This Is What Happens When You Slip Picking Up Nickels In Front of a Steamroller

There are times when going viral is good.  There are times it ain’t.  This is one of those ain’t times.  Being the hedgie equivalent of Jimmy Swaggert, delivering a tearful apology, is not a good look.

James Cordier ran a hedge fund that blowed up real good.   The fund’s strategy was to sell options, collect the premium, and keep fingers crossed that the markets would not move bigly.  Well, OptionSellers.com sold NG and crude options in front of major price moves, and poof! Customer money went up the spout.

Cordier refers to these price moves as “rogue waves.”  Well, as I said in my widowmaker post from last week, the natural gas market was primed for a violent move: low inventories going into the heating season made the market vulnerable to a cold snap, which duly materialized, and sent the market hurtling upwards.   The low pressure system was clearly visible on the map, and the risk of big waves was clear: a rogue wave out of the blue this wasn’t.

As for crude, the geopolitical, demand, and output (particularly Permian) risks have also been crystalizing all autumn.  Again, this was not a rogue wave.

I’m guessing that Cordier was short natural gas puts, and short crude oil calls, or straddles/strangles on these commodities.  Oopsie.

Selling options as an investment strategy is like picking up nickels in front of a steamroller.  You can make some money if you don’t slip.  If you slip, you get crushed.  Cordier slipped.

Selling options as a strategy can be appealing.  It’s not unusual to pick up quite a few nickels, and think: “Hey.  This is easy money!” Then you get complacent.  Then you get crushed.

Selling options is effectively selling insurance against large price moves.  You are rewarded with a risk premium, but that isn’t free money.  It is the reward for suffering large losses periodically.

It’s not just neophytes that get taken in.  In the months before Black Monday, floor traders on CBOE and CME thought shorting out-of-the-money, short-dated options on the S&Ps was like an annuity.  Collect the premium, watch them expire out-of-the-money, and do it again.   Then the Crash of ’87 happened, and all of the modest gains that had accumulated disappeared in a day.

Ask Mr. Cordier–and his “family”–about that.