The Greatest Trade Ever: How John Paulson Bet Against the Markets and Made $20 Billion - Hardcover

Zuckerman, Gregory

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7,116 ratings by Goodreads

9780670918355: The Greatest Trade Ever: How John Paulson Bet Against the Markets and Made $20 Billion

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670918350 ISBN 13: 9780670918355

Publisher: Viking, 2010

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In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected--that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him. Even pros skeptical about housing shied away from the complicated derivative investments that Paulson was just learning about. But Paulson and a handful of renegade investors such as Jeffrey Greene and Michael Burry began to bet heavily against risky mortgages and precarious financial companies. Timing is everything, though. Initially, Paulson and the others lost tens of millions of dollars as real estate and stocks continued to soar. Rather than back down, however, Paulson redoubled his bets, putting his hedge fund and his reputation on the line.
In the summer of 2007, the markets began to implode, bringing Paulson early profits, but also sparking efforts to rescue real estate and derail him. By year's end, though, John Paulson had pulled off the greatest trade in financial history, earning more than $15 billion for his firm--a figure that dwarfed George Soros's billion-dollar currency trade in 1992. Paulson made billions more in 2008 by transforming his gutsy move. Some of the underdog investors who attempted the daring trade also reaped fortunes. But others who got the timing wrong met devastating failure, discovering that being early and right wasn't nearly enough.
Written by the prizewinning reporter who broke the story in The Wall Street Journal, The Greatest Trade Ever is a superbly written, fast-paced, behind-the-scenes narrative of how a contrarian foresaw an escalating financial crisis--that outwitted Chuck Prince, Stanley O'Neal, Richard Fuld, and Wall Street's titans--to make financial history.

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About the Author:

GREGORY ZUCKERMAN is a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, where he has been a reporter for twelve years. He pens the widely read “Heard on the Street” column and writes about hedge funds, investing, and other Wall Street topics. Zuckerman appears on CNBC twice a week to explain complex trades. He is a two-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of the credit crisis, the demise of WorldCom, and the collapse of hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, and he is a recipient of other awards.

From AudioFile:

John Paulson took home $4 billion in 2007 as his share of the deals his firm made in anticipation of a mortgage crisis. Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman profiles Paulson and others who saw the economic disaster coming. Narrator Marc Cashman reads with a blend of sound journalism and admiring astonishment as Zuckerman casts Paulson as an underdog of high finance. That part might be an exaggeration--Paulson was savvy enough to see what others missed and had enough money to place bets that would reap billions--but Zuckerman's detailed analysis of Paulson's thought processes provides a valuable look at financial indicators that should interest any investor. J.A.S. � AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

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