Saddam Futures brachten bis zu 2.000 % Gewinn

Saddam futures net profits for the 'longs'

By Adrienne Roberts, FT.com site; Dec 15, 2003, http://snipurl.com/3g20

Futures contracts linked to Saddam Hussein's capture were settled on Monday, netting a tidy profit for anyone who took a "long" position on the former dictator's arrest.

The contracts, offered by the Dublin-based exchange TradeSports, paid investors $10 a contract for the capture of Mr Hussein, and paid nothing if he was still at large when the contract expired.

Contracts for settlement in December, January, March and June all paid out.

At the beginning of this month the December contract cost 50 cents. An investor with $100 to spend could have bought 200 contracts, receiving $2,000 when the news came in.

The June contract had been trading at a price of about $3 before the capture, indicating that the market gave a 30 per cent probability to an arrest by the end of June.

The June Osama bin Laden contract - betting that the Al Qaeda leader will be captured or "neutralised" by the end of June - is currently trading at $2 to $2.50.