Quote from TraderZones:
Yes, after all, these banks were so profitable...
They deserve $100 million for making $200 million? What kind of nonsense is that? See if they took on the full responsibility of operating their own fund, and raising the kind of capital that the bank provided, and took on all the risk and got that kind of return. How do you know it is not the volatility of the energy instruments that caused a lot of the return?
A lot of these bigtime traders are WAY WAY overrated.
I disagree.
Especially in the case of Andrew Hall.
I don't think that you have an accurate grasp of the facts.
Hall had the foresight and "out-of-the-box" intellect to conclude (back in 2003) that long-term and short-term energy prices would abandon their historical relationship with one another.
"He bet on this trend by investing in the extremely long-term market in which traders buy and sell oil to be delivered years in the future. Back in 2003, oil for future delivery was as much as 20% cheaper than oil in the current -- or "spot" -- market. Hall told traders to bet that this relationship would reverse itself. He bet on this by buying all the oil futures he could for delivery three to five years out along with "call" options that gave him the right, but not the obligation, to buy oil at lower prices in the future. .
Around 2005, the discount for far-forward oil vanished and it began commanding a premium. That year, his tiny Phibro unit contributed $800 million in pretax revenue to Citigroup. Hall's pay totaled $125 million, around five times that of then CEO Charles Prince."
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/02/28/andrew-hall-citigroups-quarter-billion-dollar-oil-trader/
Hall's money making opportunity only came from his belief that energy prices would dramatically diverge from their historical relationships. It's not like EVERYONE in the trading community was making the same kind of "bets" that Hall was back in 2003.
Kudos to Hall for having the prowess and insight into the markets that no one else had.
He should get paid for that.
Period.
