The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History

Contrarian investment guru Doug Casey used to say, "You know the time to dump an investment is when it makes the cover of Time Magazine." I don't rememeber if it was 2004 or 2005 when Time's cover story was "Will Your House Make You Rich?" Casey was right, the time had come to get out of real estate, although profiting from that move was as treacherous as playing a game of high stakes craps in a casino used to fleecing its players.

In a story revealing one man's prescience about the housing bubble, Gregory Zuckerman describes with rich detail how John Paulson zigged when the rest of Wall Street zagged, and wound up making billions in the process; this was by far, the "greatest trade ever", and the story behind it is a most compelling one, indeed. The complexities of the huge power play that Paulson parlayed into outrageous fortune, also left others who bet the farm too early, out in the cold. To make a fortune when betting against a tidal wave of growing valuation, you've got to time it just right; and you've got to have a lot of courage and conviction in your strategy.

Certainly, "conventional wisdom" will be shouting in your face that you're way off base; of course, as we've seen time and time again, "conventional wisdom" is often anything but "wise". In the case of the wildly escalating housing market in the middle of this decade, even Alan Greenspan was fooled.

Zuckerman's behind the scenes story of Paulson's brilliant trade is one of contrast; between the logical and pragmatic approach Paulson took when calculating the upside potential of betting against the stampeding real estate market, versus the illogical rationale behind those expecting the bubble to never burst.

The lesson learned here is simple; eventually, everything returns to its logical state of being. Never bet against that for too long, unless you want to end up like so many of the former Wall Street high rollers, who shot craps on their last turn at the table.

As a banker for over 42 years and with a great understanding of finance, this book was an excellent read on how people went against the tide, against the banking community opinion and through many trials bet against the house and WON!

This is about a small group of people that recognized a niche and accepted the risk.

I believe the author did an excellent job in conveying all sides of the story and I think this would be an excellent movie as well.

For those that are interested, once you start the book, you will not want to put it down.

This is an excellent book for understanding the events leading up to the financial meltdown of 2008-2009, explaining the key individuals that foresaw the problems and the financial instruments that were the root of the problem.

Gregory Zuckerman's book is an easy to read in depth account of not just the unique genius of John Paulson but of others who beat him to the punch but failed to cash in for various reasons. Mr. Zuckerman makes the book an enjoyable read for the outsider and for those in the know. I look foward to seeing what else comes out of this great new author.

This is an amazing book! Zuckerman goes into great detail on why and how the financial meltdown occurred. He introduces the reader to many diverse characters throughout the book that give the story depth and likability. Zuckerman paints the disappointing lows and the cheerful highs of the story of John Paulson and how he made financial history. This is a riveting, page-turning story and is a must read.

The book, like all the store stuff I order, arrived in excellent condition and on time. The book itself was a good read. I had a little bit of a tough time getting into it at first, but after getting past the first few chapters of background information on the people, it became quite a good read. It is always interesting how our stock market is manipulated to get gains and how that same manipulation can create such massive losses for others, with none of it based on anything but a hunch and a hope and some history. It proves the theory that one can make money whether or not the stock market (or commodities market) goes up or down.

This was a well written book. I liked the way the author moved between different players involved. It doesn't go to deep in the mechanics of what these people had done but just enough to make you realize the enormity of it all. Also gives you a real picture of these folks psyche. These people have egos on steroids. Great read! Enjoyed it alot.

A winning trade is not just direction, it is timing, patience and organization. The point is well brought out in this riveting read of a book and how even the slightest deviation from the winning combination brought starkly different payoffs.

Incredible story, fast-paced book. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in hedge funds, the stock market, wall street, and especially one trying to comprehend how an individual could earn $4 billion dollars personally. Read it.

Without engaging in a lengthy critical review, I strongly argue that this interpretation of events drew too heavily on not only unrelated but also unsubstantiated personal subject matter (Zuckerman's fetish of cyclically referring to Paulson's supposed quiet but womanizing nature, for example) and not enough on cogent, fact-based explanatory and analytically-insightful deconstructions of the market distortions that precipitated the Great Recession, and by extension the phenomenal short thereof.

Both objectively and subjectively, this book is seemingly written with the prose and haste characteristic of a junior high paper rushed the night before the due date and largely defined by the banal drama such a paper employs in an effort to distract readers from the near total absence of substance.

A much more insightful and stylistically better written book in my opinion is the Big Short by Michael Lewis.

Not a lively written narrative like Michael Lewis' "The Big Short," but the book digs deeper into the financial morass and focuses on characters more essential to the financial malaise. Provides a reportorial in-depth analysis of the financial double-dealing that crippled the country's financial system and infected many of the world's economies. The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History

Go with The Greatest Trade Ever if you want just one book on the Bank/Real Estate melt-down. Excellent look under the covers on Credit Default Swaps and who got caught holding the bag. Knowing what to bet against is only 10% of the problem. Paulson and few others figured out how to trade it and make money. Very cool story.

The fact that Zuckerman had personal access to several of the biggest players in the subprime meltdown should have made this book a home run. Instead, his write-by-numbers style sinks it. It's absolute tortue to read his stumbling, awkward prose. Worse, when he quotes Paulson or Pellegrini--which he does constantly--the content is utterly worthless. These two guys, who are critical to the book, in the end provide almost no value to it.

Skip this, read TBTF and The Big Short.

This book is better written and a better read than The Big Short, but my only criticism with it is that it doesn't really deal with the larger ethical questions surrounding the whole financial meltdown. It is an adoring look at all the folks involved. The author writes about them like a star-struck teenager. Still, its a good book.

The Big Short on the other hand asks hard questions but is kind of scattered, frenetic and over the top cynical.

I like this book very much because it teach me:
1. What is hedge fund doing
2. What will take to become a great trader
3. Every success lie in the detail analysis and persistent execution.
Now I know I don't have the personality and guts to become a hedge fund manager nor
a great trader like John, Bob, etc.

It help me to focus (and content) and my own small fund... maybe 5 - 10 years from now,
I have the personality for it.

This is an amazing book. Well written, suspenseful, detailed, informative, insightful and human. If you do not walk away with a very good understanding of what was happening in the mortgage market and on wall street from 2006 through 2009, than you did not understand the book.

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. Cast of Characters - 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 whom 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 other words he was not the classic alpha male. John Paulson was portrayed as a random i-banker with awkward communication skills, a weak handshake and an affinity for the NYC club scene. Many actually saw his career as stalled and unexceptional. 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 market), 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.

The author holds back the story from you. A lot of personal narrative about a lot of different people who made money shorting Credit Default Swaps. I read through it an afternoon, and got the story.

This a "fluff" book that reads as a fiction and most likely is fiction. I take nothing away from J. Paulson's acumen and abilities as a trader and owner of one of the more successful hedge funds in the world. But most of the author's leading up to the trade and subsequent deification of J. Paulson could have been looked up for free on any of the free websites available. In fact, if one is really interested in the how's and why's of the trade, i.e., its mechanics, you will be seriously disappointed. It reads as a first attempt at screenplay more than anything. It is failed reportage with little in the way of insight into the trader's mind, analysis, and risks associated with volatility and dynamic hedging. Just a lot of soft words without deep understanding or acumen. the book is a failure.ACEMAN

i was sold on this book from the editorial reviews. 2 days later after finishing im lost as to the purpose of the book.

a list of what this book is NOT:
-examination of greater market environment at the time
-expose of the mechanics behind the 'greatest trade ever'
-romanticism of the trading and the players' lifestyles

it is not an economics text, nor a technical text, nor a drama of personal intrigue. rather it is a shallow effort of all 3 that very much READS DRYLY like a ticker-tape stock quote. the book repeats the story of different market players, starting with multiple (extraneous) layers of their family life through their business life and to the aftermath of the subprime meltdown. within this framework of repetition zuckerman belabors the same points: (1)these guys are associated via alumni or social networks and (2) and movement in product XXX correlates to YYY effects to their portfolio; did he intend to offend readers' intelligence or simply to make filler? (and the answer seems is likely both)

the background of these subjects, presumably for their characterization, is presented as an absolute BORE. little anecdotes from their lives are written in such a empty, matter-of-factly way to the point of senselessness and AWKWARDNESS. imagine your pub conversation when a hilarious event is told by a friend with absolutely no skill in story-telling.

to the point, though -- the greatest trade ever -- whether the truth or an injustice by zuckerman, the players are NOT conveyed as geniuses with high business acumen. there is no "angle". the whole REDUCTIVE "play"* was a few people who believed the housing market to be a bubble and bought insurance against the fulfillment of mortgages... and they bought lots of it.

*(to be fair, one person was tersely credited with an engineering of market products to make the trading possible...)

the 300 page book can be condensed as follow (and it reads equally as DULL):

-bob was born to jerry and jessica
-bob met and married jane
-jane and bob had a son michael
-michael went to harvard
-michael struggled with his 500k salary, and felt inadequate compared to his peers
-michael divorced his wife
-michael speculates housing is about to collapse, purchase insurance (CDS) against their fulfillment
-housing actually collapses, michael receives money. the end.

this book is too vague and boring for students/participants of the market. and it is too dull and dry for outsiders looking into the market. wouldve been best for someones unread blog.

