Be careful, Don. Daytrading is not as easy as it looks. <g>
A Bond Trader Elbows His Way Into the Market
By JEFFREY L. HIDAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PARIS -- The darndest things happen when you accidentally
lean on a computer keyboard. For example, you might sell
10,000 bond contracts on the Paris futures exchange without
knowing it.
It happened to someone at Salomon Smith Barney. On July
23, a trader on the Citigroup Inc. unit's Paris trading floor
rested his arm on the F12 button of workstation number 201.
Before long he'd placed orders to sell 14,500 10-year French
government-bond contracts collectively valued at 7.3 billion
francs ($1.3 billion). The contract price fell to 103.61 from
105.10. Buyers scooped up about 10,000.
"We've done all these because we were on another
screen and leaning against the keyboard, and I guess we were
trading," the trader said at the time, according to a transcript
of conversations included in a report by Matif, the French
futures exchange.
Salomon sustained losses of "several million dollars," said a
person familiar with the trades. The firm later asked Matif to
cancel the trades. Matif said no. A Salomon spokesman in
London said the firm wouldn't comment. The hapless trader?
He's still trading for Salomon, but watching his elbows. |
