The Series

The Wizard Traders

Conviction is the rarest currency on a trading floor.

The Wizard Traders centers on a single discipline: the trader working their own book, with their own rules, against a market that does not care. Where The Risk Tape is institutional, The Wizard Traders is personal. The capital is smaller. The decisions are louder. The line between a market that is moving and a market that has been arranged to move is exactly where each story lives.

Book 1, Conviction, follows Cal — eighteen months after the trade that ended his career — as he is offered a fresh $500K mandate by a retired trader he has been avoiding. The novella The Elephant moves the lens to London and Singapore, where macro fund manager Marcus Holt is eight months into a sovereign short that the market suddenly turns against.

Books in this series

2 books · Read in any order

New Series

Financial Thriller

Conviction

The Wizard Traders Series | Book 1

He had one rule. Don't move the stop.

Eighteen months after the trade that ended his career, Cal is still at the screens. Small positions. Clean exits. Nothing he can't walk away from.

Then a call comes from a man he's been avoiding — a retired trader with $500,000 and a question Cal isn't ready to answer.

The setup is clean. The thesis is airtight. The terms are simple: manage the capital, follow your own rules, don't repeat what happened last time.

But someone is watching. Someone who knows how Cal trades, where his stops sit, and exactly how much pressure it takes to break a man who has already broken once.

The only question is whether Cal can tell the difference between a market that's turning against him and a room that's been arranged to make him think it is.

For readers of The Fear Index, Margin Call, and anyone who has ever held a position through a shakeout and lived to talk about it.

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The Elephant by K. R. Talon — book cover

Novella

Financial Thriller · The Wizard Traders

The Elephant

The Wizard Traders Series | Book 2 · A Novella

Marcus Holt runs a macro fund from a quiet floor in Mayfair, reading sovereign debt and central bank silence better than most people read headlines. For eight months, he has built a massive position against a small Southeast Asian nation whose numbers do not add up.

Then, without warning, the market turns on him.

Over seven days in London and Singapore, The Elephant follows one trader as pressure closes in from every side. His position is under attack, trust inside his walls begins to fracture, and being right about the world may not be enough to save him.

For readers who want the intelligence without the noise.

Perfect for fans of Margin Call, Liar's Poker, The Big Short, and Capital by John Lanchester.

Novella length (~22,000 words). Reads in one sitting. Stays with you longer.

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Concepts in this series

Discretionary trading and stop discipline
Sovereign and macro positioning
Position sizing and survival
Pattern recognition vs market manipulation

For fans of

The Fear Index — Robert Harris
Margin Call (film)
Liar's Poker — Michael Lewis

Background reading

The financial mechanics behind these novels are real. Explore the underlying concepts on the K. R. Talon blog — including how a margin call actually unfolds and why synthetic leverage stays invisible until it doesn't.

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