A well written story about those who correctly predicted the 2008 U.S. housing crisis and profited from it.

The main character and creator of the so-called “greatest trade” is John Paulson, who made approximately $20bn for his firm and $4bn personally during the worst of the GFC.

This book explained a few things I was not aware of. Firstly, just how much doubt these contrarian investors encountered (Burry, Green, Paulson, Lippman et al) from seasoned professionals about their views on housing. It would have taken enormous fortitude to establish positions in such size.

Second, the pressure they were under to close positions once they had become marginally profitable. It would have taken guts to maintain positions until they were trading for cents on the dollar, at which point they exited. This trade was flawless from start to finish.

The book explains that there were a few acts, or a sequence of trades, to the “big short” that allowed Paulson to generate such enormous profits. First there was the subprime CDS trade where most of the profits were made. Then came CDO’s and other products likely to fail. Finally Paulson went short individual companies like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. He just nailed it at every stage, taking advantage of Mr Market’s imperfect understanding of the real level of risk and exposures.

If you are interested in “Soros-like” trades or learning about the characters and events behind the “big short”, you will really enjoy this book.

For those looking to understand the primary events that led up to the housing bubble's collapse, THE GREATEST TRADE EVER is a fine primer. For those interested in learning how John Paulson's hedge fund, as well as a handful of other investors, were able to execute trades to take advantage of its precipitous fall and earn record breaking profits, it is a fascinating read. However as a biographical work or cohesive narrative, it falls short.

The dust jacket bills the book as part Grisham-esque examination of the colorful characters who found a way to short the housing market, part financial journalism, and part a historical narrative of the financiapocalypse of 2005-2009. Of those, it succeeds best at the last, aptly chronicling the rise of 'cheap money'(easy credit for banks and individuals), exuberant homeowners convinced their houses were bank accounts, greedy lenders, dishonest professionals along the way, and the highly educated morons at the top of many Wall Street firms that enabled things to get way out of hand (not to mention Congress failing to curtail predatory lending practices).

As a work of biography, it is very herky-jerky with meaningless details masquerading as insight into Paulson and a few others seeking to profit from the housing bubble's collapse. The problem is not with the source material; each of the individuals is on the surface captivating: a doctor with Asperger's syndrome who drops out of the medical field to start a hedge fund, a struggling young business graduate with prescience but no funding, an Italian ex-patriot full of bravado and confidence but little to show for it, and then Paulson himself: the undervalued Chess Master who pulls off the greatest Coup d'état in the history of trading. All on the surface have the potential to be captivating. However, Zuckerman is never able to weave their stories together in a way that feels complete, solid, and rewarding for the reader. The style is not journalistic nor is it narrative--it's something in between the two, and doesn't maximize on the strengths of either.

Strange passages full of meaningless details (Zuckerman seems obsessed with chronicling what people consumed at meals) are sewn together with analysis of complicated financial products and financial history. Many of the attempts at shedding light on Paulson or the others in the book are opaque and lack insight. Cliches litter the pages, as well as redundancy in word use, and some bizarre narrative that is either poorly written and confusing, or simply geared towards eliciting titillation:

"In March, exhausted from a grueling year, he (Andrew Lahde) invited two young women to Miami, trying to relax. He rented a penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton for the women and another room nearby to ensure that he'd get some rest during the day as the women shopped."

--THE GREATEST TRADE EVER
Page 266

What does this communicate? That the women were friends? That they were hookers? It seems that Zuckerman has included this information purely for sensational effect since it stirs up many more questions than its dubious biographical usefulness warrants, and because he is so imprecise about the context of the event or the nature of the 'young women.' A bit later:

"Two weeks later, bringing a young woman with him (Andrew Lahde), he left for St. Thomas to research the tax benefits of moving to the island."

--THE GREATEST TRADE EVER
Page 266

Is this journalism? If it is, I'd argue it's the tabloid variety. Zuckerman could have easily simply said "a traveling companion," or "friend," or even left the event out since he is either unwilling to draw his own conclusions or simply doesn't have enough information to accurately represent what occurred.

Even with writing and style issues, THE GREATEST TRADE EVER is still a worthy read, especially for those looking to better understand the complicated financial products that brought down the US economy. Zuckerman does a great job explaining Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), tranches, derivatives, Credit Default Swaps (CDS), etc. He also accurately lays out the various levels of blame for the collapse; much of the blame may rest on the shoulders of the "Big Banks" but it also rests on Congress, Subprime lenders, mortgage brokers, appraisers, and even home owners. It was refreshing to see that nuanced a perspective--much of the media has made Wall Street and "Big Banks" the scapegoats when it really isn't as simple as that.

The sense I had after finishing the book (which is a quick, afternoon read) was that I understood how Paulson executed his trades, why they worked, and how he ended up an immensely wealthy man. What I was much less clear on were his motivations, what made him tick, and why what he did is significant other than the financial reward. Zuckerman gets close to offering some insight into the failings of the US political and economic systems, but stops short of tying that together in the same way he stops short of providing a cohesive narrative and biography. It would have been interesting to hear Paulson's take on his own trade from the perspective of it's impact on US economic policy.

Like Congressman John Tierney who said "I'm thinking we've probably got the wrong Paulson handing out the TARP money here," when Paulson appeared before Congress, I think the account of Paulson going against the grain despite immense pressure, of calmly defying his critics and sticking with sound financial research and modeling, can and should influence government policy. If Paulson is more than a one-trick pony, it would have been extremely interesting to see a chapter detailing his views on how to FIX the problems that created the housing crash. Oracle or no, Paulson certainly knows a hell-of-a-lot more about how Wall Street banks work than the public servants who gave a blank check to the likes of AIG.

The book concludes with a projection from Paulson: the US Dollar is overvalued and inflation will drive it's value into the toilet in the near future. Paulson is buying Gold. Maybe I will too.

3.5 Stars / 5

read this book and michael lewis' enjoyed both.... they don't duplicate each other that much, but it's hard for me to articulate the differences

i guess lewis' book tries to tell it as more of a wall street insider (self-avowed one?). this book is written more as someone looking at it from outside and i think it works better.

this book is much, much more focused on paulson than lewis' book.

one thing that was odd is that with both paulson and greene in this book the author ends chapters with statements that these people will seriously regret some decision and then i don't really see how later (why did it really matter if greene make cds bets off paulson's advice? it seems he'd done it before and paulson didn't mind and he didn't seem to move the market)

i thought the info on jeff greene was very good. classic wheeling and dealing real estate entrepeneur.

i wish both books had got much more deeply into housing but maybe that's not what the average reader wants.

i highly recommend this book

The writing in this book is as tepid as that Lehman book written by the former employee. The Lehman book sucked beyond comprehension, but the fact that you could enjoy how bad it was, and how pathetic the 'author' was, made it slightly more digestible, sorta like movies that are so bad their good, yet, not quite. The people in the book are realistic in that they are quite possibly some of the most boring people you could ever read about. Usually, you could make an interesting yarn out of somebody with a 'glass eye'(not paulson), but man, trying to read about the Glass Eyed guy's upbringing made me want to drink my own urine ice cold, shaken not stirred.

The subject matter is a good topic but the quality of prose reads like a scrolling news banner. I might as well just watch the bottom inch of my tv. In fact, after reading the first hundred or so pages, I felt like I dumbed myself down, and I can tell my review sucks, thanks for making me dumber, merry christmas.

In any case, I wait the sequel about Paulson's massive 'GOLD trade' which I believe he is still holding long, bought a bunch of it over $1000, and a boatload of the gold etf, did Paulson san and his dojo.

In "The Greatest Trade Ever", Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman presents a collection of storylines that, together, give the reader a picture of what life was like for people who tried to bet against the housing bubble using newly standardized credit default swaps (CDS) in 2005-2007. I don't think there was any shortage of people who recognized the housing bubble, but most didn't have the means or access or know-how to short it. Even those successes to whom we are introduced in this book had trouble pulling it off in the obscure and opaque world of CDSs, instruments that are normally only available to institutional investors and trade on an unregulated, over-the-counter market.

Though he always returns to Paulson and his analyst Paolo Pelligrini, the author also tells the story of hedge fund owner Michael Burry, who entered the trade too early and had trouble keeping his clients, and upstart fund owner Andrew Lahde, who bought CDS contracts on the ABX (subprime) index. Burry and Paulson both tried to create funds dedicated exclusively to the housing short. Then there is Jeffrey Greene, real estate investor and Paulson's former friend, who navigated the CDS market as an individual investor with some difficulty. And Greg Lippman, the trader at Deutsche Bank who created the standardized CDS contract, recognized the bubble, and advised people to short the industry he normally cheered.

Most were outsiders to the mortgage and CDS markets. Paulson had made a career in merger arbitrage. And they were all desperately trying to figure out how to profit from the greatest mispricing mess in history, that of CDS insurance on toxic CDOs. This was easier said than done, and Zuckerman shows us why. Most of the book in the build-up, where we see why the various players thought that subprime mortgages were going to blow up and what they did about it. The drama is in the nail-biting wait, once the mortgage market slowed and the defaults began in 2006, as traders were unable to get reliable quotes as to the value of their positions and suspected that CDOs were being deliberately mispriced by banks who were in big trouble.

