Trader Burned Wall Street With Bond Bet Leveraged 11,000-to-1 (1)

In the early hours of Feb. 20, 2020, as the world worried about the spread of Covid-19, a trader began contacting Wall Street banks looking to place a mammoth bet.

Jan Ralph, an English native in Singapore with a taste for Ferrari sports cars, was convinced that the threat of Covid was overblown. US Treasuries would lose value as global markets calmed down, he believed, and he needed the banks to help him profit from this.

Firms including Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lined up to help him build a one-way bet of $2.6 billion — ...