There is a trader on every floor who makes everyone else uncomfortable. Not because he yells or throws things. The opposite. He is calm when calm should not be possible. The portfolio is down five percent in a morning and he is eating a sandwich. The market is in freefall and he is scanning for […]
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 certain dark comedy in the phrase “pump and dump.” It sounds like something you would do with a flat tire or a bad relationship. Instead, it describes one of the oldest and most reliable methods for separating people from their money. Not your money, of course. You are too smart for that.
How to Turn $10,000 into $10 in Three Easy Steps (Pump and Dump) Read More »
There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from having a good reason for everything. It feels sturdy. It feels earned. You did the research, ran the numbers, built the thesis. And then the market did something that made your airtight reasoning look like a paper umbrella in a hurricane. This is not a
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 »
There is a particular kind of person who has never consistently made money in the markets but has figured out how to make a fortune teaching others to do what they themselves cannot. This is not a bug in the system. It is the system. Welcome to the guru industrial complex, where the product is
The Guru Industrial Complex: How to Spot a Fake Trading Coach Read More »
There is a drug dealer in your pocket. It does not wear a trench coat or lurk in alleyways. It wears the logo of your favourite brokerage app, and it has studied your brain more carefully than you ever will. Welcome to neuro-harvesting, the quiet art of turning your emotional impulses into somebody else’s profit.
Neuro-Harvesting: How Your FOMO is Literally Someone Else’s Alpha 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 horror that dividend investors feel when they watch someone day trade. It is not the horror of watching money being lost. They can live with that. Losses happen. Markets fall. Mistakes are part of the game. What horrifies them is something stranger and harder to explain. It is the
Ask a dividend investor what they did last Tuesday and they will probably say nothing. Ask a day trader the same question and you will get a story involving three screens, a ruined lunch, and a moment of either triumph or quiet self loathing. Both people are in the market. Both want to make money.