Paulson made $4 billion personally in 2007, the biggest trade in Wall Street history. "The Greatest Trade Ever" tells that story, and, more vaguely, the story of the CDS market during those years. But it does not delve very far into the mechanics of the trades or precisely what the CDS contracts were insuring. For example, in reference to the instances in which Paulson asked a bank to create CDOs for him to bet against, the author states, "Paulson's team would pick a hundred or so mortgage bonds for the CDOs." He later says that "the deals were CDOs composed of CDS contracts, rather than actual mortgages." Confusing. "The Greatest Trade Ever" is a fair overview of "the big short", but it's poorly written and not enlightening as to the details of the trades.

I prefer The Big Short by Michael Lewis over this book, but this one is still incredibly interesting and a good read, and I highly reccomend it. I was twenty when the Market crashed. I knew a little about the stock market, but the crash really grabbed my interest. What grabbed it more was when the new edition of Trand Following came out, and I learned that people profitted off the collapse of the market. This became a running fascination for me and so I come at this book having already read through dozens of news reports and scouring about fifteen books for information on people who predicted the market would collapse.

This was the first narrative form one I encountered that grabbed my attention like a novel and held it all the way through. The Big Short however gives a much more uniquely drawn story in my opinion, but again, this book is excellent. John Paulson pulled off a Hail Mary of a trade. The negative reviews that bash Paulson for his success, and claim he's under investigation didn't get all the facts. He chose, like anyone else could, what Cred Default Swaps he wanted insurance on. Goldman Sachs was the one packaging them poorly. He capitalized on what he saw as a poor system. Life is all about seeing your opportunity and taking it, if you don't act then you're going to be left regretting it.

How he figured out how to make the trad , how he got the funds for the trade, how he went about organizing the trade, makes this book read like a thriller in a way, in my opinion at least. A financial thriller. In the end, had he lost everything, and this book was called The Greatest Trade Never Made, the people booing this book with one star reviews, would be cheering. But since he was successful, since he prospered while others suffered, there may be some ethical issue, but in my opinion, I thought he acted brilliantly.

This book really brings the story alive and you could do worse in your choice.

I finished this book as Robert Rubin was being grilled by a Senate committee about the financial meltdown. It struck me that the book described just the first act in something fundamental which is happening to the West's financial future.
Zuckerman, a Wall Street Journal reporter, describes the decline of the US property market from the point of view of the (few) winners; those who say it coming and figured out how to profit from the looming disaster. The winners it seems were quite few - John Paulson, a formerly obscure hedge fund manager, Jeffery Green a property speculator and Mike Burry, a fund manager based far from the New York financial scene. They all discovered that the newly developed CDS formed a deliciously asymmetric bet on the housing market - i.e. for a regular sequence of insurance -like payments, at cents in the dollar relative to the assets covered(CDOs), they stood to make vast profits if the unthinkable happened i.e. the US property market declined. It did, but when it did the financial destruction was so great that there was always the possibility that they would not get their money as potentially their counterparties would be bankrupted.
That's where the Western tax payers come in, some of the counterparties were banks and as the banks tottered US and other taxpayers stepped in to prevent them failing, i.e. taxpayers money went to pay off the CDO/CDS transactions. I reckon that at least 1billion of John Paulson's funds 12 billion profit came from the German governments rescue of IKB bank (this last is not in the book).

So the fascination is in watching this unfold. The events are so recent that we still have a sense of the breath-taking audacity of those that felt the property market could crash. The banks, the rating agencies, the math-geniuses who calculated risk all felt it couldn't (hence the low rate charged for CDS's). By concentrating on those who bet against the market, Zuckermann under-emphasizes the fact that almost no-one on the planet held their views. Zuckermann's book excels in telling their story - specifically the difficulty in getting investors to stay with the bet - Paulson was willing to loose up to 8% per annum; Burry had to refuse to return money to his investors for up to two years as the bet was in play. It took real courage to wait for the market to turn, even if they were correct, they might run out of money before the bet could pay back - Keynes quote - `the market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent'. There were also worries about being successful - if the bets came off, the scale of the winnings might be such as to jeopardize actually getting the money.

The behaviour of the bankers is infuriating, in seeking CDS coverage for CDOs (which might just be an extra source of income) bankers could be seen to be betting against products they were selling to their clients. While this may or may not be the case, the fact that there was enough money sloshing around to encourage various investors to create CDOs in the first place, is even more infuriating, as I cannot see
a useful social purpose to it. I can understand the provision of mortgages as a useful social purpose, i can understand insurance,; but to me the speculation that took place here was of no use to society, who ever `won' the bet. And of course the most infuriating of all (which brings me back to Rubin), is that
those that `lost' the bet were not those who took out the CDOs, but rather the taxpayer. Why was this allowed to happen?

The book itself leaves out mention of the counterparties - what possessed those who generated and purchased CDO's? There is an interesting description of a confrontation between Paulson and Stanley O'Neal (ex CEO of Merrill Lynch) which exposes O'Neal as not being aware of the existential risk his own bank was holding as CDOs. But otherwise the book has little to say about the guy's who lost. It is both deferential and stylistically quite flat in describing the winners. Somehow Paulson is seen as a bit of a looser in the hedge fund community prior to his big bet , despite a lifestyle most would see as opulent.
Through Zuckerman Paulson is allowed to make self-justifying statements about how he never misrepresented what he was doing; statements which might be pre-emptive in light of the SEC investigations of Goldman Sachs (though in fairness Paulson has not been indicted). Michal Lewis' book `the big Short' does not interview Paulson at all.

So overall, a fascinating partial account of the latest trauma of Capitalism. The book could do with being more critical, more analytic., less deferential. From a full reading of the text, I'm not sure that the irony in the title was intentional A more comprehensive account would need to cover the irrational `group-think' among bankers, rating agencies and regulators. Nonetheless well worth a read. Also, for about fifty pages I think I understood what a synthetic CDO was.

Though I'm a big Michael Lewis fan, I'm here to tell you that you don't need to read Lewis' The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. That same story is told here in even more riveting fashion by Wall Street Journal reporter, Gregory Zuckerman. It's a fantastic book. Zuckerman excels at explaining obtuse, complex subjects in clear, crisp terms and drafting a riveting narrative around it. Who would have thought Credit Default Swaps were so enthralling? Zuckerman does it by introducing you to the characters who recognize the value behind these then-obscure vehicles and ride them to jawdropping gains.

Don't let the subtitle fool you: Zuckerman's book - though dominated by the presence of John Paulson - features many other investors who contemporaneously deduced and arranged the same short as Paulson. Those characters include Michael Burry of Scion Capital, Andrew Lahde of Lahde Capital (Zuckerman includes an almost-complete rendition of Lahde's famous farewell letter), Greg Lippmann of Deutsche Bank and, most compellingly, Jeff Greene. Greene's tale is fascinating for two reasons: first, he did the trade as an individual investor, which took a lot of smarts, drive and ingenuity; second, the idea came directly from a Paulson pitch...a fact Paulson was none too happy with. One broken friendship and $800m later, Greene landed on the 2008 Forbes 400 list.

Still, the question of whether one enjoys this book rests solely on how you feel about John Paulson. In Zuckerman's hands, Paulson comes across as very likable - reserved, hard-working, quiet, grounded, unflappable, unperturbed by criticism. By the end of the book, you end up celebrating Paulson's triumph...even if - as Paulson, Greene and others note consistently - their gains were based on the tanking of major sectors of the American - indeed, the world - economy. Some of the book's character's do not take this conflict lightly. Then, there was Lahde, who says in his famous goodbye letter:

"I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

I strongly recommend you get the unabridged audio version of Zuckerman's book featuring a superb, enthusiastic reading by Marc Cashman. After 11-and-half hours, I'm a bit saddened not to have Mr. Cashman as part of my daily commute. I was inventing reasons to stay in the car...probably the best testament a professional voice talent can get.

This book is well worth reading. It tells the story of John Paulson, an unknown hedge funds manager in NYC specialised in M&A and arbitrage. Allthough Paulson wasn't familiar at all with real estate investment world, he foresaw the housing bubble and its crash. This book tells the story on how he placed his bet against the housing market and made an enormous amount of money from it. Amounts most people would link to Buffett or Soros, but not to a simple hedge funds manager who started out relatively small.

You got to give it to the guy, he had the balls to stick with his trade. Most of the other traders wouldn't have had the patience and guts to go with such a risky trade.

The book is very nicely written, allthough I have doubts if every detail is true. Like another reviewer said, the detailed description of the sun falling inside the church on the wedding day ... Did the author actually got all these details from Paulson and the other characters in the book? And even if he did, what's the relevance with the story? Not that it bothered me though ..

Also the story of Michael Burry in this book I found pretty good.

All in all: recommended if you like books on trading. I don't think you'll find this one boring. Also, I don't think you'll easily find a guy who has made so much money on 1 trade.

