Monday morning and Lawrie Inman, a confident young east London-based futures trader in T-shirt and trainers, is in his Bishopsgate office at 6.30. While the interior designers are redecorating the three-bedroom Shoreditch apartment he has just bought, and installing an Xbox and table football in the games room, he is hungry to start making money.

And make money he does: last April he made £700,000 in one hour. How? By watching a televised speech by the chairman of the European Central Bank and realising that there would be no increase in interest rates. While others waited for confirmation Inman jumped in and cemented some long-term trades.

Now he grabs a bowl of Rice Krispies and a banana, powers up the seven monitors that surround his desk, and prepares for a deluge of data. The European markets are about to open, and today could be another seven-digit day for him on the German government bonds market.

Across town New York-born Adam Grunfeld is starting his day at a more leisurely pace. Dressed in tidy blue jeans and a polo shirt he glances at the two screens in the study of his rented Covent Garden apartment while he prepares breakfast. He won’t stroll over to the Mayfair offices of his hedge-fund employer, Comac Capital, till later. For now, what will it be? Currencies, interest-rate swaps, metals — or today, perhaps, German bonds? The two 25-year-olds have never met, but their worlds collided when both were named last month in a list of the world’s top 30 young traders. They were the youngest, both based in London, and thought to be earning up to £1.5m. They were both born on May 14, 1981.

The City of London has always been a place where fortunes are lost and some are made. And the men who do it have always held a unique fascination for mere mortals struggling by on salaries that wouldn’t even cover the Pétrus bill of a City high-flyer.

First there were the stuffy pinstriped gentlemen traders, tottering to work through the mist on Blackfriars bridge with umbrellas and bowler hats. Then after the big bang in the 1980s came the much-loathed Gordon Gekko yuppies; dead-eyed asset-strippers and loadsamoney wideboys as unacceptable a face of capitalism as ever there has been. Both these groups are still alive and well in certain EC postcodes, but as bonuses yet again reach record levels within the Square Mile, the City is changing faces once more. And if there is a face of the modern City, it’s represented by Lawrie Inman and Adam Grunfeld.

Grunfeld was brought up in a comfortable Jewish household in the New York suburb of Scarsdale, surrounded by kids who never doubted they were headed for Ivy League universities and professional success. His maths teacher set the class the task of investing play money on the market for two months: Grunfeld bet everything on stocks that were at a 52-week low — and failed dismally.

He furiously vowed never to mess up so badly again. At Stanford University in California he took on his preppy contemporaries at Yale and Harvard in another competition and beat them all with a 500% return. He was plucked from the graduate programme, parachuted into a leading hedge fund, and posted to London.

Overlooking the genteel streets of Mayfair it is clear he isn’t quite able to settle into the role of pacy City lad. Though he will go out for the occasional drink he hasn’t found a taste for English bitter. Instead he spends his evenings watching his American football team, the New York Giants, on television while waiting for the US exchanges to close.

Inman, by contrast, grew up the son of a taxi driver in Wales, reading the market pages in his dad’s red-tops. In his late teens he worked alongside dad at a Gibraltar race-betting agency, learning to recognise the punters with a track record and occasionally slipping a sly fiver on whichever horse they had backed.

He might have become a professional footballer after his Swansea team won the universities title. The local newspaper reported one game in which he was knocked out and stretchered off the field. More often it reported him scoring.

But Inman could see his younger brother already making it big in the markets and followed him in. “I have a real will to win. I hate losing,” he says. “We’re like footballers. The company knows that, at my age and having the money I have, I could quite easily go bananas and blow it and be left with nothing. So the company (Marex Financial) has looked after me and protected me and put me on to financial advisers. It’s a very similar support network to a football club.”

Their routes to the top could not have been more different — but now that they are there one thing keeps both of them hungry: “The buzz is not so much the money — it’s the feeling of vindication. That I was right, that my hard work has paid off,” says Inmam, who drives a black £72,000 Porsche 911 997.

In such princely lives there is only one real concern: how to spend it.

BOYS’ TOYS

HOW TO BLOW A BONUS

CAR: Bugatti Veyron 16.4 (£830,000) If money really is no object, there’s just one car you should want: Bugatti’s 1001bhp supercar. The only problem is there’s a waiting list of about 14 months with only 70 made each year.

HOUSE: Chesham Place, central London (£10m-£20m) Each apartment in this Belgravia development boasts its own indoor pool and sauna.

DRINK: Johnnie Walker Blue Label Anniversary (£2,200) This limited edition was created in celebration of the distiller’s 200th birthday and comes in its own Baccarat crystal decanter and silk-lined leather box.

WATCH: Panerai Luminor Chrono (£3,795-£6,850) For traders, watches are as important a signifier of financial success as their car, phone and handmade leather shoes. This exquisitely crafted Panerai tells everyone you know your timepieces.

HOLIDAY: One&Only Maldives at Reethi Rah (Grand water villa £9,718 for seven nights) This resort of beachfront villas resting on stilts above a paradise-blue lagoon is the ideal destination for “bonus boys” looking to escape the cold.

BIKE: Ducati 999R (£19,995) Your mother won’t approve, but nothing compares with the feeling of blowing your cash on a 150bhp superbike, firing up its Testastretta 999cc engine and blasting off with the sounds of Top Gun pounding in your head.

Source: Trader Monthly magazine