Yet, despite being apparently aware of the liquidity issues with their natural gas positions, they continued to act perilously and actually increased the size of their positions from the end of May to the end of August (the leverage of the natural gas positions with respect to the fund increased from 3.83 to 5.23) perhaps because they ultimately believed that the market was wrong and they were right. In their monthly letter to investors explaining the losses of May, they said “...we believed certain spread relationships remained disconnected from their fundamental value drivers.” (Senate Report, p. 73).
With respect to management, the senior management inGreenwich knew of the market risk but overlooked the position size by giving too much credit to Hunter, partly out of their own greed