4. There are lessons for internal risk management. It might be important to have risk managers in the same location as traders, rather than thousands of miles away. It might also help to follow guidelines that many large banks have of allotting only certain risk capital to certain traders and diversify across the firm, rather than have one trader, like Hunter, use the majority of the firm’s capital and be responsible for the
majority of the firm’s performance. After all, Amaranth was not an energy trading hedge fund, it was a multi-strategy hedge fund. Along that line of thought, one might even consider a different incentive scheme for risk managers. Risk managers are not paid as well as traders. This causes their voice to be less important in the firm. And of course, risk managers’ bonus also depends on firm profits. Thus, to a certain extent they will also be reluctant to reduce the firm’s aggressive trading activities. They have a “free option” too. It is not clear that there is a simple way to restructure the incentives of risk managers, but it might be worth thinking about.