The duo proceeded to transform Enron from a 'boringly predictable' and regulated Gas Company into one of the largest energy traders in the US that would eventually dominate the trading of energy contracts and financial instruments known as derivatives.

             Trading Becomes the Mantra: As Enron's revenues sky-rocketed in its initial forays into wholesale buying and selling of gas and electricity, Skilling was emboldened to extend the trading concept into almost any commodity that could be traded, i.e., futures contracts in coal, paper, steel, water and even weather. Taking advantage of the growing use of the Internet, Enron started Enron Online (EOL) in October 1999-an electronic commodities trading Web site that was hugely successful almost overnight. Skilling hired the brightest talent from the top MBA schools and turned them into high-flying traders with incentives to "eat what they killed." (Thomas, para on "The Best, the Brightest.") .

             and Fall.

             While the company grew rapidly through the 1990s, "some of the worst manifestations of its culture-obsessions with bonuses, the stock price and exotic accounting-were also growing, and out of control." (Fowler, "Enron's Implosion.") Enron did make huge profits for a short while due to highly volatile energy prices, and there was widespread perception in the company about the unlimited potential of online trade and technology innovations such as the broadband. Things started to change in the late 1990s. Other energy companies such as Dynergy, Duke Energy, and El Paso had entered the field of energy trading and the competition started to eat into the huge profit margins of Enron. Other factors such as falling energy prices in early 2001, the approaching worldwide recession and the broadband bubble burst began to work against Enron's 'dream' run. The company, in the meantime, had embarked on a culture of cutting trading deals that had a momentum of its own that was hard to stop.