| Updated:
July 2007
There’s a firestorm brewing between Amerex Energy
and Choice Brokers of Houston. In a recent Dow Jones newswire story,
“Wealth, Power in Energy Trading Often Rests on Small Brokers,”
by reporter Leah McGrath Goodman, Choice Brokers’ founder
and CEO Javier Loya claimed that his firm “clears the largest
number of trades on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s (NMX)
ClearPort trading system…” The story claims further
that this was confirmed by NYMEX. A few days later, this same story
was rerun in the WSJ, only we noted a certain key correction was
made: Suddenly Choice wasn’t listed as the biggest ClearPort
broker, but rather, the biggest natural gas ClearPort broker.
Shortly after the wire story hit the streets, Amerex Energy chief
Michael Cosgrove cried foul. Cosgrove contacted the story author
and demanded a recount. Sources at the time told us that Cosgrove,
by way of Dow Jones reporter McGrath Goodman, had offered a challenge
to Choice’s Loya on the subject of who’s the biggest
contributor to ClearPort, in any case. Basically, Cosgrove said
to Loya, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine –
volume numbers on ClearPort, that is. The Desk learned later that
Cosgrove sent his YTD ClearPort tallies to Goodman, and further
that she serve as an honest broker, to request the same data set
from Loya, so that she might compare the two and settle the matter
once and for all. Then, nothing.
We finally shot off a note to Loya asking him if he planned to respond
to Goodman’s request. Later, after a brief conversation with
Goodman, we learned that she never actually raised the challenge
to Loya, and further, never planned to. Sensing our interest in
the story, Goodman said she’d be happy to “bequeath”
the whole mess to The Desk. And of course, we gladly accepted the
offer.
We contacted Cosgrove at Amerex to alert him of the change in venue,
and asked that he forward to us his YTD natural gas and total ClearPort
volume numbers so that we might compare the figures with Choice,
once we sent the challenge to Loya. Last week, we received the Amerex
data sets. And then we issued Cosgrove’s challenge to Loya.
By press time last week, we’d not heard a peep out of Loya,
despite our repeated calls and e-mails. One of Loya’s staff
confirmed that our emails and such were actually received.
While all of this was going on, we took the opportunity to ping
NYMEX on the matter. The original Dow Jones story that claimed Choice
was the biggest ClearPort broker was said to have been confirmed
by sources at NYMEX, but we had a hard time getting anybody to own
up to that fact. In fact, the NYMEX press office told us that they
were not contacted by the journalist in connection with this story.
That’s not to say conversations were not had on the sly, as
is often the case in this business, but NYMEX policy is pretty clear
on this point – they will not discuss individual member volume
numbers, in any case.
Will the truth ever be known on this one? Read on.
Last week we shot an inquiry over to NYMEX asking that they confirm
a particular set of aggregate ClearPort volume numbers. We described
the situation at hand, but left out a couple details, like company
names. “Since you’re not in the habit of giving out
actual numbers, I need a confirmation. I have in hand certain ClearPort
tallies for 2007 – they were given to me by the officer of
an energy brokerage. You may confirm this by calling his tel at_______.
In any case, please confirm the following: In view of the numbers
listed below for 1.) total ClearPort volumes and 2.) for total natural
gas ClearPort volumes, are these numbers representative of the highest
volumes by a single brokerage company on ClearPort?”
Late last week we received a note from Keil Decker, a communications
officer at NYMEX, who said while he did not yet have the natural
gas numbers, he “can confirm the other…”
By this we understood that the aggregate number we provided is in
fact the largest of all ClearPort contributors but that he did not
yet have access to the individual contract volumes and thus could
not confirm whether the natural gas numbers we provided were the
largest. Fair enough.
The ClearPort numbers we provided to NYMEX – but did not identify
by name – we will now identify as those aggregate ClearPort
numbers of Amerex Energy.
We have attempted to contact Loya several times this week to discuss
our latest findings, but alas, we have yet to hear anything; no
clarification, no argument, nuttin’.
Cosgrove told us later that he was pleased with the result, “but
mostly that the truth is finally known…” He further
said he believes Amerex is also the ’07 YTD leader in natural
gas. Amerex was the ClearPort volume leader in 2006 as well, Cosgrove
says.
Still no word from Loya.
|
