traders

  • 10 Feb 2010 at 12:41 PM

Traders Who Commute Psyched For Opportunity To Spend The Night In The City, Momentary Respite From The Old Ball And Chain

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Bloomberg reports that not everyone is freaking out over the prospect of a little more snow and are in fact keeping fingers crossed they’ll be forced to tell the wife/husband they’re stranded for the night. ‘Cause that’s when the real party* gets started.

Weather advisories calling for as much as 20 inches of snow prompted firms such as New York-based Jefferies & Co. to reserve hotel rooms in Manhattan as a precaution if employees can’t make their usual commutes. That’s good news to traders who welcome an evening at the pubs.
“Bars and restaurants are the beneficiaries of the blizzards,” said Doreen Mogavero, president and chief executive officer of Mogavero Lee & Co., a brokerage located on Broad Street in Manhattan. She plans to stay in the city tonight. “We always manage to make the best of it and have a good time — good friends, some dinner and a glass of wine in a gorgeous blizzard.”

*One night each year they get off from the nagging wife/fat husband and screaming children.

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  • 28 Jul 2008 at 10:31 AM

UBS Suspends Trader For ‘Poor Judgment’

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Damned if you do/damned if you don’t UBS, under a bit of fire for both helping clients avoid paying taxes and hurting clients who it told auction-rate securities were a sweet ass deal, has suspended David Shulman, head of U.S. fixed income. The moratorium on Shulman being allowed to come into the office probably has something to do with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s suit against the Swiss bank concerning the perpetration of “multi-billion dollar fraud” on its clients, though there’ve been whispers from IT about Shulman repeatedly violating the company’s rules regarding “appropriate internet usage” (talkin’ ’bout porn here). UBS stated that while it “does not believe that there was illegal conduct by any employee, we have found cases of poor judgment by certain individuals and are evaluating appropriate disciplinary measures,” which in this case would be three months of self-gratification without a digital aid.
UBS Suspends Top Executive [WSJ]

  • 14 Jul 2008 at 9:59 AM

Caption Contest Monday: The Sleeves Are About To Come Off

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CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino ringside at Trader Monthly‘s fight night. [PageSixMag]
Related: CG’s Training Regimen

  • 21 Feb 2008 at 3:39 PM

Jerome Kerviel: Charting His Trades

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Jerome Kerviel's Performance (small).pngOur eyes were already glazed over when we finally turned our attention to the the report released by Société Générale on the Jerome Kerviel scandal. The ocular varnish hardened to opaque as we skimmed through blather about how almost everything had gone right, everyone had done things well, and it was just a few bad eggs. It confirms much of what we had already concluded—that the back office lacked the knowledge and spine to really control the risk of the traders. “In some cases, according to the report, controllers who asked Mr. Kerviel about irregularities in his trades didn’t understand his explanations, but they dropped their inquiries,” the Wall Street Journal writes.
We woke up a bit when we read the Journal’s summary of the report: “The findings are likely to prompt widespread soul-searching within the banking sector.” Cue laughter.
But what really got our attention and tore the scales from our eyes was the chart attached to the report. Kerviel, according to SocGen, hid his real profit and loss by displaying an “official” P&L that was very small by comparison. After the jump, we bring you the chart.

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Saracen Gets Crushed As March-April Natural Gas Spread Widen

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Go Panthers!Remember that Houston-based energy fund we told you about yesterday? The one found itself on the wrong side of a natural gas futures trade? This morning the wires have named the fund as Saracen Energy, which matches what DealBreaker was told by readers yesterday.
“The spread between March and April 2009 natural gas futures leaped by more than 50 percent in the week between Feb. 7 and 14,” Reuters reports. For the year, it has almost doubled. Saracen had apparently went short March 2009 gas futures and long April 2009, and got crushed as the spread blew out.
How bad are the losses? Reuters says the fund lost up to $400 million. Platts says it’s more like $700 million to $800 million. Saracen denies rumors that it is selling its book to Goldman Sachs, and tells has sufficient liquidity to continue operations. But a 2006 report detailing the fund’s size before these losses put it at around $1.4 billion, meaning it may have lost half its assets under management in this trade. Amaranth, which suffered serious losses in 2006 after getting on the wrong side of the March-April calendar-spread bet, initially made assurances that it had enough funds to continue operations. Within a matter of days, Amaranth collapsed.
The losses are a major setback for Saracen. Earlier this year, Saracen lost a top trader, Bill Reed, to the Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy LLC, an energy trading operation launched by Highbridge Capital Management LLC and Louis Dreyfus Group.

Energy fund Saracen has big natgas trading loss [Reuters]