James has gone on to bigger and better things – he is now a managing director at Citi with more titles behind him than you can shake a stick at – and he had very kindly offered to help shed some light on the issues surrounding Russian rouble settlement.
Inevitably, we started talking about the old days, particularly the events around the market crash of 20 years ago. On the Thursday night, London had been battered by an unexpected storm. I was one of only a handful of staff to make it in to work on Friday. We’d been running a strategic short dollar position for a couple of weeks, which was nicely in court, and although I tried to sit on my hands all day, I ultimately got bored of playing computer golf and bought the position back.
On the Sunday, I got a frantic call from my boss, asking me if we were still short because by this stage it was inevitable that the dollar was not only going to fall out of bed, it was going to roll down the stairs, out of the front door and disappear down the street.