In September 2011, a 31 year old trader named Kweku Adoboli walked into a London police station and, in effect, handed UBS a $2.3 billion problem. The media called him a rogue. UBS called him a criminal. The courts called him guilty. But the more interesting question is what UBS called him before anyone found […]
Beyond the Rogue: Why Banks Secretly Love High Stakes Traders (Until They Lose) Read More »
There is a reliable pattern in financial markets that has nothing to do with price charts or earnings reports. Every few years, someone invents a new vocabulary word. The word sounds fresh. It carries the scent of innovation. And it exists, almost always, to describe something old enough to have a Wikipedia page. The pump
Three centuries apart, two crowds of people made the same mistake in almost the same way. One wore powdered wigs. The other posted rocket emojis. The outcome was identical. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 is usually taught as a cautionary tale about greed in a distant era. But if you strip away the costumes
The OG Crypto: Why 1720 London Looks Exactly Like 2021 Reddit Read More »
There is something almost poetic about watching a government lose a fight with a number. Not a war, not an election, not a scandal. A number. A simple exchange rate that Britain insisted was correct while the entire planet disagreed. On September 16, 1992, the United Kingdom was forced out of the European Exchange Rate
The ancient Athenians had a word for it. They called it hubris. The dangerous belief that success was permanent, that the rules applied to everyone else, and that borrowed time was the same thing as earned time. Twenty five centuries later, in the spring of 2010, the modern Greeks discovered that the word still carried
Why Every Value Investor Needs to Study the Fall of Athens Read More »
Most people meet Alexander Hamilton through a Broadway musical or through the face on a ten dollar bill. Few realize he essentially invented the modern concept of a government stepping in to rescue a collapsing financial system. And he did it before the United States had a functioning economy, a credible currency, or any real
How Alexander Hamilton Invented the “Bailout” to Save a Fragile Nation Read More »
Everyone knows Warren Buffett. He is the Oracle of Omaha, the folksy billionaire who drinks Cherry Coke and dispenses wisdom at annual meetings like a financial Buddha. Entire libraries exist about his methods. MBA students can recite his letters to shareholders the way seminary students recite scripture. But almost nobody knows William Duer. And that
Why Modern Investors Should Study William Duer, Not Just Warren Buffett Read More »
In 2011, a trader at UBS named Kweku Abiodua Adoboli managed to lose $2.3 billion of the bank’s money. Not over a decade. Not through some elaborate corporate conspiracy. Over a matter of months, through unauthorized trades that he hid with the kind of creativity that, in another context, might have earned him a promotion.
Adrenaline and Accounting: The Bio-Chemistry of a Rogue Trade Read More »
There is a moment from late 1989 that captures a small ticker running. The Nikkei 225 is approaching 39,000. Nobody believed the number could go down. That is the most important detail of the entire story. The Setup Nobody Questioned To understand how Japan briefly held more stock market wealth than any nation in history,
42% of the World’s Wealth: When the Tokyo Stock Exchange Owned the Planet Read More »
There is a particular kind of disaster that only visits people who believe they are too important to fail. Jay Cooke knew this disaster intimately. He just did not know it was coming for him. In September 1873, the most powerful private banker in America locked the doors of his firm and sent the financial
The Napoleon of Finance: The Rise and Devastating Fall of Jay Cooke Read More »