More likely they tried front-running their client positions, and completely screwed it up. Time will tell.
nazzdack - lol re the true spirits he was likely under the influence of - not for nothing but this actually happened a while ago - a trader was drunk and there was a huge story about it - think he was trading CL or BRENT anways - as another posted mentioned i'm very curious as to how they could have put this trade on in this size in the first place - how the hell do you buy $1 billion of stock w/ only a maximum $3.5 million in equity - and i thought hfs/banks pre 2007 were over leveraged