'I only tried my best'

[AtW]

" Kweku Adoboli, 32, is accused of gambling away £1.5billion of the Swiss bank's money and wiping £3bn off its share price while working at its London headquarters.

Prosecutors claim the trader ignored financial controls, including trading limits, and invented phantom transactions to disguise his 'naked gambling' from bosses in order to boost his ego and career prospects.

It is alleged he was 'intimately aware' of how UBS's trading controls worked after moving from the back office to trading floor and was able to play the system a result.

But Adoboli hit back at allegations he took advantage of his knowledge of the bank's inner workings today, saying he just wanted to 'do my job to the best of my ability'.

He said: "It was the ability to understand the interaction of systems and accounting processes that allows you to do your job.

After Foster left, Hughes took over as 'supervisor' of the ETF desk, said Adoboli, leaving two young men in charge of a '$50bn book'.

The pair were aged 27 and 25 at the time in 2007.

"Our book was massive. A tiny mistake led to huge losses. We were these two kids trying to make it work," he said. "

UBS 'rogue trader' sobs: 'I only tried my best' - Telegraph

Just WTF is going on with the bankers - leaving some kid unsupervised in charge of a whole load of money where small mistake can cost billions?!?!

Such large transactions should be signed off by the board pending approval of shareholders. Proper investments should be made long term (at least 2-3, more like 5-7 years) and should be very carefully considered - all that split second crap just means it's a gamble rather than investment: and this require full gambling license from the Govt.

[sbakoola]

At the end of the day if the market moves against you, there's nothing you can do after you commit to a certain portfolio trade position. Had the market somehow moved to get him in the money he would have been due a hefty bonus instead of jail.

[AtW]

At the end of the day if the market moves against you

Why a kid is allowed to bet billions in the first place?

Why any single person can do such things in a big bank in the first place?

[ChimpMaster]

Why a kid is allowed to bet billions in the first place?

Why any single person can do such things in a big bank in the first place?

He's probably just being made a scapegoat for people much bigger and higher up.

[darmstadt]

He's probably just being made a scapegoat for people much bigger and higher up.

Is it cos I is black?

[dmo]

Believe it or not these 'kids' are generally good at what they do. Put an old timer in today's high octane trading floor environment and the first thing they'll struggle with will be the sheer pace of biz. Kids can naturally deal with fast changes and voluminous levels are info (no offence - it's true). This is just 1 bad case, for which I'm sure there are countless instances of this going well - nothing gets said or publicised until it goes too horribly wrong to cover.

I suppose there's not much stopping someone from betting billions. Once executed it's done.. it'll take back office to stop it from happening, by which point it'll probably be too late.

[AtW]

today's high octane trading floor environment

The point is that it should not be "high octane" (or explosive in other words) in the first place.

[dmo]

The point is that it should not be "high octane" (or explosive in other words) in the first place.

Why, because it's unsafe? I'm not saying I condone it, but if it can be done correctly (which I believe is the case), then it's worth the risk.

For example.. what's the need for Formula 1 - why do we need to have drivers race cars around at 190mph; surely there's others ways to run a marketing job than through this unsafe and potentially lethal proxy.

The point I'm making is some risks are worth taking sometimes. If it's not 'high octane' then you're traders aren't trying hard enough.

[AtW]

what's the need for Formula 1

Formula 1 does NOT increase price of oil, gold, wheat etc for all consumers to make some trader rich just because he gambled well.

The problem with current markets is that "banks" have so much leverage to shift the market even when they don't have money to back it up - some kids bet billions as we speak, those of them who win sometimes get in the news, others very rarely go to jail - ultimately everybody else has to pay for it.

Just how much of the £1.50 per liter petrol price is due to those kids playing up the market? Probably a lot because just 10 years ago oil was worth 10 times less than it is now (even though due to high taxes in this country the end sell price was only half current amount).

It's fairly easy to deal with this problem - very high taxes on short term profits and very long jail sentences to everybody up the chain starting from those who hired that kid who gambles billions of shareholder money on tulipe bets.

Kweku Adoboli, if guilty, should spend the rest of his life in supermax jail - right next to everybody who was meant to supervise him. This probably won't stop those ******** gamble other peoples money, but at least it will give some small satisfaction in that justice has been done.

He will probably be out in a few years max...

[OwlHoot]

The point is that it should not be "high octane" (or explosive in other words) in the first place.

Groan - He's off again, in his own little idealistic world.

The snag is if there was Worldwide agreement to impose an artificial delay of say a second (or some suitable interval) per trade, I guess it would be analogous to increasing the reaction time of motorway drivers and the result would be gridlock like one of those phantom traffic jams with no cause except the traffic density itself.