The Memphis Wheat Trader Who Tried to Fool the Market
Less than a month after Jerome Kerviel blew a $5 billion hole in Societe Generale, another rogue trader popped up on the other side of the Atlantic. This one was not at a fancy French bank in Paris. He was sitting in Memphis, Tennessee, betting on wheat. Chapter 31 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” tells how one guy at MF Global secretly built a $1 billion position against wheat, got absolutely crushed, and brought his entire firm to its knees.