If one computes the losses of Amaranth’s natural gas positions from August 31, 2006 through September 21, 2006, assuming the positions were not altered during the period, the losses amount to about $3.295 billion. The actual losses computed in Figure 4 total $4.433 billion.9 This difference between the losses indicates that the trades that Amaranth executed between August 31, 2006 and September 15, 2006 served to increase their losses by an additional $1.138 billion. In fact, these additional losses were probably not accidental or random. That is, given the losses up to September 7, 2007, the Amaranth energy traders may have exercised their “free option” of limited downside liability if things went wrong by increasing the bets in response to troubled times. Correspondence from an Amaranth trader to Brian Hunter indicates a line of reasoning along this path: