greatest hedge fund disaster story?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by windward, Jan 2, 2004.

  1. Yeah. ~$100M in a day.

    He wasn't such a bad trader, either. Just didn't cut his losses... Once...
     
    #11     Jan 2, 2004
  2. recluse

    recluse

    What is he doing now?
     
    #12     Jan 2, 2004
  3. windward

    windward

    probably still counting his money- seems all it takes is one big run
     
    #13     Jan 2, 2004
  4. Selling books. As they all do. :D
     
    #14     Jan 2, 2004
  5. Cutten

    Cutten

    "The Great Silver Bubble" by Stephen Fay has an excellent account of this affair.
     
    #15     Jan 2, 2004
  6. I'm pretty sure he is doing more than just "selling books" and wouldn't be surprised if he were once again swinging a decent sized line. The guy still has a lot of cheese from what I gather,
     
    #16     Jan 2, 2004
  7. Arnie

    Arnie

    Didn't Neiderhoffer blow by selling naked puts? I remember reading that shortly after it happened. It was right before a big decline. Also, I think the position he had on was huge.
     
    #17     Jan 2, 2004
  8. He was NAKED a few thousand S&P futures puts back in the Fall of 1998.

    The market was getting hammered due to the Asian Currency Crisis and Niederhoffer refused to buy back the naked put position.

    I recall that the WED, THUR, and FRIDAY of that week saw the Dow Jones register triple digit losses, going into the weekend. Yet, he still held his position.

    The clearing firm took him out on Tuesday morning.
    And of course, that was the low.

    A guy on the equity-derivatives desk at Deutsche Bank took the other side of much of Niederhoffer's option position, sold thousands of the puts and made $45 million that week!

    True.
     
    #18     Jan 2, 2004
  9. :D
     
    #19     Jan 2, 2004
  10. It was more than a few thousand, something like 20k puts with no hedge Roughly $2.5MM $delta. Fool and his money.

    I hear Specul8or is short a sh*tload of puts...

    arb. :D
     
    #20     Jan 2, 2004