Foolish business error number 9,763,252

Or should that be 520 million? That’s the amount that one trader apparently spent, in dollars, in a drunken night betting his company’s money on oil price movements. He initially lost almost $10m (hence the title of this blog).

I came across this news looking for items about recent oil price movements. Most economists understand the price of commodity items like oil in terms of deep forces of supply and demand. So they were baffled by a sudden leap in world oil prices on June 30^th last year. Had conflict broken out in the Middle East, interrupting the world’s oil supply? No, the sudden $1.50 surge in global oil prices was down to one person’s late night drunken laptop exploits.

This story is a little bit sad and a little bit funny (the chap in question told investigators that he has "limited recollection" of the entire episode, claiming he had placed the trades during a drink-induced stupor, and has lost his job). It’s also a little scary: how one person can cause so much damage and how fragile the financial system can be, plus its vulnerability to ‘fat finger’ mistakes.