A Forex View From Afar

A Trader's Look At A Trader's Life

Forex Analysis

Rogue Trader's job applicantion

Written by A Forex View From Afar on Thursday, January 24, 2008

Back to www.thelfb.com

Got some guts and some dice? If you do, let's go and hire on a bank's trade desk.
Don't worry about the losses, we have dices to show us the right path and we have guts, and a lot to support those loses.

Today, Societe Generale Bank in Paris took one of the biggest loses recorded from rogue traders: $7.2 billion from a Paris based trader who was deeply involved in the European index futures. He used his back-office experience to hide his losses.

Looks like he didn't know about the 2% rule, which Forex traders should worship, especially retail traders.

Add to this, the credit market loses (read sub-prime) and you get the perfect case of a bank which depleted its capital and it's now looking for investors. $5.5 in their pockets, bank sources tells.

Remember Nick Leeson? It's one of the most known cases of a rogue trader. He bankrupted Barings Bank through trading frauds on Nikkei Futures. He hid his loses through an account named 88888, which ironically is considered a lucky number by the Eastern cultures.
Want to hear the similarity between Nick Leeson and Societe General? They both got awards and trophies for trading before the losses were discovered...

Despite what I said in the opening paragraph, trading for a trade desk is something very hard. Immense pressure, a lot of money flowing around, money which a person is unlikely to see all his life, that pressure is huge. But this still doesn't excuse these traders who fraud the system to hide loses.

Wikipedia provides us a Hall Of Fame with trading loses. Watch out, don't you make it on the list. See it here

Sources:
Bloomberg: Societe Generale Reports Record Trading Loss of EU4.9 Billion
BBC: Rogue trader to cost SocGen $7bn

Please add your Comments

Related Posts by Categories



  1. 0 comments: Responses to “ Rogue Trader's job applicantion ”

TheLFB Team & The View From Afar Blog

© 2008 A Forex View From a far Trading Blog

Trade Desk View

Fundies and Trading
There is a constant question from some traders as to why anybody would ever need to consider the ‘F’ word when trading. Fundamentals: what is so damaging at looking at both Technical charts and having a Fundamental filter to gauge how many Lots to put on? Why is it that accepting that Technicals give us price points to trade, but Fundamentals determine the direction that we travel is so difficult for some traders to accept? Without a Fundamental Filter very few pure Technical traders would have seen this Dollar move coming today.

Want to subscribe?


Subscribe in a reader.