A Day in the Life

Tom Hayes may have been predisposed to fixate on financial markets, but he was also a product of his environment. All his interactions are with brokers, traders or co-workers. In the rare moments he's not offering prices or closing deals, he's working on improving the accuracy of the spreadsheets he uses to help spot price anomalies and identify opportunities. Hayes has a vested interest in Libor being as high as possible on the days the contract fixes every six months. One of Hayes's favorite trades involved betting that the gap between Libor in different durations would widen or narrow: what's known in the industry as a basis trade. The Tokyo interbank offered rate was similar to Libor, but while the majority of banks on the Libor panel were Western, Tibor was based on estimates mostly from Japanese lenders.