Are you having a bad day in the markets? Afraid to have a look at your P&L?
Well, you've got nothing on these guys. I present to you, the worst trades in history:
The worst ever trader, based on his loss, is Morgan Stanley mortgage bond trader Howie Hubler. He lost who lost that bank about $9 billion on subprime bets. Hubler was also featured in Michael Lewis's book The Big Short. As a villain naturally.
Former Société Générale rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel owes the bank $6.3 billion after he lost that amount for the bank. He's also going to jail.
Brian Hunter, then aged 32, was a hot shot trader of the unasuming kind. In 2006 he was trading gas futures for the hedge fund Amaranth Advisors. Trade was first up about $1 billion, but ended with a loss of $6.5 billion.
The London Whale, otherwise known as Bruno Iksil, is the (former) JPMorgan trader that had his positiion outed by Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg on the same day by his counterparties. A combination of a trading loss and unwanted attention created a black hole in the JPMorgan CIOs books. Eventually the loss balooned to $6.2 billion.
At the time, it looked like John Meriwether's Long Term Capital Managment might take down the whole global economy. So the fact that the hedge fund "only" lost $5.85 billion seems almost benign in retrospect. LTCM basically bet the farm on them being smarter than the market. They were not.
Yasuo Hamanaka lost Sumitomo Corporation $3.46 billion in Copper in 1996.
Isac Zagury and Rafael Sotero lost Aracruz $2.43 billion in FX options in 2008.
Honorable mention from Scandinavia: Aleksandar Adamovic lost Carnegie $0.1 billion in equity derivatives in 2007.