Comment by kyleblarson
9 years ago
I worked at a small quant fund and we once had a bug that caused our roll forward trade to fail on a rather large position of front month WTI contracts. We technically were going to have to take delivery since we were long the contracts at expiry, but our brokerage was nice enough to fix the situation for us.
This is a recurring nightmare of mine: forgetting to close out a commodity futures contract, then suddenly having 20,000 bushels wheat (or whatever it was) show up on my doorstep one morning. Brrrr.
Ok, in the commodities trading business there have GOT to be stories of this sort of thing happening.
One of the better ones I've heard is that John Maynard Keynes took delivery of a grain contract while running the Chest Fund of King's College Cambridge. Not having any better place to store the grain, he filled up the college's chapel with it, leading a reverend to remark "Mr. Keynes must believe that God is some sort of enormous chicken."
http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery
Edit: Oops, somebody already posted, later in the thread.
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This is more common than you think, however any larger broker (GS,ML,MS,DB) will gladly take your position for a large fee. You will pay handsomely for their service.