My Word Was My Bond: Tales from the Old Stock Exchange

Before compliance departments grew larger than trading desks, before algorithms replaced instinct, and before lunches became something squeezed between meetings, there existed another City.A louder City. A sharper City. A wonderfully absurd City.A world of shouted prices, spoof on escalators, Friday afternoons at Sweetings, Brick Lane Thursdays, trainee coffee disasters, analyst dinners that drifted gloriously off-course, and lunches so vast they effectively ended the working day.Deals were struck with a handshake. Reputations mattered. And somewhere beneath the bravado, noise, wine, humour, and occasional chaos, there existed genuine loyalty and camaraderie.These poems are reflections from that vanished world - affectionate, humorous, occasionally outrageous, and entirely written from the perspective of a market man fortunate enough to have lived through it.For all its flaws, excesses, and questionable judgement, the old Square Mile possessed a spirit that those who stood beneath its trading lights still remember fondly: "My word 'was' my bond."My Word Was My Bond is the sequel to The Making of a Fiscal Market Man