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

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,

OK didn't know that. They had Bloomberg terminals (and empty Bisley cabinets), logos very much in evidence.

Kayak,

Agreed. But as much of the thing is faked anyway (OK edited then!) I would have thought it would be a more impressive scenario.

Anyone can film someone throwing a phone on to the floor or being slagged off by his boss - but seeing Croc trick a bot using a laptop and broadband was fascinating. And then trying to second guess the pressures actually behind the stacked orders on level two is real Sherlock Holmes stuff if explained properly.

TP

Kayak, yes noticed the bloomberg terminals,they arent cheap to run are they,must have cost a fair few quid as they all seemed to have one.

ThePublisher - but they were meant to be running a mini-hedge fund not scalping ticks day trading.

Ruthie: Don't worry, they didn't pay for the Bloomers terminals -- Bloomberg got a big fat credit in the titles. So just the exchange fees then (maybe Bloomers subbed them that too).

MM;-)
Isaacs,agree but still the charts could have built up a bit of excitement,showing the rapid moves on their positions and how they had to deal with it, stop losses etc,or even better viewing the rabbit in the headlights senario;-)

'rabbit in the headlights senario'

The single mums face when she was told to trade with 200K was a picture.

I only saw 2 episodes but I thought it was terrible.

Wait until the new series starts. Celebrity traders, that will be a good laugh.

Post your celebrity Traders that you think would be good for the series

Ruth