First published 2009
John Paulson stares at housing market data in 2006 and sees what others miss. Subprime mortgages are wildly overvalued. A crash is coming. The problem is that Paulson knows mergers and acquisitions, not real estate. His Wall Street career has been unremarkable. Investment bank colleagues mock his theory. Investors won't listen. Even housing skeptics avoid the complex derivatives he wants to use. Paulson teams up with renegade investors like Jeffrey Greene and Michael Burry. They place massive bets against risky mortgages and shaky financial firms. The timing goes wrong at first. They lose tens of millions as real estate prices keep climbing. Paulson doubles down anyway. He risks his hedge fund and his reputation. Summer 2007 brings the market collapse he predicted. Early profits arrive, but so do rescue efforts trying to save real estate and stop him. By year's end, Paulson has executed the greatest trade in financial history. His firm earns over $15 billion, dwarfing George Soros's famous currency bet.
Genres: business, economics, non-fiction, 21st-century, finance
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: against-the-odds, underdog
Setting: Wall Street
Period: 2006, 2007
304 pages · Hardcover · Crown Business