Well, I've read more than one book on the subject, including Reckless Endangerment, The Big Short and others as well as countless news articles. Greatest Trade is probably most useful because it is such a personal insight on how these individuals realized the opportunity, struggled to recognize it and finally to execute on the opportunity and the personal and practical challenges they had in doing so. Paulson comes off as some kind of a genius, the rest of the cast a bit more human but Paulson deservedly so as he simply made the most money.

what is disturbing for us MBA types is the full appreciation of how stupid we all are. It's discomforting. we've been trained to believe we have some expertise and that markets are efficient and that it is our analytical tools that make them efficient but to appreciate the degree to which our groupthink causes them to be wildly inefficient, wrong and just plain dangerous is personally problematic. While it's nice to be the hero and we all tend to identify with the hero, the practical reality we all much face is that we were 'the crowd' (as in the 'Madness of Crowds') and that we were all part of the problem, we elect people who are part of the problem and that our business leaders are typically part of the problem. in that respect, the book is a humbling read for those who are open to that lesson and willing to doubt what they think they know to be right.

I can remember considering real estate frothy in 2006 myself, just based on observations in my own neighborhood. I can remember one instance in which a friend was looking to buy a home in Capitola California, a market I knew nothing about, and advising her not to buy because of 'the bubble'. but beyond that observation, I did nothing to follow that instinct to where it necessarily led as Paulson and others did nor did I consider ever the kind of collapse we ultimately saw. so the wisdom and tenacity of these contrarians is a lesson to all of us to carefully consider what we accept as the common wisdom.

I was surprised by the very diverse reviews here. The negative ones focused primarily on the favor/glory the author shone on Paulson. Well expected! Otherwise, how could he have got over 50 hours of interview with the arguably most successful trader in history. Yet, I really love this book, in particular the passages on those supporting actors who got the same trading idea as Paulson but for various reasons fought to win the jackpot but had various level of gains for different reasons. To me a professional trader, it reminds me with memorable stories that luck (see the life of Pellegrini vs others), patience (Paulson made his chunk of money by sitting on his positions tight) and perservance (shown by various "very small yet ultra smart" investors who found their way to bet on what they knew was coming). A helpful trading book for me, nearly as enlightening and entertaining as Reminiscences of a stock operator. Highly recommended!

A great book which tells you so much about what actually went wrong with the financial system through the device of the point of view of an insider who foresaw the massive pitiful fallacy of the whole property bubble situation.

I have read other books and watched TV docs about the cause of the financial crash, but this book gave something so much more. Seen through the eyes of a group of independent thinking mavericks who followed their hunches, it reveals sharply the mass idiocy of the deluded greedy financial industry herd. You get a real feel for the way the worst kind of greed and herd instinct led the banks etc stampeding to make easy money from a property bubble. You also get a feel for how hard and stressful and patient you had to be to follow your own convictions when you knew you were right, while the financial establishment with their useless complex risk models and toxic complex risk reducing financial instruments were SO wrong. Made me angry a bit and made me think that these complex products should be licensed or rationed or something. Moral hazard / state picking up the risk etc.

Perhaps the book focuses too much on the personal back-rounds of the main charactors? I admire these charactors, but I do not know whether I would like some of them that much? But they are very rich now so what would they care! Anyhow, I can definitely see a film being made about this story as it is such a good device through which to see the wider collective mania.

I enjoyed this book very much, and I highly recommend it to others who are interested in the financial crisis - or even just business and investing in general. As I understand it, the mind-boggling facts about how much Paulson made and how fast he made it are generally accepted. I will leave it to other much more learned and much more on the inside than myself to debate the most accurate narrative of the financial crisis generally and Paulson's journey more specifically.

However, the book raises some important issues about investing, regardless of your view of the facts. A couple of the main ones that stood out to me are:

1. When investing, not only do you have to identify the opportunity, but HOW to best take advantage of the opportunity. Over-simply put, in this situation, Paulson and others thought they saw a problem with mortgages and the related industry. But they could not short invididual risky mortgages, for example. They had to think of a way(s to take advantage of the situation. Some of this came about by trial and error at great cost. Eventually this lead to the primary solution: basically buying relatively novel insurance products against certain risky groups of bundled mortgage investments - with deep-pocket counterparties. Back when Paulson was doing his work, I remember being concerned about the mortgage situation and discussing the craziness with people close to me who worked in some of the very companies at the center of the problems. But I never even came close to figuring out a way to take advantage of the situation - much less actually acting on it on a large scale. The same is true in other situations. Many people claim to see trends, bubbles, etc. - but figuring out how to best take advantage of the situations and taking large-scale action is much harder. Even when one had decided on a specific investment, there are always other tools to consider such as options which might better the situation.

2. Related, when investing, not only do you have to identify the opportunity, but WHEN to best take advantage of the opportunity. Even when Paulson and others figured out the insurance path, many invested early and lost money - some to the point of not being able to stay in the game and make the big profits at the crash. I am not saying you have to have a crystal ball to make money, and I am certainly not advocating market timing or any other type of trading strategy. But you have to consider the facts that even the best opportunity (like a great company) can be a poor investment at the wrong time (like when it is overvalued).

3. "They" are not always right - whether in business or any other field. Calling yourself an expert, having a fancy title, working in a tall building, etc. does not make you smarter than those who do not, and they certanly do not make you infallable. In this case, very few real estate and investment "experts" were right about the financial crisis, and none of them made out better than Paulson.

This could be a pretty good book, but the author doesn't appear to know much about the subject. It's crammed with non sequiturs, such as random details about the events of somebody's wedding, or flattering references to Paulson's ability to seduce women for one-night stands (apparently his soulful eyes, soft-sell approach, and million-dollar net worth were real closers). All right, fine, I'm interested in the subject, so I'll put up with lousy style.

But on p.107, Zuckerman is explaining how Paulson's analyst, Paolo Pellegrini discovered that housing prices were in a bubble: he gathers a lot of data about prices since 1975. Then, he hits upon the idea of adding a trend line (Zuckerman encloses this in quotes, as if it's abstruse jargon. It's not; I found out about it on "the Internet"). Adding a trend line shows that the squiggly line suddenly bends upward around 2000. Sensing that he's onto something, Pellegini runs a "regression analysis" (again, in quotes) which, according to Zuckerman, "smooth[s] the ups and downs."

At this point, I decided to give up (I actually did finish the book, for no good reason). I understand that Zuckerman is a journalist and he's not writing about quants. But even as a gross journalistic oversimplification, this is so wrong it made me realize nothing is credible. In view of how much of the book is vapid padding, you'd at least expect Zuckerman to spare a couple of paragraphs to explain what sort of information a regression analysis provides. Even if Zuckerman disagrees with me about this, I would expect him to not say something so spectacularly wrong. If he doesn't expect his readers to care about Pellegini's analysis enough to bother describing it accurately, then this is not a book anyone interested in Paulson's trade would want to read.

If you want an insight in to how the financial crisis of real estate market happened you need to read about the story about the man who learned to understand the mechanisms that wound it up and he learned how to profit as those mechanisms were unwinding...

Gregory has spent over fifty hours with John Paulson directly and with many other hours with the main cast of actors that were center stage as the synthetic mechanisms wound up and down. He engaged me with the story of the 'trade' executed by chief Paulson and the others that positioned themselves similarly on the trade like Greene, Lippman, Burry and Ladhe. He explains the backdrop to the trade very well, the instruments used to exploit and expand the risk for the bullish including CDOs, CDSs, MBSs, and other structured finance instruments and how it was possible to short their positions. The unwinding of the positions is told with suspense and the mystery as there is always the uncertain if assumptions are true and when they are not true the search to discover what happened...

Bring yourself up-to-date in the world we are in today. Finance is played this way around the world. We cannot afford to be ignorant...

I picked this book up expecting to scan through it mostly - and perhaps read a few key chapters and toss aside. The first few chapters I more or less did this - as the book when into deeper details of the main characters, such as their upbringing and marriage matters, that I didn't care about. Things quickly picked up however, and I was soon hooked on how the "trade" played out. Much of the book is obviously about Paulson, but Zuckerman does a great job of bringing in other key players and their stories - making this book truly about the "greatest trade" and not just about any one individual.

For anyone studying the real estate meltdown and subsequent credit crisis, this is a must-read as yet another perspective on the whole mess. Many direct anger at Paulson and the likes at betting against homeowners, but the way Paulson and company defied Wall Street and "conventional wisdom" in the face of snickers and scorn, putting their reputations on the line (which many on Wall Street refuse to do), and ultimately sticking to their trade was impressive.

Whenever two books on the same subject are published almost simultaneously, most readers want to choose "the better one." The Greatest Trade Ever by Gregory Zuckerman and The Big Short by Michael Lewis seem to cover the exact same story (or stories) of the quirky collection of investors who made spectacular fortunes by figuring out a way to bet that the real estate bubble would burst (as it finally did in 2007-2008) -- basically, they bought obscure investment contracts known as "credit default swaps." I've read both books, and the remarkable thing is that they don't feel repetitive. Part of the reason is that Zuckerman focuses more on the most successful of these investors, John Paulson (and his analyst Paolo Pellegrini), and part is that Zuckerman takes a more journalistic approach. Unfortunately for Zuckerman, his book was almost buried a few weeks after publication when Lewis' media/promotion machine got him onto most of the major talk shows, and blanketed us with advertising. I enjoyed both books, but if I had to choose one I would pick The Greatest Trade Ever. I found it to be more focused and informative, whereas I would classify The Big Short as entertainment. But most importantly, I would advise readers that you don't have to choose one -- you'll enjoy each book more by reading the other, and oddly enough you'll rarely feel like either author is telling you something you already know. You cannot go wrong by reading The Greatest Trade Ever.

