Hey, Jody, SocGen is gonna have a job opening...

[01WhiteCobra]

Société Générale said on Thursday it had discovered €7bn ($10.26bn) of losses from a rogue trader in European stock futures and big US subprime mortgage writedowns, forcing the French bank into an emergency €5.5bn share issue.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd9f55d6-ca4b-11dc-a960-000077b07658.html

Makes Kick Lesson look like a ghetto boy. haha.

[slow99]

Somewhere, Brian Hunter just got a warm, fuzzy feeling.

[Slowhand]

we were just talking about this...slightly ridiculous that one guy could pull that off.

[01WhiteCobra]

we were just talking about this...slightly ridiculous that one guy could pull that off.

What cracks me up is... it ain't the guy's money. Whether he made a killing or not he'd collect his salary and the firm would have collected the profits.

But you are right, in this day and age, you have to think there was some collaboration that had to exist.

How the risk department didn't see this amazing me. SocGen isn't some little rinky dink day trading bucket shop.

[AL P]

Funny shit! I'm really not suprised that no one was keeping tabs on the money. With the work i do, I could embezzle tons of money and few people would realize it. Not that I ever would, thieves make me sick, it's just that the lack of oversight really amazes me. It's all about trust I guess.

[01WhiteCobra]

Funny shit! I'm really not suprised that no one was keeping tabs on the money. With the work i do, I could embezzle tons of money and few people would realize it. Not that I ever would, thieves make me sick, it's just that the lack of oversight really amazes me. It's all about trust I guess.

From what I'm hearing on Bloomberg, without the meltdown last Monday in the global markets he would never have been outted. Guess he had a hella of a margin call. lol

[Denny]

Like the typical Vegas loser... just keep doubling down with hopes of winning after each loss.






It'll happen someday, buddy... someday. LMAO!

[01WhiteCobra]

Like the typical Vegas loser... just keep doubling down with hopes of winning after each loss.






It'll happen someday, buddy... someday. LMAO!

Martingale buddy... its the debil.

My favorite trader in the world, Victor Sperandeo, went bust this past year supposedly. I still use alot of his chart techniques and money management (risk management) but obviously emotion got the best part of him and he blew out if the reports are true.

Not to quite the extent of this dude, reports say fiddy million, but damn, that was his money. lol

[slow99]

Hey, you didn't happen to catch Fast Money today, did you?

[01WhiteCobra]

Hey, you didn't happen to catch Fast Money today, did you?

No, was out.

Hey, looks like SocGen may have known about this a little earlier then they let own... lol.

[slow99]

No, was out.

Hey, looks like SocGen may have known about this a little earlier then they let own... lol.

All 4 traders strongly agreed that there is no way in hell all those trades just, "slipped through the cracks." Looks like they found a lower tier guy to be their scapegoat, probably paid him handsomely under the table to take the fall, then viola. We have a multibillion dollar "trading mishap" and our stock drops 4%, instead of a multibillion dollar writedown and the stock tanking 30%.

[01WhiteCobra]

All 4 traders strongly agreed that there is no way in hell all those trades just, "slipped through the cracks." Looks like they found a lower tier guy to be their scapegoat, probably paid him handsomely under the table to take the fall, then viola. We have a multibillion dollar "trading mishap" and our stock drops 4%, instead of a multibillion dollar writedown and the stock tanking 30%.

You got to give him style points. Blowing through 70 million is one thing, blowing through 700 million is another, the first billion had to make his nuts shrivel just a tad. After the second billion I think he must have been so numb it didn't matter anymore.

Something tells me he'd get bored if he was on Deal Or No Deal. haha.

Here is something from Financial Times:

There are two central questions in the case of Jérôme Kerviel and Société Générale. What was the precise nature of his position? And does it explain the sharp decline in European equities between January 21 and 23? The best assessment is as follows.

Mr Kerviel’s supposed job was to arbitrage small discrepancies between equity derivatives and cash equity prices. However, starting on January 7, Mr Kerviel made a series of bets that Germany’s Dax index, the French Cac40, and the Euro Stoxx 50 would rise. He bought futures contracts, as normal, but did not hedge against market falls. (Hedging would usually involve selling the underlying shares, or over-the-counter derivative contracts with clients.)

Eleven days later, internal controls finally identified suspicious activity. By then the Euro Stoxx 50 had fallen by a cumulative 7 per cent, and the position had generated, SocGen has indicated, a loss of between €1.5bn and €2bn. This implies Mr Kerviel had taken a notional long exposure of €21-€29bn. The margin payments on this position might have been more than €1bn. This sounds too big to avoid detection, but may have seemed normal given the desk’s legitimate activity of very high volume and low- risk trades.

On Monday, a shaken SocGen began to liquidate the position over three days, bringing its total loss to €4.9bn. Did it move the market? Over the period the total value of trading in index futures and the cash market for the Euro Stoxx 50 was €544bn. That suggests the unwinding of Mr Kerviel’s rogue position accounted for 5 per cent or less of activity. Clearly a determined seller does not go unnoticed by traders in a jittery market. But it seems likely that the main explanation for the market rout in Europe was earlier sharp declines in Asia, general concerns over the US economy and specific worries about the monoline insurance crisis. One man damaged SocGen severely but it seems unlikely that he moved global equity markets significantly.

[Yale]

Damn, one guy tanking an entire market's equities? Michael Milkin must've taught this guy everything he knows!