
The Man Who Lost $6 Billion - byrneseyeview
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/07/news/companies/The_man_who_lost_6B_mclean.fortune/index.htm
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ctkrohn
In Hunter's defense -- word on Wall Street is that after Citadel and JPMorgan
bailed out Amaranth in 2006, they made a killing on Hunter's positions. Hunter
had made ultimately profitable trades; Amaranth just wasn't able to withstand
the temporary loss.

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markm
_Hunter is not especially arrogant or intense or brash. (He is Canadian, after
all.)_

Shudders. Do small generations like this make anybody else cringe?

~~~
hugh
Well, this is an especially poorly-written article. I stopped reading and
skipped to the comments after the second sentence was:

 _As Jane Austen might have said, it is a truth universally acknowledged that
a man who single-handedly loses a large fortune, especially one that wasn't of
his own making, must be way more interesting than the average man._

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bingtan
Had he made money on his trade, he'll most probably just be one of the
nameless millionaires (billionaires?) making a killing on the markets on a
regular basis.

Trading can teach you a lot about doing business - put your money where your
mouth is; high risk, high returns; trade like you don't need the money.

Maybe one thing he should have learned first though was - never trade anything
you can't afford to lose.

Bing

~~~
fallentimes
It wasn't his fund though; he lost investors money (plus, obviously, what
would have been his bonus). It's the fundamental problem plaguing investment
banks and hedge funds: you're rewarded ridiculously well for exceptional
performance and punished very little for poor performance. This encourages
taking substantial amounts of risk in the name of superior returns.

Hunter is set for life and never has to work again. The legal crap will be
tied in court for a while as bureaucratic shitkickers shuffle papers around
and Hunter will eventually "admit no wrong doing but pay some nominal fine".
It's the SEC special.

~~~
jodrellblank
You say that as if he should admit some wrong doing.

People paid him to manage their money, asking him to make as much as possible,
knowing that he could win or lose, and he did and lost. Where did he "do
wrong"?

~~~
fallentimes
I don't think he did anything wrong - at least not that I'm aware of. Granted
I didn't work with him or anything so there's no real way for me to "know." I
was just trying to spell out what's most likely going to happen and why it
(i.e. massive loses) happen so frequently. These stories, as a whole,
exemplify why I'll always have the majority of my money in a low cost, no
load, diversified fund.

~~~
aswanson
_These stories, as a whole, exemplify why I'll always have the majority of my
money in a low cost, no load, diversified fund._

Good call: [http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-
youll...](http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-
get)

<http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/fortune.pdf>

~~~
lutorm
Awesome book. Check out "the Black Swan", too.

