Oill broker spent $520m on drunken Binge

[Gromit]

Oil Futures trader Steve Perkins from Brentwood, Essex, bought 7m barrels of crude in late-night trading binge on his laptop, driving the world oil price to an eight-month high.

He had been drinking heavily over the weekend at his company's golf event, and in a drunken stupor began oil trading at 2am.

Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2am – the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour.

By the time his empolyers realised the trades were not authorised and swiftly began to unwind the positions, losses of exactly $9,763,252 had stacked up.

http://www.telegraph....global-oil-price.html

I do have sympathy with him, because I regular wake up with an unaccountably empty wallet after a night on the lash.

Comments please?

[R1Geezer]

Bet he still got a 6 figure bonus!

[mosesg]

He should be sacked for gross misconduct and taken to court for fraud.

[youngmafbog]

I belive he was fined 72K and banned from trading for 5 years.

He should have couse got alot worse.

[flip_flop]

Nowadays, when I'm having a drink, I steer well clear of the computer as I got tired of having Amazon boxes arrive and having no recollection of ordering books, CDs and DVDs.......so I can see how this has happened.

Although my drunken computer exploits only cost me a few hundred quid over a period of time, not almost $10m.

[VHG]

One of the big problems we have a the "money markets" nowadays is people buying and selling things they dont want or need, just to drive the price up, and make a massive profit for themselves.

And in the end WE (the ordinairy members of the public) have to pay more for a product (be it a loaf of bread or a gallon of petrol) while these money men make loads of money and get huge bonuses.

As a world we need to STOP these people being able to do this, they are the modern day form of pirates.

[Haggisdj]

lol @ flip_flop - snap!!

[Booldawg]

yes, imagine the shock (and confusion) I got when TWO Russian brides turned up at the same time!

[jake-the-peg]

Personally I would be investigating the companies security policies that allowed a drunken trader to come in and trade 7million barrels of oil in the middle of the night

Did these city clown not lean anything from the Nick Leeson affair?

It's not clear if any sanction was applied at all to PVM - these companies need to be made to stand accountable for the actions of their employees - simply saying -"it was the traders fault is not good enough".

If they cannot properly control their traders they shouldn't be permitted to operate

[sp1814]

Here's the answer - all laptops, desktop PCs and mobile phones should be fitted with a small pad which when swiped with your finger, can detect the amount of alcohol in your blood.

The device would only operate if your alcohol level is below a preset level (to be determined by the owner of the device).

That way, you can be sure that you don't buy things you don't want from amazon.com, or worse - send inappropriate texts to your ex at 03:00 on a Sunday morning.

Job done.

[R1Geezer]

this idea coupled with your idea about Ip addresses SP makes me think that you should really stay away from computers, clearly you haven't got a scooby!