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“Mr Churchill you are VERY drunk!”
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June 30, 2010 at 10:47 pm
EEofDC
June 30, 2010
Drink. Trade. Refill. Lose $10 Million.By JULIA WERDIGIER
LONDON — Alcohol-induced behavior has produced many unintended consequences, but pushing up the global price of oil and losing $10 million must rank among the most novel.
Britain’s financial regulator disclosed on Tuesday that Steven Noel Perkins, a former oil futures broker, single-handedly engineered a jump in the price of oil a year ago and cost his firm millions of dollars with a string of unauthorized trades after a weekend of heavy drinking.
Mr. Perkins had just returned from a liquor-soaked golf weekend with colleagues in June of last year when he sat down in front of his laptop at his home east of London and started to place bets on Brent crude futures, according to a report by the Financial Services Authority. He continued to drink and place bets through the night, and by the morning of June 30, Mr. Perkins had placed more than $520 million worth of trades, at one point pushing the price of oil to $73.05, an eight-month high. The trades by Mr. Perkins were the main reason the price gained about $1.65 a barrel in just over two hours in the middle of the night, according to the report.
“Mr. Perkins’s explanation for his trading on 29 and 30 June is that he was drunk,” the F.S.A. said. “He claims to have limited recollection of events on Monday and claims to have been in an alcohol-induced blackout at the time he traded.”
Just before 7 a.m., Mr. Perkins realized what he had done and tried to unwind his positions. To gain time he sent a text message to his boss at PVM Oil Futures saying that a relative was ill and he would not be in the office that day.
When a back-office clerk called Mr. Perkins at 7:45 a.m. on June 30 to ask for details about the trades, Mr. Perkins lied and said he made them on behalf of a client. PVM takes commissions on fulfilling orders from its clients, which are banks and other institutions, and does not trade for itself.
But by 10 a.m., PVM, where Mr. Perkins had worked since 1998, had discovered that his trades were unauthorized and suspended his access to the trading system. The trades cost PVM almost $10 million, the company said last year.
The F.S.A. fined Mr. Perkins about $107,600, for market abuse and barred him from working in the financial services industry for at least five years.
The regulator reduced the fine from about $224,000 to avoid causing Mr. Perkins “serious financial hardship.”
Mr. Perkins joined a rehabilitation program last year and has stopped drinking, the F.S.A. said.
July 1, 2010 at 1:33 am
Boudreaux
“Just before 7 a.m., Mr. Perkins realized what he had done”
Yeah I’ll bet it was sobering.
But between 2 and 5AM it was probably funny as hell. Just fucking buying and selling shit and laughing.
JR let that be a lesson to you.
July 1, 2010 at 1:43 am
JR
@EE
Come down here
You gotta see this stuff
NO.
Seriously. I’m not kidding. I’m puking my fucking guts out.
I’m watching The Road, throwing up, and… oh, christ
I’m winding it down to OFF
this has to stop
July 1, 2010 at 1:46 am
JR
Sobering?
Try the worst pain ever. Fuck You.
Yes. It was a lesson. Thank You.
July 3, 2010 at 2:20 am
Dr. Doom
so Chris, what did you think of “The Road”?
basement scene at the cannibal’s house? pile of used sneakers in the living room?
July 3, 2010 at 2:21 am
Dr. Doom
ever watch “Funny Games” with Naomi Watts?
don’t.
July 5, 2010 at 5:29 am
Nudge
Either the story of “the Road” was that bad or its transmogrification into movie format was just really horrible. Haven’t read the book yet but now I’m not tempted to either. I very nearly wrote Netflix a nasty letter asking them how & why this shite got on their list of things to watch. Or maybe Stephen King, he of the oh-so-painfully-cardboard-like on-screen characters was involved somehow?
The scene at the cannibal farmhouse was inexplicable to me. I mean, who would /not/ have recognized that pile of used shoes for what it was upon immediately seeing it? Furthermore, how hard would it have been to end that sorry mess of a so-called household by using one of the most primitive tools available to humans, viz. fire? Especially since they were upstairs then? No fire department would have been able to reach that flaming Victorian anyway. Deprived of their home & larder, that gang might have perished shortly anyway.
Watching that movie made me feel like wanting my two hours back. I gave it a horribly low rating on Netflix. It’s worth avoiding. Jeez, even the movie “Wolf Creek” gives much better treatment to that topic of “how to avoid predatory humans”.
July 5, 2010 at 8:16 am
dave
yeah, the road pretty much sucked, both the book and the movie. i’ve often said that it’s been down hill for cormac mccarthy ever since blood meridian. the price you pay for popularity, or maybe just the price you pay for getting old. don’t know.
July 5, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Dr. Doom
ya, dave, the basement scene was a stretch, too. we are supposed to believe that that cannibals were going down there and carving off yet another piece of that poor guy’s arms/legs, him still being alive and conscious. he would have been neither.
July 5, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Nudge
Additionally, cannibalism is practical only when the victims are really healthy and the meat is very well cooked. The basement larder crowd was anything but healthy.
The archer taking out the main character, toward the end, was equally inexplicable. No one would last very long if that’s what everyone was doing with distance weapons, especially quiet ones like that. It would have fully been “game over” a long time ago. At some point, you gotta put down the bow and set about gardening and doing other things to survive.
Feh, I want those two hours back.