Business Insider UK spoke with Alexis Stenfors, author of "Barometer of Fear: An Insider's Account of Rouge Trading and the Greatest Banking Scandal in History", who explained why risk-taking can become so addictive.
He said: "How can risk taking become addictive? Take a skydiver. why would you go up in a plane, and then decide to jump from the plane? Trading has a similar kind of feeling - the more risk you take, you get that sort of feeling of a buzz, an element of being outside of the normal life. And that in itself has nothing to do with money."
"The same way as you want to become a better skydiver and want to go higher and higher up, the same goes with trading. You want to be able to cope with a lot more risk. More risk you can cope with, the bigger risk you can take."