Eight ordinary people are given a million dollars, a fortnight of intensive training and two months to run their own hedge fund. Can they make a killing?

The experiment reveals the inner workings of a City trading floor. The money is supplied by hedge fund manager Lex van Dam: he wants to see if ordinary people can beat the professionals, and he expects a return on his investment too. Yet no-one foresees the financial crisis that lies ahead.

The traders were selected in spring 2008, before the US credit crisis gathered pace. The successful candidates were chosen, trained and dispatched to their specially created trading room in the heart of the Square Mile. Among them are an environmentalist, a soldier, a boxing promoter, an entrepreneur, a retired IT consultant, a vet, a student and a shopkeeper.

As the novices learn the dark art of trading stocks and shares, the financial markets start to buckle. Making money takes second place to basic survival as the brutal realities of global economics take their toll on the traders. How do they cope? Will they secure themselves a bonus, or walk away with nothing?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gthhq

Now see the unseen City-4 January 2009

Lex Van Dam and his million dollar TV gamble-07 Jan 2009

But the sight of Lex and Anton, these two 'ruthless' traders, squirming in their office wondering how to fire the frequent cryer without the Scouser coming in and flooring them, was one of the funniest things I've seen on television in a long time.

Seymour - perhaps WOS was +100 +80 +60 +40 +19. That would count as falling fast.

Didn't really make you want to work in a hedge fund, staring at screen 16 hours/ day putting in the face time in a sterile goldfish bowl, cold heartless bosses and making no money. Not sure if the comparison was appropiate to hedge fund performance as their losses were also probably a lot to do with liquidating positions due to increased margin requirements and redemptions though there was a fair bit of distressed selling going on in this office. I expect they shot a lot more footage than is shown and the producers decide to drag out the emotional card a bit long. I couldn't wait for them to get sacked but when they were there wasn't anything to watch except for the cats that got the cream!

True Isaacs, but he already had his hands in his head with a position when it showed that.

Ok fair enough. Can see I haven't watched it.

NickB

"I know some of the people involved in making that prog, they are film-makers and are a long way away from the 'reality tv' producers mindset."

Any final comments? I used to work for LWT, inevitably many years ago, and am always interested in what goes into making a programme. My sadness is based on the conviction that today's programme makers underestimate the intelligence of the average viewer - but maybe they don't (!)

TP

All in all a bit dull,
it could have made for such gripping exciting tv, but instead it was a damp squid,

As previously mentioned i liked the scouse lad, and although i think he was a bit soft walking out in support of that mard arse woman who kept crying, i did like his morals and principles about talking to people with respect etc,

The 2 guys that run it,Lex and Anton, were arrogant i thought , especially Anton,
but agree with Kyoto , they soon lost that big time charlie attitude when they were squirming on how to fire the cryer without upsetting the scouser fella,
was the best bit of all the footage shown.

Send him a note, he will probably answer as he doesn't appear to trade any more.

http://www.antonkreil.com/

It was a very poor series. The last prog was just too long winded and full of waffle. I agree with what someone else said earlier in the thread that you needed to see one of the "Traders" sitting in front of a screen with an open position watching the price go up or down and see their reactions. we only got glimpses of screens and chatter.
Poor - they could have made a lot out of it.
Bring back the yuppie dramas of yesteryear. Can't even remember what it was called but it was more fun than what we have seen over the last 3 episodes.
TT

Show me the money!

I think everybody could have benefited more from a web cam in Ruth's garage ;-)

As Ruth posted it could have been a great show but it appears they did not realise what a blockbuster they could have had.

MM, youde all laugh at my pjamas;-) there would be more bleeps in it than gordon ramseys kitchen nightmares,and would give all my internet surfing content secrets away.

In all seriousness,i agree with Clubman, it could have and should have been great viewing,and the worst of it is alot of my friends watched it too as ide told them it would be great to see the challenges us traders have to sometimes endure , and now they all think i just sit on my arse all day having brews and little chit chats round the table, and generally dont do much, when of course the life of a trader is really far more complex than that;-)

Last night I caught a trailer preview for 'The City Uncovered with Evan Davis', which is on BBC2 tonight, Wednesday, at 9pm, and saw 'Clem from across the road' featured in it.

Two major problems with the series. Firstly as others have said much more should have been made of the charts rather than the traders. I guess the problem here is that they didn't think of it before shooting began and so didn't have direct recording of the live charts independently of whatever was displayed on the trader's terminal. Also, that would have been a lot of recording channels open at any one time (unless they developed a way to simulate a live chart from an intraday chart taken at the close).

Secondly the two "tough" guys Lex and Anton could win a national contest for unexpressive faces. Lex was asked to be Alan Sugar and it just didn't sit. His people skills were non-existent and even Anton had to step in on occasion. You really needed an AS type to create the pressure. All they could do is bemoan the laid-back style of the trading room but hey, the pressure has to come from the top.

Just a thought on why the geriatric Simon might have been recruited: the maths question in the interviews was, what is 32 x 32? Now there is one class of individuals who would instantly know the answer, and that is computer programmers elderly enough to have dabbled in assembly language (like Simon and me) to whom it is patently obvious that 25 x 25 = 210 or 1024 :-)

Simon's firing/resignation is an example of how it could have been done much, much, better. It would have been great at least to see a one-minute summary of all his trades speeded up to show them going the wrong way. As it was, we really didn't have much more than a vague feeling that he'd been wasted 'cos he done bad.

computer programmers elderly enough to have dabbled in assembly language
Oi, Kayak, less of the elderly :-)

Yes - bring on the chads :-)

"Firstly as others have said much more should have been made of the charts rather than the traders. I guess the problem here is that they didn't think of it before shooting began and so didn't have direct recording of the live charts independently of whatever was displayed on the trader's terminal. Also, that would have been a lot of recording channels open at any one time (unless they developed a way to simulate a live chart from an intraday chart taken at the close)."

I don't understand the problem here. I've never day traded but one of the more interesting days of my life was on a course given by Bully, Croc and Limpy. Croc traded live in front of us using level two and graphs. We saw the ones he got right and the ones he got wrong. We saw him move the market and bots on level two and it was fascinating.

I cannot see why this could not have been captured on camera. We seem to have been using the word 'filmed' but my understanding these days is that everything is captured on tape in cameras - and then made to look like film electronically.

TP

Yes but with every trader having multiple positions that's a lot of cameras... and the trader himself wouldn't want to be stuck on a single screen.

Kayak, they could have used esignals replay facility if they had done a bit of research,no need for multiple cameras,could have added all the actual chart footage later when editing,
I can pull up any chart, from any day and then play it back as it actually appeared live, bar by bar, i can even set the speed at which i want each bar playing back,