Morning Coffee: The trader who made $34m during the chaos, investment banks are back

In case you’re wondering that the market slump correction was in any way detrimental to all apart from HFT firms, Bloomberg has uncovered an individual day trader who pocketed $34m during the market chaos of Monday.

Ironically, perhaps, on the day that Narinder Sarao was denied a delay to his extradition to the US, news broke about a solitary Japanese trader who had come out of Monday last week $34m up after shorting the Nikkei 225 stock average.

Who is this man? He goes by the mantle CIS, says he does his best work while “other people are panicking” and appears to have amassed a $150m fortune in his bedroom whilst claiming to out compete Goldman Sachs. If all this seems out of reach of mere mortals, he also has a Twitter handle where he talks about video gaming, suggesting he’s not short of any spare time.

He’s also not the only beneficiary of the ‘correction’. Universa, the Miami based hedge fund which follows the ‘Black Swan’ theory that something extreme and unexpected can happen in financial markets, managed to haul in $1bn on Monday – or a 20% gain on its fund – and another fund, Capstone Investment Advisors, gained 52% in August alone.

Separately, in case you’re despairing about the future of investment banking or merely staring into your beer after recent job cuts, it’s worth pointing out that investment banks – as a group – aren’t doing so badly after all. If you strip out all variability in the way that banks allocate costs, capital and profitability, it turns out that actually investment banks remain more profitable than their parent groups. Death knell rescinded.

Notting Hill Look (Bloomberg)

The former CEO of Standard Chartered, Peter Sands, is setting up a book store near soccer club Arsenal’s stadium in London. Don’t worry, he won’t be working behind the till.

Infidelity after 20 years (Financial News)

The lead trader at fund manager Fidelity Scott Rogers, is to leave the firm after more than 20 years. He’s taking a break from trading.

Time for a Trim (WSJ)

Man who’s beard neared ZZ Top proportions after promising not to shave until the markets lose 10% has finally made a trip to the barbers.

Hedge Fund Move (Finalternatives)

Aberdeen Asset Management, which has seen a brutal drop in its share price over the past few weeks, has launched a ‘liquid alternatives fund’ to retail investors.

Quote of the Day:

“Steve Jobs taught us many, many lessons, and he was brilliant, but the reality is most of us aren’t Steve Jobs. You’ve got to assemble an incredibly great team, and what most people overlook with him and I know, because I was with him, is that he was brilliant at being able to recruit talent. And he did it by his charismatic ability to tell a compelling story with metaphors and poetry in ways that got people to do things they never thought they were capable of,” why Steve Jobs has been misrepresented in popular culture.