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Bill Hwang may be about to make the biggest, and fastest, personal loss ever. No one knows exactly how much, but according to Bloomberg * it could be anywhere between $10 billion and $100 billion. The list of names-investors, clients, portfolios-is enough to make anyone sit up and notice. And this will have reverberations for months. How did it happen?
Because according to Lucy White of the Mail: *
In 2012, he admitted in a US lawsuit to insider trading and manipulating Chinese bank stocks. He stumped up £32million in fines and agreed to be barred from the industry.
How do you come back from that? Mr Hwang found a way . By trading, perfectly legally,as a single family office he was able to avoid the heavier regulation which falls on larger portfolio managers. Thus he returned to the game, and was once more playing with the big boys (you can read the Roll of Honour in our links below)
We at LSS admit to a sneaking regard for Mr Hwang’s courage and acumen in bouncing back from a setback which would have finished weaker spirits. As for the banks-they too are victims of the system, albeit one they have helped to create. Any system that is high risk, high reward and deregulated is inherently unstable. This time it is just Mr Hwang and his associates. But in 1929 and 2007 the damage was system wide-and catastrophic. A return to the post war golden days of regulated markets is impossible-the concentration of money and media power is too strong against it. But couldn’t we look once more at the more glaring areas from which the next crash might come? At least it might buy time.
we thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire for this story
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