Advice For Oil Brokers: No Drunk Trading

This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

You can't make this up-really. The UK regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has banned a 34-year-old oil trader for trading while drunk and fined him $108,000. The FSA said that Steve Perkins was 'not a fit and proper person' to be trading large sums of money in volatile markets. The events in question took place a year ago.

After a weekend of binge drinking, our bad boy was smart enough to stay home, but in a continued drunken stupor, thought that it might be fun to try trading while pickled. After recognizing the activity, his firm, PVM Oil Futures, had to undo the trades and take a $10M loss. Not surprisingly, they fired Mr. Perkins.

I'm sure you'll be happy to know that Perkins went into rehab and has since sobered up. Here's a lesson to all of you traders out there: trading while drunk has consequences!

Image by Flickr User ell brown, CC 2.0

Jill Schlesinger is the Editor-at-Large for CBS MoneyWatch.com. Prior to the launch of MoneyWatch, she was the Chief Investment Officer for an independent investment advisory firm. In her infancy, she was an options trader on the Commodities Exchange of New York.