Salon – In the summer of 2005, hotshot Amaranth Advisors LLC trader Brian Hunter spied a bargain.
Natural gas supplies nationally were plentiful, gas production was unusually high, and by midsummer storage facilities were brimming with the stuff. Prices were low, hovering between $6 and $8 per MMBtu. Since investors didn’t expect any reason for prices to shoot up, nobody was very interested in options that gave them the right to buy natural gas well above that. The options were going for bargain-basement prices. So Hunter swooped in, scooping up millions of dollars of options on the cheap.
