Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Released on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385529914
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Review
"Gregory Zuckerman's recent account of [John] Paulson's triumph, The Greatest Trade Ever, offers a fascinating perspective on the predator thesis...Rarely in human history has anyone made so much money in so short a time."
--Malcolm Gladwell

"Mr. Zuckerman is a first-rate reporter who is also able to explain the complexities of real estate finance in layman’s terms. At times, The Greatest Trade Ever reads like a thriller."
--The New York Times 

“How Paulson and a handful of contrarian investors pulled off this once-in-a-lifetime coup is the subject of The Greatest Trade Ever ... a fascinating and believable counter-narrative to the growing pile of books recounting the disastrous mistakes made by many of the supposedly smartest minds on Wall Street. It is also a surprisingly dramatic work...In The Greatest Trade Ever, Zuckerman skillfully shows how Paulson and a few cohorts anticipated a disaster and figured out a way to profit.”
--BusinessWeek

"More than a cinematic narrative of how Paulson and others figured out how to short the market. We’re also reminded of how opaque and illiquid some financial instruments are, how little Wall Street executives understood them, and how difficult it was for more knowledgeable bankers to say that the subprime emperor had no clothes."
--Bloomberg.com

"Zuckerman has a story to tell, a thread to follow, and it just happens to turn out that by following the saga of John Paulson, Zuckerman reveals all kinds of fascinating perspectives on complex finance, the real estate bubble and Wall Street and Washington's difficulties in putting the two together.”
--TheDeal.com

“A magnificent insider look at how Paulson and others profited off of subprime’s demise, detailing both the formulation and implementation of such a trade…Zuckerman’s work is both insightful and gripping.”
--Marketfolly.com

"Greg Zuckerman was the first to tell the world about John Paulson's sensational trade…He's written the definitive account of a strange and wonderful subplot of the financial crisis."
--Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball and Home Game

"Gregory Zuckerman takes us to Wall Street's heart of darkness, where mushroomed a $1 trillion subprime mortgage market that only the few, the brave, the smart dared short. The story of John Paulson and the few colorful contrarians who made outsized bets and outrageous profits on the subprime implosion, is at once a great page-turner and a great illuminator of the market's crash."
--John Helyar, co-author, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

"Greg Zuckerman's book is much, much more than a brilliant account of Paulson's trade of the century; it also provides a highly enjoyable and lucid journey through the analytical and emotional maze that constituted the financial markets on the eve of the Great Recession. The book is compulsory reading for those looking for exceptional insights on the complex forces that interconnect Wall Street, hedge funds and Main Street."
--Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. and bestselling author of When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change

"I couldn't put it down. All I can say is, WOW! What a story! Incredibly illuminating."
--Whitney Tilson, hedge fund manager and author of More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times

"A wonderful, fast-paced summary of how John Paulson, a hedge fund manager, made billions of dollars."
--Sarasota Herald-Tribune

"The Greatest Trade Ever is aptly titled, for it is possibly the greatest book to come out of the financial crisis of 2007 — 2008, and it’s certainly up there in the top 3."
--Bnet.com

"...a Tour de Force chronicling the rise of John Paulson from a mediocre merger arbitrage investment manager into a financial titan."
--Marketthoughts.com




 

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. 

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Read!
This is an incredible book about John Paulson, and in general, the trade against the housing market. This is a great read for anyone who is interested in how an investment thesis is constructed and executed.

There were two pleasant surprises of the book:

1. How different investors, besides John Paulson, also saw the similar trade opportunity and went for it. As the crisis unfolded John Paulson, George Soros and a host of other investors were revealed to have been shorting the housing market. The surprise was learning about the host of other, "unknown" investors from a medical school dropout to a cocky Deutsche Bank trader to wealthy real-estate mogul to a recently graduated MBA, each of who recognized the crisis before most others and were able to trade against the rest of the investment community.

2. The transformation of John Paulson - He was initially described someone who was smart, but not as someone who always had to be the best or a natural leader; in fact many saw his career as stalled and unexceptional. He was portrayed as a random i-banker with awkward communication skills, a weak handshake and an affinity for the NYC club scene. The book is very good at showing how he transformed himself from a run of the mill finance professional to someone whose ambition grew and grew....and once he saw the opportunity, he calmly executed his trade, and transformed his life.

(A small side note...this is also the one of the best books describing the technical terms of the housing crisis (e.g. CDS, MBS).)

Finally, even though the ending is essentially known (the collapse of the housing crisis), the description and narrative of the sequence of events is riveting.

A great read for anyone interested in finance, the markets and the real estate crash.

Excellent read, excellent education on a complicated subject. FASCINATING!
I just began reading this book and I can't put it down. I am not in the field of finance and have always been a bit intimidated by it as a result of my ignorance, but once I read the introduction and began to read the book, I find the basics of investing as well as the events leading up to the recent economic breakdown and Paulson's unbelievable trade, laid out in a clear, thoughtful, concise, and intriguing manner. Zuckerman writes with the skill of a seasoned finance intellectual combined with the style and savvy of someone who makes it his business to keep on top of current events and the goings on in the tumultuous social world of finance, and shows how it all ties together. At the same time, Zuckerman puts Regular Joe at ease, maintaining his interest with writing and details that are anything but dry. I am enjoying the book thoroughly and you will too!

Really interesting story
This book was recommended to me by a friend who's a fan of Greg Zuckerman. Considering I'm not in the financial world at all I still found the story and characters really compelling and was astounded by the amount of research and detail included in each characters' personal story about how they came to forsee the impending financial crisis in the real estate market, bet against it, and make billions in profit. The most amazing thing is that no one seemed to believe these guys until the market crashed and by then it was too late. I wish I had been as smart as them....