[Steely Tom]

Merrill is poring over the books of Alexis Stenfors, a London currency trader, who was suspended after Norwegian and Swedish currency trades went wrong, according to people familiar with the situation.

I'd like to know exactly what "went wrong" means in this context.

[SAJ]

A lot of people last year got NOK and SEK (Norwegian Krone and Swedish Krona, respectively) wrong. NOK went well higher than many folks thought it would because of the spike in crude prices, while not many expected SEK to be as weak as it has been for a year or so.

Trading either of these against EUR or CHF (Swiss Franc) has been **very** treacherous for some time. As a (reasonably informed) guess, our hero at Merrill was likely long JPY/NOK and/or EUR/NOK...and refused to take his losses, ultimately losing 9 figures.

Just this past week JP Morgan Chase pulled their longstanding long NOK/CHF trade. Must've cost them a bundle, too.