The Biggest Losers

Alan Howard, Louis Bacon, and PTJ may be killing it in these violent markets, but things are a little different for their more equity-centric brethren. Dan Loeb and David Tepper felt the heat earlier this month when volatility sent their funds down low single digits, Berko’s big bet on banks took his fund down almost 20%, and the current King of the HF world, Mr. John Paulson, is just a few points shy of seeing his fund down 40%.

I wouldn’t worry so much though, because the guys you’ll see after the jump did far, far worse.

Here are the 5 biggest trading losses, ever.

Mr. Copper, as Hamanaka was known, enjoyed years of paper profits when he tried to corner the copper market back in the early 90’s. The shorts couldn’t get him and the bulls loved him. That was until China decided to flood the market and asked him to bend over.

What don’t we know about the geniuses that failed? Crazy shit can happen when you’re leveraged over 200:1 and said shit can happen really fast, Nobel Prize winners should’ve known that.

Hunter may have been way over his head with his huge positions in natty, but he gave us an epic duel between Amaranth and Centaurus. Unfortunately for him though, John Arnold does control the weather, so he ended up liquidating Amaranth to Citadel, JPM, and ML.

Rogue trader or scapegoat? All I know is you can’t trade the size that he did without raising a few eyebrows, and he did it for years, even making SocGen a $2 B profit in ’07. This dude should have his picture in the dictionary, right beside “thrown under a bus.”

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, and lord knows he may have made a buck or two off it before, but arbing CDO’s by going long AAA mortgages right before the meltdown didn’t end well for Hubler and MS. When the CDO market froze, MS had to write off a staggering $9 billion due to Hubler's positions.

So there you have it, the five biggest losers ever. Will we see Paulson here anytime soon? His losses could easily be in the high $2 B range now, maybe even more.

Either way though, he's still worth more than what Howie lost so it doesn't really matter.

Should be funny seeing the architect of The Greatest Trade Ever on it though.

Enjoy your weekend WSO. Good luck with Irene.