About me

My career in the financial markets began in 1994 when I was taken down to the trading floor of the London Metal Exchange (LME).

It was a baptism of fire from day one, that much I can tell you, trading and trading floors are not your average job and I quickly realized that I had much to learn, however I did have a great fall back, my father, who worked on the LME for around 35 years, so I’m guessing you could say that it was my destiny or fate (If you knew him, joking of course) that I would also end up in the business and what a crazy, stressful and fast paced life it was.

So at the ripe old age of 16 I worked for my father, unpaid work experience in order to see if I could get my head around what trading was all about.

After a couple of months, a vacancy came up at Credit Lyonnais Rouse, I was to be a market clerk (tea boy, breakfast run, go pick up my dry cleaning etc) and I entered Broadwalk House, 5 Appold Street in the City of London, crapping myself quite frankly at the thought of what might lay ahead.

CLR were to be involved in one of the largest financial “Rouge Trader” scandals in history, I won’t go into it here but feel free to ask me about it if we get to speak.

I was told in no uncertain terms that I had three months to get to grips with things or I was out, that was from the guy that had been there the day I was born, I wasn’t going to be given an easy ride, in actual fact it probably made it harder to succeed.

After being at CLR for a few years, I had the old traditional interview for a new role at another firm, this was conducted in the Old Tea Warehouse, opposite the trading floor which at the time was in 56 Leadenhall Street, this involved quite a few beers, a bit of drunken conversation but in the end, all figures were agreed and I was off to join Sucden UK Limited (Now Sucden Financial).

S&D……Blimey what a place to work, I must admit this was the best place I ever worked at during my time in the City, the best bunch of guys you could ever ask to work with, some outrageous personalities, I have so many fond memories of Sucden, I could be writing forever.

At Sucden I worked both on the trading floor at the LME and also upstairs working alongside a great man who really helped to show me how things really worked (Thanks Skunk Nuts). We were trading and brokering a variety of different financial products, including base metals, precious metals and FX, with the odd bit of oil and soft commodities thrown in on occasions, what this showed me was that all markets work and function in the same way, it’s only the contract specs that change, fundamentally it’s all the same.

Without boring you with all the details, I later moved to a few more different banks and brokers, and finally decided after the “Financial Crisis” in 2008/2009 that 2010 would be my last year in the City.

I would just like to say a massive thank you to some of the people I worked with over the years, thanks guys you helped me a lot.

Harry Scott – Thanks Dad RIP

Ivor “Skunk Nuts” Howes, Chris Adams, Terry Wilsone, Hugh Le Fanu, Chris Doel, Andy Farrage, Guy “Guido” Newman, Jim Boland and many more along the way, it was a blast.

These days I try to help aspiring retail traders to understand the markets in the way they should be understood, forget what you’ve heard or read, that’s all horse shit.

If you would like to find out more about what I can do to help, then please feel free to get in touch.

Kind Regards

Paul Scott