"The Greatest Trade Ever" is about how a small hedge fund made about $20 billion in 2.5 years, including $6+ billion for its founder. It also tells how enormous 'investment' fortunes can be made without building a single factory or widget, without feeding, housing, educating, entertaining, clothing, or healing a single human, and without developing a new product - all while hiring just one new employee, creating garbage investments to unload on the unsuspecting, and paying the same 15% tax rate (capital gains) as that paid by employees earning less than $31,850/year.

John Paulson founded a small hedge fund in 1994 after graduating as Baker Scholar (top 5%) from Harvard Business School (HBS) and working at Boston Consulting, and then on M&A projects for Bear Stearns and others. As of 2006 Paulson's firm was still relatively small, and Paulson himself was recognized as competent, but 'behind the times' because of his conservative investments. By 2005, Paulson was looking to make a name for himself. His attention was caught by the skyrocketing housing market - one-quarter of all mortgages were 'non-prime' (up form 1% a decade earlier), one-third were interest only (vs. 1% in 2000), and nearly half (43%) put no money down. Worse yet, by 2005, home prices were almost 2.4X average annual income, vs. a 17-year-average of 1.7X. Paulson thought mortgage-holders might have difficulty handling ARMs rate-increases, while banks and investment firms might also be vulnerable due to their then 25:1 leverage. Yet, traditional approaches seemed overly risky - a 'put' contracts on the S&P 500 had become over-priced, in his mind; moreover, he believed shorting financial firms at the time was dangerous because some were receiving takeover offers. Into the void stepped new employee Paolo Pellegrini ($400,000/year) who was also a HBS Baker Scholar, considered 'washed up' by most. Pellegrini suggested using 'Credit Default Swaps' (CDS) on 'Collateralized Debt Obligations' (CDOs) tied to a portfolio of mortgage securities in which the buyer makes a series of payments and receives a payoff if the CDO fails to pay the promised interest and principal. (Note: One does not have to own any mortgages or CDOs to take out CDS insurance and benefit from their default.)

Paulson's early efforts were unsuccessful - he had moved too soon, buying CDS on 'aged' CDOs in which the associated real estate had already appreciated sufficiently to allow refinancing if interest rates went up further. He took his losses and reinvested in 'green' CDOs. ($100 million of CDS protection for subprime-mortgage CDOs could be had at that time for 1%/year - $1 million.) Still unsure, Paulson requested additional analyses, and finally became totally convinced of the wisdom of his strategy when Pellegrini showed him a graph revealing housing prices increasing 1.5%/year over inflation from 1975-2000, and then 7% for the next five years. The implication was that prices were set for a 40% fall to historic levels. Meanwhile, housing prices in 2006 has already leveled out - harbinger of a fall.

Paulson now saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity and sought out new investors. They'd have to commit to at least a two-year holding period (so Paulson wouldn't be forced to liquidate prematurely by scared investors - there was about an 8% 'negative carry' cost associated with Paulson's move. (How did the cost go from 1% insurance cost/year to 8% carry cost? Zuckerman did not make this clear.) Paulson was driven by the thought of collecting the standard 20% of gains fee for monies he invested; most others, however, saw no problems in the then mortgage market or believed the Federal Reserve would bail everyone out by lowering interest rates. Eventually Paulson raised some $700 million by mid-2006.

This time success was delayed, but not thwarted, by the growing demand for mortgage-backed CDOs - despite early signs of trouble. Paulson kept on buying and enlarged the pool for target CDOs by working with Deutsche Bank to create new CDOs custom-tailored to fail. Why this was necessary, or why Paulson also bought 'synthetic' CDOs (Zuckerman didn't explain, and I can't either) is unclear. Regardless, even as the CDS began sinking, 'hopeless bulls' tried to rally the market, leading to a temporary 28% rise that tested Paulson's nerve. However, he remained focused on the underlying home prices - which Paulson still saw as too high, and stayed in the market. Paulson was tested again when Bear Stearns floated a plan to manipulate mortgage pools by adding cash and changing the bonds within the pools - Paulson's response was to get Harvey Pitt (former SEC Chairman) to back them off, while Paulson went on to buy CDS protection on the very banks he traded with.

By now readers are probably wondering how Paulson got his money after Wall Street began falling apart. Again, Zuckerman's treatment is overly superficial - regardless, it's clear that Paulson was smart enough to force daily 'reverse margin' calls on those standing behind his CDS. Paulson also eventually sold most of his positions back, rather than ride them to zero and risk finding himself astride a team of bankrupt horses. (My guess, however, is that eventually much of Paulson's partners' losses were covered by TARP.)

Bottom Line: "The Greatest Trade Ever" is excellent reading, even though it is short of details in some areas. Regardless, readers are left suspecting that bubble-riding may be today's 'California Gold Rush' - Zuckerman also tells of others (including a freshly-trained M.D.) making huge, though lesser, profits doing the same as Paulson. Bubbles today are aplenty - Zuckerman points out that the first decade of the new millennium brought bubbles in Asian currencies, Internet stocks, and commodity prices - as well as real estate; local government debt may be next. As for John Paulson - he's moved on to what he considers the next bubble - the dollar, and stocked up on gold stocks and other gold instruments. As for Paolo Pellegrini - he took home a $175 million bonus for 2007, and has started his own fund. Meanwhile, low interest rates, the key ingredient for 'blowing bubbles,' continue.

Fascinating and sickening at the same time. How were millions made in the midst of the financial crisis? can we stay away from greed? how are all interconnected and why is New York still the 'place to be'.

I particularly liked the objectivity behind the scenes... in the game of loosing and wining money, there are no heroes and villains, we are all interconnected...

A book for those who can understand financial markets - or the intangible world of money. Sometimes too technical so I doubt that it will be understood by mainstream, yet it is an amazing book. In hindsight we all knew such economic growth was illogical, but it also took a lot of hard core math and financial acumen to create the slices of the pie that would survive the crumbling of the cake.

Well done for Zuckerman. A gem to read.

Truly a great book for anyone involved in, or seeking to be involved in, portfolio management or trading. The book is really a great read for professionals as well as those with a casual interest in the financial market. The story reads like a thriller as it follows Paulson, Pellegrini, Greene, Lippmann, Lahde and Burry on their journey in the initially contrarian wilderness and eventually into the promised land of success. Anyone who has ever managed funds or set up their own contrarian trades will identify with the joy of discovering an angle no one else has seen, the fear of anyone finding out your strategy, the emotional highs and lows as the market gyrates and the sheer euphoria as it all comes together. Highly recommended.

This is one of the best business books I have ever read. There is so much in this short, succinct, and well-written book. Definitely better than the more popular "Too Big to Fail" that everyone seems to be reading.

First, this book is great human drama behind the trade that reaped $15 billion or so for Paulson and his fund. It shows all the agony and self-doubt that traders have to endure in the hedge fund world: the frustration and self-doubt because the market does not move as expected, the naysayers who scoff at you for your idea, the constant pressure from investors to cash out and lock in returns. The book is not only about Paulson but also other traders who saw what was coming, but went thru agony because they couldn't convince investors that it was the right call, or got in too early and underestimated how crazy and protracted a bubble can get. You can sense the exasperation and loneliness that these guys must have felt as they were pounded by the markets that were moving the wrong way. It is a great story of perseverance.

Paulson's drama serves as a vehicle for Zuckerman to delve into other interesting themes. The book provides an excellent summary of the derivatives that Wall Street was churning out and how these WMDs (as Buffett called them) exacerbated the situation in the real estate market, and how and why it all unraveled.

In doing so, Zuckerman hints at the underlying dynamic that creates such bubbles - the Wall Street traders, even if they had qualms about any eventual doomsday, were compelled to churn the sausage maker because they were taking home such huge bonuses. Everyone involved - the consumer, the mortgage companies that sold the insane mortages, the commercial banks that took on the mortgages, the investment banks that repackaged them, the rating agencies that put their stamp of approval on the derivatives, and finally the investors worldwide who bought the derivatives - were all looking out for themselves in the here and now.

Apparently Michael Moore had trouble finding someone able to explain the nature of the now-infamous credit default swaps to him, if you believe Moore's latest film about the Wall Street apocalypse. All I can say is that it's too bad he didn't have Greg Zuckerman's phone number. Five minutes, and I guarantee that Zuckerman could explain the raison d'etre and basic functions of these credit derivatives.

