Quote from morreo:
At my work, we trade primarily eurodollar future spreads which means for everything we buy, we sell something against it. We are always hedged.
Pretty much the whole company is split into groups of 2 or 3 with a leader of the group (day shift trader) who primarily makes decisions about portfolio strategies and pays themselves, and the one or two other people in the group who manage the portfolio (European and Asian shifts).
So anyway, to the story. Starting with the huge drop in the S&P on monday, my boss developed a keen interest in trading the S&P future. Now, she wasn't just trading 3-5 lots max; she was trading 5 lots adding to 45-50 max. I watched her do this as she made tens of thousands of dollars in the matter of a few hours. As interesting as this profit was, I knew that the risk involved may not be worth it based on her discipline. So, I asked her, "where is your stop loss?" and she responded speechless. This is when I realized she did not have enough discipline to trade the S&P future. So, the other teammate we work with and I had discussed her actions and both agreed that this trade was too risky for any of us and we both felt scared by the risk she was taking.
On Tuesday, we both at separate times expressed that we were uncomfortable with her new interest. I told her, "I don't want to come in one day and see you down 100k from a bad trade". I'm not sure what my boss told my other teammate, but she assured me that she was "also scared when she had 45 lots on" and she would, "From now on only put on 15 lots max." and put a stop loss at the amount she made from it. I foolishly believed her, but I've been trading with her for about 4 months now and know her styles. I should have put my foot down.
On Wednesday, my darkest fears came true like a prophecy. Around noon, in the middle of my economics class (I'm still in college. bleh), my teammate called me (He was just casually checking our positions online) and told me my boss was currently short 100 S&P's and the S&P was rallying pretty strongly. I was a bit fearful, but assured him that the online positions must be wrong as they were wrong the day before and perhaps they had not been fixed correctly. I knew this wasn't the truth and even if it was incorrect, it wasn't incorrect by 100 lots. I sat through the rest of my class sweating out knowing what I would find when I walked into work only an hour later.
Sure enough, as I walked in, my boss embarrassed, asked me to walk away for about an hour and come back (She's never asked me to do that. Even on a day she lost 70k). I took this hour to call my teammate and confirm that both of our fears were definitely true. While he was on the phone with me he was still keeping a close track to the positions from online and told me she had just bought 600 Ten Year note futures while still short 100 S&P's. For those of you who don't know, this is the total opposite of hedging despite her buying something against a short. She had pretty much double downed on this losing trade.
She finally called me over and took me outside in the freezing cold to tell me she lost money, a lot of money. I was so pissed at this time because she didn't know that I already knew that what we had said only the day before had happened. I just didn't know the magnitude. All she kept telling me was she lost a lot of money. I refused to respond at all to anything she said. Then a few co-workers came over and she was telling us all what happened and finally spit out the figure she had lost: $625,000. I immediately walked away to walk around the block, so that I didn't do anything i would have regretted. This was the money we had worked 4 months on to earn. This was the money that paid our salaries.
It's been 3 days and I'm still getting pissed every couple of hours. I'm not sure if I'm more mad at her or more mad at myself for not being a little more persuasive in my warnings. I just needed somewhere to write this down. Man... I am so pissed off.
You need a set of brass balls to do that and it looks like she doesn't have a pair, or the brain to match.