City trader diary

IT has been the most tumultous week in the history of Britain's stock market - but what is it REALLY like on the trading floor?

Jimmy Yates, 29, has risen quickly through the City's ranks to become a senior dealer at stock brokers CMC Markets - which traded almost £1 TRILLION for clients last year.

Here's Jimmy diary on five tumultuous days in the City.

MONDAY

Last week I was in the office until 3am on Tuesday morning, 5am on Thursday and 10pm on Friday covering the US markets and the bail-out vote. It was absolute hell - I have never seen the markets like it.

After the US bail out approval, I finally thought "Right, we can push on from here" and had expected this week to be quieter. How wrong I was!

We're all in by 7am, trying to plan for the day. Before the markets opened at 8am, the dealing room's silent. It erupted as trading started and prices started falling.

We were hopeful, though. Alistair Darling was expected to give a speech that might instil some confidence - and confidence is what the market's been missing.

Unfortunately he said nothing. We had the TVs on - and eight minutes in, prices fell 100 points.

But by that point, the FTSE was down 200 points and we've all got used to big swings like this.

The phones have been ringing off the hook for the past three weeks, so when the screens started turning red (red means prices are going down; green means up) and we started getting more clients calling it hardly felt any different.

Everyone was thinking, "This can't get any worse."

By the end of the day everyone's heads were in their hands. The world saw the pictures from the trading floors across London - none of that was put on, that's exactly how the mood was.

And this industry is global now, operating around the clock. So just because Europe had shut, the US was still trading.

I got home exhausted, just had time to play with my two children for an hour before looking at the US markets at 9pm and wondering whether or not I should head back to the office.

Monday was so huge - biggest one day fall in 20 years - but by then we were getting used to big moves.

TUESDAY

First thing the market initially goes up by three per cent, so happy days, but pretty soon prices started falling again.

Then at 10am the news about Iceland hits.

Our FX (foreign exchange) boys have always got their fingers on the pulse and they started hearing all the chatter early on that the whole country could be at risk.

But then the news smashed through to the rest of the market.

They couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Now we're not too heavily invested in Iceland, so it shouldn't have had that much of an impact.

But as the news starts brewing and people realised, "actually this isn't just a bank going under, it could be a whole country", confidence was lost and screens went red.

In this market everyone is trading on momentum - a move is made, a price starts falling and everyone is so scared they start doing the same as everyone else and the situation snowballs.

The floor is alight.

WEDNESDAY

We knew something was going to be announced by the government this morning at 7am. So I made sure we were in the office by 5.30am.

And then nothing gets announced. 7.30am comes and still nothing is announced. All we could think was, "come on give us a chance. You're always giving the banks second, third chances - help everyone else in the markets out."

We expect to see the markets really rally. Bank shares were helped, making back some of there losses, but the rest of the market tanked again. It's taken everyone by surprise. Negative territory by 250 points, the banks are all falling lower again.

Then I heard on of the FX boys shout "Christ they've cut all the rates", and then everything was pandemonium in here.

The markets have gone crazy, and that 200 points we were down, we've wiped out within 15 minutes. So that's gone, a whole morning's work gone.

Our business was manic. We had 40 per cent more trades in that one day than we've ever had on any day before.

A lot of our business is automated, so whenever there's a big move BANG, all these orders (when I say orders I mean buying and selling shares) kick in on people's accounts so our customers can protect themselves.

Our clients range from small trades where a person has an account of a couple of hundred pounds, trading a pound a point, right up to corporate and institutional accounts where millions of pounds are traded.

I expect that we pushed through the billion pound threshold today.

And after all that we've gone through today going home, knowing that I'll be checking the markets later on, I feel I've aged 20 years over the last three weeks.

THURSDAY

Like most mornings, after waking up at 5.30am the first thing I do is check my phone, which I can use to look at the markets - not too bad.

We were happy - a bit of respite in the morning as the markets started on the up.

Being on the floor this morning compared to yesterday, is like a different world.

There's a more jovial mood, people are almost happy, because the markets are going up.

HBOS rose 30 per cent, RBS were on the up, but then the US opens up on the slide and starts taking us with them.

Then General Motors in America come out with poor figures, then markets start falling again. FTSE down 50 points. And you look at it and it's started to come down pretty quickly, then it stops there - why's it stopped there? Because the markets have closed, that's why. So what does tomorrow morning hold? I think we know¿

It's exhausting - you're talking to clients all day, they're shouting because they want this done, they want their trades through, and of course, that's their right. But it does drain it out of you.

FRIDAY

What a week - more crashing falls today.

It's the worst week since 1987 - and still not realistic prospect of when it is going to get better.

After everything that's happened this week, and the previous three, I need some time relaxing with my family.

People have always had this opinion that city boys do nothing but short-sell by day, and hit London bars and clubs by night. Not all of us are like that.

Yes, there is the odd reckless villain out there, and some guys earning millions, but the vast majority of us aren't. We work hard to provide for our families.

Over the past month, I've been lucky to get an hour a night with them before getting back to check the computer screen. We're all working 18 hour days.

When I get home to Essex tonight, I'm loading up the car and taking my wife and two kids - I have a ten-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son - away for the weekend to Sussex.

It will be the perfect opportunity to do not very much but spend quality time with them all.

I don't envy the position of any government or central bank at the moment. At the beginning of the week we were all reeling when Alistair Darling managed to address the nation and say nothing in particular.

But in hindsight, they may have just been preparing for the joint rate cuts across the globe.

The good thing about the UK is that while the Americans want to do all the blaming right away, we're happy to get the problem sorted and then look into the blame game and finger pointing. I'm sure we'll address the whys and whos in the next three to six months.

But at the moment the powers that be need to carry on concentrating on getting us out of the current situation.

We're finally understanding why we're had such a good ten years. A lot of people have been taking on debt, leveraging their debt up, and it's finally got to a crisis situation.

Are we in a recession? Probably, yes. The US has probably been in a recession for the past three to six months.

Some jobs will be lost - I've got friends that are out of work - and the money supply will be short, so loans and mortgages will be hard to come by. This will make it hard for smaller businesses.

But I'm hopeful this recession won't be as deep, or as long, as some people are predicting.

When the FTSE closed last night it was on the slide. Overnight both the US and Asian markets hadn't faired well. So we knew what was coming.

To start off with we were down nearly 450 points - we got absolutely pummelled.

The big banks like HBOS got a battering, and we were just inundated with calls. By 9am everyone was shattered.

But we began to climb back - euphoria - right up until the American markets opened. That started sinking fast from the start and we were dragged down with it.

The whole day we've seen ridiculous movements in both directions. As soon as it starts everyone jumps on it and a movement turns into a landslide.

There's been no rhyme or reason to it, it's just been blind panic.

It's been an unbelievably hectic day and no one has left the trading floor.

The concerning thing about the day's trading is that it's been a full market movement - not just the big banks fell, retailers have. We've seen everything fall.

Instead of banking fears there's now global recession fears.

The week has just been unbelievable - absolutely ridiculous. Everyone here is just glad it's the weekend.

It's early days yet and I haven't seen all the figures, but I'm pretty sure we booked even more trades than on Wednesday.

So that's it, the whole week - £250billion wiped off the FTSE 100. It's been the worst week for British markets since the 1987 crash.

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