But that's because Zuckerman is a smart financial journalist, one who would rather explore what is really going on behind the scenes on Wall Street -- getting to know the people and understand the products and strategies that led to the recent debacle -- and generate 'scoops' that way rather than chase the story only after it has blown up. He's the kind of financial journalist that even Jon Stewart, with all his scorn for CNBC, could or should admire. And in this narrative, Zuckerman takes us beyond the world inhabited by the likes of Lehman Brothers' Dick Fuld, Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, to the hidden corners of Wall Street, where a handful of folks who were decidedly NOT household names until 2007 were coming to question the business that was responsible for an ever-greater proportion of profits at nearly every investment bank and financial institution. How, they wondered, could so many people be so bullish about the housing market when it seemed so clear (as mortgage originators rushed to finance outsize home loans to people with no jobs, no credit history and no downpayment) that disaster was just around the corner?

Perhaps because they were outsiders -- as Zuckerman deftly shows us -- they were in a unique position to criticize and, more importantly, to act on their conviction that something was seriously amiss. John Paulson, who by 2008 would be a multi-billionaire and arguably the most important hedge fund manager since George Soros won billions betting against the Bank of England decades earlier, was a hedge fund outsider who had, until very recently, scrambled to be taken seriously by his own investors. With the help of Paolo Pellegrini, a failed investment banker, he put together the 'greatest trade' of the title -- a bearish bet on the housing industry and the financial services companies supporting it. Some put 'the greatest trade' in place too early and lost out because they couldn't afford to stay in the game long enough for it to pay off -- revealing another truth of the way financial markets and bubbles function. Others, like Paulson and Greg Lippman -- a Deutsche Bank trader who never really fit in on the trading desk and never could even fake an interest in sports -- would stake their personal and professional futures on believing that they were right and that the bubble was about to burst, even as the rest of Wall Street derided them.

This is the book to turn to for real insight on how Wall Street works, particularly when it comes to grasping the important and convoluted links between hedge funds and the banks and investment banks that developed as the former group rose to prominence over the last decade and John Paulson battled to take his place within that group. Zuckerman explores the tensions within the hedge fund industry as well as those that emerged between some of those hedge fund managers and the investment banks that at once relied on them for fees and became increasingly concerned that the same hedge fund managers were betting against the investment banking stocks en masse. He does a marvelous job of not only describing the complex products (like CDS) that were at the root of the market problems, but of setting out clearly and concisely the equally complex strategies pursued by the small and somewhat disparate band of outsiders that collectively made up "the greatest trade ever". What ultimately makes this book more enlightening than many of the straightforward chronicles of the market debacle that have been published so far is that rather than rehashing what happened by telling the story through the eyes of the folks who got it wrong (99% of Wall Street), Zuckerman introduces us to the handful of people who got it right -- who realized that the emperor was naked, and who had the courage to act on that conviction in the face of widespread scorn. What is particularly chilling is how few of these individuals there were, and how common Wall Street's 'group think' had become by the time the first cracks in the system appeared in the first half of 2007.

This is an exceptionally solid piece of reporting from a journalist who has won the financial media's version of a Pulitzer, a Loeb award, twice for his work on these issues. He's not a household name, like Michael Lewis or even Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, and doesn't have the bully pulpit of a television show to promote this book. Which is unfortunate, because of the books I've read so far about the events of the last two years (which is pretty much everything), this one has the most insight into what Wall Street has become over the years. Best of all, by the end of it, even the financial neophyte will have a solid knowledge of everything from short-selling to those pesky credit default swaps -- and understand why they are important.

Highly recommended for anyone looking for more than just a "what happened/who did what, when" book about the financial crisis; the only thing missing, in my opinion, was some kind of input on what it implies about where we are headed now that only a tiny handful of market outsiders had the insight and the chutzpah to bet against the bubble. If you've tried to read something like A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation but drowned in the terminology, this is the book to try next. Another book that looks behind the "what" to understand and discuss the "why" is Gillian Tett's Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe, who shows how some of the products involved in the debacle had their origins in creative and useful financial innovations.

Full disclosure: Zuckerman is a former colleague, although we haven't worked together in a number of years. I obtained a copy of the book independently, however; he didn't request that I either read or review it.

The world of Credit Default Swaps is a little known corner of the financial world. John Paulson and a small group of unrelated Hedge Fund Operators concluded the US mortgage market was in deep trouble long before the government or major institutions had a clue. Paulson, et al bet against the most vulnerable segments of the mortgage market through the use of Credit Default Swaps.

I enjoyed the way the book dealt with the personalities. This made the story come alive for me. Even though the traders were right, the price of the mortgage pools and swaps held up even when the news was negative. Consequently; Paulson and the others had trouble finding and keeping investors in their funds.
John Paulson made $6 billion and his investors cashed in for $20 billion. One wife checked her bank account online and found she had a $45 million balance.

If you are looking for some insight into how Wall Street and the Hedge Funds operate. Or, the events and institutional conduct that drove our economy to the brink of disaster: you want to read this book.
The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History

This book is fairly entertaining and a quick read, but Lewis is much better at engaging the reader. Hard to imagine it, but Lewis actually explains the technical details better too. This book don't focus on the key point of the story either. Predicting the future is one thing, but mastering it and making tens of billions is another level. And Paulson was masterful. More attention to how he was able to stay in the trade while other weren't would have conveyed the drama better. Instead the book kind of reinforces Lewis's impression of Paulson & Co as "lucky donks" as we would say at the poker table. Obviously, given his performance since and going forward, that is not true. Also, no coverage of the Goldman deals.

This is a great read for anyone, especially those with little prior understanding of how markets work. I, for one, was looking for a book that would explain how the housing bubble began and what exactly happened that led to the bubble bursting. This book was perfect. The author does an exceptional job of intertwining personal accounts of the major players who profited from the housing boom with technical analysis of how mortgage-backed securities came to exist, how they were bundled, how firms began trading them and ultimately how individuals such as John Paulson were able to exploit the wilful ignorance of traders who were overly invested in believing housing prices would never drop. By assuming no prior knowledge, Zuckerman makes his work accessible to all and for anyone who wants to understand the lessons that should be learned from the current recession this book is a must read.

This is true for several reasons. Greg Zuckerman interviewed John Paulson for over 50 hours. Meanwhile, Michael Lewis pretty much ignored Paulson in The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Yet, Paulson is the "Big" factor in this "Short" story. Also, Zuckerman describes better than Lewis the hedge funds run on the banks that accelerated the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. And, Zuckerman also better covers Gregg Lippman at Deutsche Bank. Zuckerman makes clear that Gregg Lippman at Deutsche Bank was the creative force on Wall Street that developed both CDS on specific mortgage backed securities (MBS) and synthetic collaterized debt obligations (CDOs). Thus, Lippman created the subprime risk multiplier that impaired the worldwide financial system.

The contrarians were readily dismissed by Wall Street. John Paulson, Paolo Pellegrini (Paulson's analyst) and Michael Burry had no prior involvement with mortgage investments. Greg Lippman was the only contrarian who was an insider. And, he was treated as a black sheep by his employer. Even when John Paulson and Pellegrini share their analysis that show massive defaults would kick in the minute housing prices would flatten because subprime borrowers could not refinance; investment banks still don't believe them. Paolo Pellegrini discloses a chart that defined the housing bubble precisely. This chart showed that the long term real housing price appreciation is only 1.4% p.a. But, between 2000 and June 2006 real housing prices had grown at 7.5% p.a. The bubble burst right at that point just as Paulson and Pellegrini expected. Pellegrini also figured home prices had to decline by 40% to revert back to their long term trend. This is pretty close to what happened. But, the banks dismiss those findings.

In early 2007, Wall Street is still delusional. Well past the peak in housing prices they are spending fortunes to buy subprime lenders to feed their subprime inventory to turn them into fee and bonus generating CDOs. Merrill Lynch pays $1.3 billion to acquire one of the largest subprime lenders, First Franklin Financial. Merrill Lynch had already over $11 billion in subprime loans on its books even though its own economics department was forecasting a 5% decline in housing prices. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch will eventually disappear because of their massive exposure to subprime mortgages.

In late 2007, government and corporate heads are still missing the boat. Bernanke states the subprime downturn will not affect the rest of the economy. Bill Gross at Pimco states the US economy will avoid a recession. And, Joseph Cassano at AIG states he can't envision a scenario where they would lose a single dollar on the CDS insurance they sold.

But, based on their analysis the contrarians knew otherwise. Additionally, Paulson, Pellegrini and Burry had studied the contents of MBS nearly at the loan level. They understood that borrowers in Nevada and Arizona who took option ARMs in 2006 would default at a higher rate than average. Thus, the contrarians were way ahead of the market in understanding those nuances (impact of geography, structure, and time). And, they exploited the excessively low premiums (only 1% p.a.) on CDS on specific CDOs.

Paulson is remarkably flexible and makes money at every turn of the markets. Based on Pelligrini's analysis, he buys massive positions in CDS on specific CDOs in 2006. In 2007 and 2008, he realizes that banks don't have the capital to withstand related losses on their CDOs. So, he buys CDS on the corporate bonds of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. He also shorts their common stocks. He also figures the credit risk has spread to credit cards, commercial mortgages, and construction loans. Thus, he also shorts stocks of banks with large exposures to those sectors. He also understands those risks have become international. And, he shorts the common stock of British banks with large exposures to mortgages. Then, in early 2009 once the main financial storm has passed he realizes that the markets have over reached. And, that much of what he shorted from 2006 to 2008 now represents good values. So, he buys back certain MBS, debt of troubled companies, and shares of banks as the financial sector recovers. Later, he also buys gold as an inflation hedge at around $1,000 an ounce and has already reaped a near 50% return on that investment.

