There is a moment, familiar to almost anyone who has ever opened a brokerage app, where a falling stock starts to look like a gift. The price is down 30 percent. Then 40. Your brain starts whispering that this is the opportunity everyone talks about. Buy low, sell high. Simple enough. So you buy the […]
Why When You Buy the Dip, But the Dip Keeps Dipping 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 »
In January 2008, Société Générale announced a loss of 4.9 billion euros. The culprit was a junior trader named Jérôme Kerviel, who had built up unauthorized positions worth roughly 50 billion euros. The bank unwound those positions in a panic, the market absorbed the shock, and Kerviel became the most famous rogue trader since Nick
If Kerviel Had Won: Would He Be the CEO of Société Générale Today? Read More »
There is a particular kind of genius that only reveals itself in hindsight. It is the genius of the financial fraudster, a person who manages to look like the smartest person in the room right up until the moment everyone realizes they were the most dangerous. Jérôme Kerviel nearly brought down Société Générale in 2008.
There is a particular kind of ambition that does not announce itself. It does not wear expensive suits or speak in loud, confident tones at dinner parties. It sits quietly in a back office, learns the plumbing of a system everyone else ignores, and then, one day, decides to use that plumbing to flood the
Every quarter, something curious happens in the investing world. Fund managers everywhere engage in a ritual that has nothing to do with finding the next great company or protecting your wealth from market chaos. They’re rearranging the furniture, so to speak. Only the furniture is your money, and the room is their portfolio holdings list
Is Your High-Priced Fund a ‘Window Dressing’ Specialist? How to Tell Read More »