Rational or irrational?

The following news report brings back memories of the Richard J. Dennis debacle at my old firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert. I will never forget when Mr. Dennis, after wiping out the limited partners equity in such short order in a public commodities fund said wryly that the markets were "not rational". Obviously, Mr. Dennis creamed so many investors so fast it was rather startling. Mr. Hunter of Amaranth fame should make out alright if reports that he made over $75,000,000 last year are anywhere near true. Maybe the attorneys will get some of it or imagine, even a limited partner or two who lost it in the first place.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The founder of Amaranth Advisors LLC, Nick Maounis, told investors in a conference call Friday that the markets turned against the hedge fund in September, leaving it no choice but to sell its entire energy portfolio to other firms at a huge loss. Maounis said that "highly unusual market behavior," not just the usual price moves, virtually eliminated the firm's access to liquidity.
"We did not expect that the market would move so aggressively against our positions," he added. Amaranth, a multistrategy hedge fund that had assets of $9.2 billion at the end of August, lost $6 billion earlier this month after massive natural-gas bets went awry.