Over two and a half years Paulson made personally $7 billion and $23 billion for his firm and clients. By the beginning of 2009, he managed $36 billion of clients' money.

Michael Burry is as intellectually agile as Paulson, but he fails at fund raising. He is actually a full year ahead of the Paulson-Pellegrini team in reaping the opportunities of CDS on specific CDOs that Greg Lippmann and he created together. Burry does other related shorting of the financial sector just as Paulson. But, Burry will not succeed as Paulson did in raising nearly as much from investors due to his awkward personality (Aesperger Syndrome). Thus, while Paulson made $7 billion for himself Burry will make only 1/100th of that or $70 million. That's much less than Pellegrini made ($175 million) and not much more than Greg Lippmann who both earned those sums as employees without taking any business risk as Michael Burry did.

If you are interested in the financial crisis, I also recommend: Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy and Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley Investment Classics).

This book delivers on several fronts. Its an introduction to a man who will be forever part of wall street history, it offers an education in trading and investing and it provides an exploration of one of the key drivers of the financial crisis. Most pointedly it delivers a lesson in the power of conviction.

The lesson from this book can and should be appreciated by every investor no matter individual or professional. The lesson gleamed is that conviction can be the most powerful weapon in an investors arsenal. This book does an excellent job of chronicling Paulson's journey from idea to conviction to execution and the obstacles encountered on that journey. That Paulson completed this journey with the success he sought should be an inspiration to all investors. The Author did a wonderful job of letting his readers appreciate the path rather than just focusing on the outcome. Further, this book wonderfully details how Paulson (and a handful of others) accomplished what most had not even attempted and how the few who did found only marginal success.

No matter ones view of Paulson, the trade he designed, how anti-American it may be perceived or his role in the Goldman saga the bottom line is that he did execute a fantastically unique and profitable trade that brought him from obscurity to celebrity (or notoriety depending on ones point of view). As such, it is worth learning about him and possibly trying to understand him.

Really enjoyed this book. Highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the financial markets and is curious to the events surrounding the financial meltdown. The author does a great job of interspersing other stories throughout the book. There is not too much financial jargon at all, as a non-finance person I had no trouble understanding what was being done. The author really simplified complex financial terms and transactions in a way that I could understand. My only criticisms are that perhaps John Paulson was made to seem too much like a regular guy, he was already a multi-millionaire when the story starts. I think the author really wanted the readers to relate to his protagonist so that was de-emphasized. Otherwise I loved it, great read.

Today the news is filled with stories about the SEC action being taken against Goldman Sachs for allegedly failing to disclose failing to disclose key information to investors in mortgage-backed securities allegedly hand-picked by John Paulson, who then shorted them and who according to the title of this book, "Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History."

Since I have only read a portion of downloaded sample of the book I cannot tell whether its accounts of the dealings between Paulson and Goldman Sacs are accurately depicted or wildly off the mark when compared with the evidence that will undoubtedly be forthcoming in the SEC's case.

The only things that I do know now are that:

1. While most of the general public had probably never heard of Mr. Paulson before today, his alleged involvement with Goldman Sachs as set forth in today's SEC action will make him a household name in our nation's financial history, even though the actual charges brought today were not brought against him personally;

2. This book's author will probably be making frequent appearances as a talking head on the cable business channel's shows examining the case against Goldman Sachs; and

3. This book's publisher will probably launch a full court press to have this book placed front and center in bookstores across the country, assuming that its contents are consistent with the allegations made today by the SEC.

Contrarian investment guru Doug Casey used to say, "You know the time to dump an investment is when it makes the cover of Time Magazine." I don't rememeber if it was 2004 or 2005 when Time's cover story was "Will Your House Make You Rich?" Casey was right, the time had come to get out of real estate, although profiting from that move was as treacherous as playing a game of high stakes craps in a casino used to fleecing its players.

In a story revealing one man's prescience about the housing bubble, Gregory Zuckerman describes with rich detail how John Paulson zigged when the rest of Wall Street zagged, and wound up making billions in the process; this was by far, the "greatest trade ever", and the story behind it is a most compelling one, indeed. The complexities of the huge power play that Paulson parlayed into outrageous fortune, also left others who bet the farm too early, out in the cold. To make a fortune when betting against a tidal wave of growing valuation, you've got to time it just right; and you've got to have a lot of courage and conviction in your strategy.

Certainly, "conventional wisdom" will be shouting in your face that you're way off base; of course, as we've seen time and time again, "conventional wisdom" is often anything but "wise". In the case of the wildly escalating housing market in the middle of this decade, even Alan Greenspan was fooled.

Zuckerman's behind the scenes story of Paulson's brilliant trade is one of contrast; between the logical and pragmatic approach Paulson took when calculating the upside potential of betting against the stampeding real estate market, versus the illogical rationale behind those expecting the bubble to never burst.

The lesson learned here is simple; eventually, everything returns to its logical state of being. Never bet against that for too long, unless you want to end up like so many of the former Wall Street high rollers, who shot craps on their last turn at the table.

This was a great book, well written, researched and very informative. I loved how the author explained John Paulson's thought process on the development of the trade. As a trader myself, it was a great learning experience and very helpful. Hopefully I will be able to benefit from this information for my own trading style and I know this book is well worth your time to read. Enjoy

The Greatest Trade Ever, has been the best book I have read about the housing crisis and Wall Street's take on the counter-argument to the booming real estate market. Zuckerman brings in multiple players from across the country all betting against the housing market and how their trades panned out.

After reading House of Cards and A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, I believe Zuckerman's account has been more accurate and provided more detail about the housing market and the obscene problems that have stemmed out of Wall Street's greed(mostly selling of CDSs)and created our current macroeconomic situation.

I highly recommend this book to any and all interested in both an exciting, positive tale of our times as well as a clearer picture into Wall Street at such a "distressed" time.

I really enjoyed this book. I read it in an afternoon, couldn't put it down. Reminded me of a Ben Mezrich book but I actually liked this author's style better. Amazing story about a little understood, huge event in the world of finance. I came away with a much clearer understanding of why the financial crash occured (and I thought I had understood it fairly good previously). I was really glad the author was even-keeled in his account (many financial books I read seem to have a political axe to grind) and I was satisfied that he covered all of the salient points surrounding the event. This isn't just a story about Paulson, it's about the housing crash, it's about hedge funds, it's about why the banks failed and it's about struggling in business in general. I came away very edified.

There are only a handful people like John Paulson that can beat the odds and pursue investments expecting the housing market to plunge while the market is still surging upward. And it earned him billions of dollars beating George Soros by a mile. The book illustrated the intense pressure that John experienced thinking what if he had made a mistake in anticipating the future housing plunge.

In the end the money he got in billions of dollars was a sweet vindication

If you're looking for a superbly interesting and equally well-written account of the winning trades during the crisis, then look no further. This book covers in significant detail the moves made by John Paulson, Jeffrey Greenberg and Michael Burry. Very interesting to read, especially the frustrations experienced by some of these key players in making others believe in them enough to trust money in their funds. The genius is of course Paulson but Paulson had help from his analyst Paolo Pellegrini. To me, the genius lies with Michael Burry! Great and recommended read on how some people became billionaires and millionaires in mere months betting on the collapse of the American Dream...what irony!!

Paulson figured out how to set up incredibly favorable odds on what was essentially a short trade. He did this by identifying the proper instruments on which to buy credit insurance. The form of insurance (credit default swaps) was at that time not well known at the time, and as a result, was very underpriced. Paulson then acted in size and with conviction. What a brilliant trade- certainly worthy of study by any active investor.

A knit pick is that I felt like Zuckerman didn't really follow through on some of the peripheral stories in adequate detail. The important thing is that you can follow how Paulson made The Greatest Trade Ever.

It's tough to find much fault with this book. It delves in to how Paulson pulled off this very ballsy trade. The only thing I think it needed -- especially in light of Goldman now being sued left and right regarding their pre-packaged CDOs -- is for Zuckerman to have been even more detailed in reporting the complex interplay between Paulson and Goldman in crafting his personalized made-to-implode CDOs.

It's really interesting more of the public isn't infuriated after reading this book, as it clearly delineates how Paulson took the process of CDO creation into the legally gray to then bet against the very same ones. I guess the same goes for the even more ingenious people over at Magnetar who self-funded their bets by buying the CDO itself to fund the purchase of the CDS insurance.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It provides insight into the lives, as well as blow-by-blow accounts of the greatest trade ever, in the history of Wall Street. I bought the book and then couldn't put it down!

