Amaranth Advisors

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Amaranth Advisors L.L.C. was founded in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2000 by Nicholas M. Maounis. The firm advised a family of hedge funds and presented itself as a multi-strategy operation, mixing convertible-arbitrage roots with equities, credit, commodities, and other alternative-investment maneuvers.

By 2005 and 2006, energy trading—especially natural-gas positions managed from its affiliated Calgary operation—had become a far bigger part of the story. At its 2006 peak, the wider Amaranth operation employed roughly 400 people and its principal fund managed about $9.2 billion. For a while, the numbers looked extremely cool. Finance’s oldest jump-scare was waiting backstage.

In September 2006, severe losses on natural-gas positions brought active trading to a halt. Amaranth transferred its energy portfolio to JPMorgan Chase and Citadel, suspended redemptions later that month, and retained Fortress Investment Group to help dispose of remaining investments in an orderly wind-down. The firm’s public-facing operating era effectively ended in 2007.

Our Amaranth Advisors collection celebrates the polished, alpha-marked confidence of the 2000s hedge-fund boom—Greenwich polish, commodities swagger, and a reminder that “multi-strategy” can become very single-problem, very quickly.