Episodes

  • Jérôme Kerviel and the Seven Billion Dollar Loss
    Aug 23 2025

    He wasn’t a superstar. He wasn’t from an elite school. He was just one man... but one man who cost Société Générale over SEVEN BILLION dollars.

    By exploiting his knowledge of back-office systems, Jérôme Kerviel built hidden positions worth tens of billions. For a while, he made billions. But when the truth emerged in Two Thousand Eight, it became the biggest one-man trading loss in history.

    This is the story of Jérôme Kerviel — ambition, recklessness, and the failure of oversight.


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    4 mins
  • The Crash of Nineteen Eighty Seven
    Aug 23 2025

    October Nineteenth, Nineteen Eighty Seven. The Dow Jones plunged TWENTY-TWO percent in a single day. It was the largest one-day crash in stock market history.

    Fueled by a bull market, portfolio insurance, and futures selling, the collapse spread from Asia to London to New York in hours. Panic swept trading floors, and the world braced for another Great Depression.

    This is the story of Black Monday — the day computers, leverage, and fear collided to create chaos.

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    4 mins
  • The Rogue Trader Who Destroyed Barings Bank
    Aug 23 2025

    In Nineteen Ninety Five, Barings Bank — the OLDEST bank in Britain, founded in Seventeen Sixty Two — collapsed in spectacular fashion. Not because of a war. Not because of a global panic. But because of ONE man.

    Nick Leeson, a trader in Singapore, seemed unstoppable at first. He was Barings’ golden boy. But behind the façade, he was hiding massive losses in a secret account. Every bad trade buried deeper... every mistake doubled down.

    And then came the Kobe earthquake. Markets plunged. Leeson’s bets imploded. The losses ballooned to ONE POINT THREE BILLION dollars — more than twice the bank’s capital. Within days, Barings was sold for ONE POUND.

    This is the incredible true story of Nick Leeson... the rogue trader who destroyed a two-hundred-year-old institution. A cautionary tale of ambition, leverage, and hubris.

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    6 mins
  • The Silver Squeeze That Shook Wall Street
    Aug 23 2025

    In the late Nineteen Seventies, two Texas oil billionaires — Nelson and William Hunt — set out to corner the silver market. At their peak, they controlled more silver than most governments in the world. Prices soared from just six dollars an ounce to nearly fifty by January Nineteen Eighty.

    Families melted silverware. Pawn shops overflowed. Traders believed the Hunts were unstoppable. But then the rules changed. COMEX tightened margin requirements. The Hunts were overleveraged... drowning in debt. And when the crash came, silver collapsed from fifty dollars to ten in a matter of weeks.

    It became known as Silver Thursday. Billions were lost. Fortunes were destroyed. And even the richest family in Texas couldn’t escape the lesson that leverage cuts both ways.

    This is the dramatic story of ambition, greed, and collapse... the day silver nearly broke Wall Street.

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    8 mins