A waste of time (reading it) and money. There's absolutely zero content around the details of the trade: both the due diligence and the execution phase. Just pages and pages of gossip, describing the emotional ups and downs of the fund managers and investors who were betting against mortgages and CDOs around the nation. The color around lavish lifestyles, atypical characters, and mood swings are 99% of the book. You won't learn anything more than you already know from the TV coverage of Goldman's scandal. No book to learn something, nor to be entertained. Highly repetitive, the 20 pages of content are stretched to 300 pages.

As someone with little knowledge of the workings of the financial world I found this book to be extremely easy to read and understand. At the same time there was enough detailed information about the events leading up to the financial crisis and Paulson's decisions to purchase the CDS coverage that I think even a financial wiz would really enjoy this book. I highly recommend this book!

While it about Paulson's trade of buying credit default swaps, it is much more than that and reads like a fascinating novel...you end up feeling you wouldn't want to associate with any of these misfits.

with so many drab 'financial crisis' books crowding the shelves covering the same topics, from the same vantage point, with the same old material, zuckerman provides a fresh, entertaining & thorough look at the other side of the trade that shook the world economy. he weaves a captivating story out of the many different players & personalities that aren't often the most recognizable names in the hedge fund business. as one might imagine this group is extremely colorful (including the hedge fund manager who made millions & then shut down his fund to go the beach & smoke pot) making the book that much more enjoyable. one learns bit by bit the fascinating story that made john paulson famous & very, very rich. personally i love this genre of books ("When Genius Failed" types) & in my opinion, this is one of the best from the past eight or nine years.

I am not someone who is familiar with wall street terms but had been interested in the book because of the recent economic collapse. The author illuminated me about formerly confusing subjects like hedge funds, but did not dumb down the subject. Overall, was an interesting and informative book.

If there's an Oscar for books I'll vote for this one. I read the audio book version and it was one of the best business stories I've ever heard. The book was written in such an intelligent and clear manner it's simply a master piece.

Thanks Mr. Zuckerman for writing such an educational and inspiring book.

To be frank I am about 3/4 through this book. Views seem to be mixed, so I thought I would chime in.

Interesting piece on the fund and the trade. Not the valentine I expected. Interesting insight into how one big trade can make 'the man", which reminds me of Soros.

As the crisis will rear its ugly head again, may be worth your while.

Kindle version should be cheaper given print version price.

Highly recommended. I truly enjoyed this book. Finished reading it in just two days. As someone working in the financial area (although a different part of it) I was intrigued to learn more about this part of our recent economic history that had so far-reaching effect on all of us.

I am not someone who is familiar with wall street terms but had been interested in the book because of the recent economic collapse. The author illuminated me about formerly confusing subjects like hedge funds, but did not dumb down the subject. Overall, was an interesting and informative book.

If there's an Oscar for books I'll vote for this one. I read the audio book version and it was one of the best business stories I've ever heard. The book was written in such an intelligent and clear manner it's simply a master piece.

Thanks Mr. Zuckerman for writing such an educational and inspiring book.

To be frank I am about 3/4 through this book. Views seem to be mixed, so I thought I would chime in.

Interesting piece on the fund and the trade. Not the valentine I expected. Interesting insight into how one big trade can make 'the man", which reminds me of Soros.

As the crisis will rear its ugly head again, may be worth your while.

Kindle version should be cheaper given print version price.

Highly recommended. I truly enjoyed this book. Finished reading it in just two days. As someone working in the financial area (although a different part of it) I was intrigued to learn more about this part of our recent economic history that had so far-reaching effect on all of us.

Zuckerman effectively covers the financial meltdown through the stories of several key traders who made out like bandits. Their story of high stakes trading is certainly entertaining and educational. Highly recommended.

I read a LOT of these books more for educational reasons as I do not expect to enjoy them and hardly ever do. This, however, was an exception. Cliched and corny as it might sound, this book read more like a novel and actually developed some real tension. It this genre is you bag, this is a MUST read.

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!

This book is far too simplistic--drastically oversimplifying very complex situations (Paulsen's 'a-ha' moment to short the market is when his analyst spends hours putting together a line graph of house prices...are you kidding me?) and creating a cast of characters more suitable for a sitcom than for an educational experience. I was skeptical about reading this book because it came from the perspective of a journalist, rather than a finance guy, and I can certainly admit that I will not be reading anymore books from this author. Please do not spend your hard earned money on this book.

I guess this book is a good read if you know nothing about markets (I am guessing most of the people who wrote these reviews don't.) I still do not understand how this was the greatest trade ever.
WHO DIDN'T make money off the latest crash?!?
If you were not short housing and finials by the time Bear Sterns came around then you are in the wrong business. Simply taking leverage from others and re-investing it by shorting the market does not take genius. You want genius study science. You want money study the markets, then doing what he did (which may or may not have included fraud) will not seem so fantastic. Be ready for the next bubble to pop and you yourself can easily do what many have already done..

I'm an avid reader of materials related to economics and finance. I had read some of the reviews here and decided not to buy this book, xt "kq1111"'s review resonating with me especially.

Against my better judgment and in a moment of weakness I bought the book as I was drawn in by rave reviews from Michael Lewis, etc.

It's an interesting topic but the writing is oh so poor. I'm at page 20 and there's this sentence "The young woman fled the apartment, running into the night."

WTF???

You were right xt "kq1111"!

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....

More Big Media propaganda and lies written by corporate shills. The SEC is sticking it's nose into this but I'm sure nothing significant will happen. They're all in cahoots together. It's the same old song and dance. The below information has been extracted and paraphrased from Mike Stathis' website [...].

Paulson was involved with the construction of CDOs. He knew which mortgage securities were the most useless, so he made easy money. He basically stole money from investors. What Paulson did was pure fraud. However, the SEC has decided to not bring charges against Paulson. Their reason? He did not fail his responsibilities to his clients. Yeah, instead, he stole money from others and gave it to his clients. I guess that's okay. Prediction: Paulson won't be touched. How do I know? Because he well-connected with the Washington crime syndicate.

Zuckerman is a corporate shill. The allegations made by the SEC demonstrate that Zuckerman is an irresponsible journalist at best, and a reckless moron at worst. His Paulson butt-kissing book has now been confirmed as a complete fairy tale, consistent with what the WSJ publishes.

The publisher should pull this useless fictional book from the market permanently.

For the real truth watch this website and specific link.

[...]

This book is a 30k foot level view of the financial crisis, poorly conceived, poorly executed. I've read just about all of Michael Lewis's books and articles covering the financial crisis, and he did a piece for Portfolio Mag. before it went under about the same topic. By the end of that article I was on the edge of my seat because he took you INTO the action, you were sitting there making a trade. I still remember Lewis's description of the traders in his article sitting in Sept. 08, shaking, watching traders leave the NY Stock exchange, knowing what they'd just pulled off. Anyway, compare that to this... the whole thing is written with an air of naivete and awestruck envy, like as if Zuckerman asked Paulson to put together a roundup of his accomplishments so the former could introduce the latter at a cocktail party or something, or Zuckerman wants to get invited to the big "bashes" he continually says Paulson hosts.

Zuckerman also looses credibility throughout the book. For example, on page 72, Zuckerman discusses Paulson's first foray into Credit Default Swaps (CDSes). After making a $500k bet, to insure $100 million, he writes "Soon their position faced some small losses. They discovered that the value of CDS protection falls as the underlying debt gets closer to maturity." OK, really? Zuckerman expects me to believe that they didn't know this? Paulson and co had been playing in derivative markets for decades, and this is standard behavior of most, perhaps all, date-based derivatives, and I think I learned this in my undergrad finance course the first week. Zuckerman gradually looses credibility like this the whole book until @ the end we wonder if he really knows what he's writing about.

Another example of the just strange reporting (p. 38): "Paulson went out of his way to embrace Jenny and her family. The couple agreed to wed in an Episcopalian church in Southhampton, and Paulson became friendly with the priest. Light streamed through the seaside church's Tiffany windows as the sun set and the ceremony began." You would, reasonably, expect this paragraph to be followed by, well, a description of the ceremony perhaps? Or an anecdote on the significance of Paulson getting friendly w/ the priest? You'd be wrong on both counts -- this is just an example of many strange irrelevant facts unskillfully woven into the book -- the next paragraph actually jumps forward 3 years and talks about other aspects of Paulson's private life. That's all we hear about the priest and the ceremony!

Anyway, the writing style here is not well developed -- gets annoying after about the first 50 pages.

While i agree that this book will give you some insight about the world of hedge funds, it is a far cry from teaching you how you can benefit from this knowledge. Reading it felt exciting, yet empty. The reason for it is that if you truly want to learn how to make money in the stock-market you need to read the works of Toby Crabel, Linda Rasche or some other professional traders that make living trading the market daily. Their books are very expensive because they do not right for a living, but trade for a living. I had to go find them on Ebay or the store. However, their writing is more focused on the techniques and ways to profit and trade any security, any time. Being very successful in this space myself, it takes a real book from a real trader these days to impress me.

Simply an overzealous attempt to create entertainment by exploiting facts, even Paulson himself has condemned Zuckerman's account. Writing comes off basic and biased and gives the reader no real insight to the housing bubble. Zuckerman writes more like a gossip columnist than a financial expert. Save your time and find a book that has more substance.