The Greatest Trade Ever
by Gregory Zuckerman · first published 2009
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Narrative account of how John Paulson's team bet against subprime mortgages before the 2008 crisis. It offers a fuller, engaging look at how the crash unfolded, and pairs well with The Big Short.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Written with the exclusive co-operation of the highly secretive John Paulson, this book tells the full story of his trading success. It also tells a wider story of staggering wealth accumulation, hubris and financial whizzery.
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Mine are : Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I just love this book! Greatest Trade Ever by Gregory Zuckerman. And I read manga , so include One Piece as well :D
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗…check out this critique of his work: [0] http://quixoticfinance.com/tag/nassim-taleb/ [1] http://unpleasantfacts.com/falken-on-taleb People who actually predicted the crisis [2] http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Trade-Ever-Behind-Scenes/dp/0... [3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Short-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393...
on “Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2013: Trendspotting in asset markets” ↗No, there were lots of people who don't explicitly predict crashes, who still called this one. Michael Lewis' The Big Short is a fun overview. The Greatest Trade Ever is also good; the protagonist of that one is a merger arb, not a doom-sayer. And of course, countless people sold when they found prices too high. It seems very obvious to me that the establishment has…
on “Higher Education: The Next Big, Bad Bubble” ↗…about John Paulson. He made the most amount ($15BN) shorting sub-prime mortgages & when you have a book called the Big Short but don't cover the biggest short, it seems incomplete. Gregory Zuckerman's "Greatest Trade Ever" should be read along with "Big Short" to get a more complete view of the crisis.
on “Michael Lewis: The Scourge of Wall Street” ↗…is entirely capable of doing this to itself, and therefore the system, and those in it, may not be able to explain itself well. Edit: another thing worth reading is Too Big to Fail, The Big Short, and Greatest Trade Ever. All are engaging books, and really walk through how 2008 started and ended through different perspectives of the system. TBtF will cover the Fed and Tier 1. BS/GTE cover the sell side. And then when…
on “Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?” ↗I agree with you about the abrupt ending but I think it's because the article was adapted from an upcoming book ("The Greatest Trade Ever" by Gregory Zuckerman). Weird editing, but maybe the purpose was to make it abrupt enough that people who want to go get the book to figure out what happens next.
on “The Greatest Trade Ever: Profiting from the Crash” ↗…so there's no way their going to load it with junk. And the identity of the short is irrelevant. At the time, Paulson was just another hedge fund manager. He became famous well after with the book "The Greatest Trade Ever".
on “On Goldman” ↗…proxy for the actual data. This is basically equivalent to an actuary using the price of life insurance to guess your life expectancy. It works fine, until someone closes the loop. If you read "The Greatest Trade Ever," one of the common themes is that the prices don't correlate the way they should--defaults don't affect CDS prices, for a while, then CDS prices overshoot, then defaults catch up.
on “How a tricked out Gaussian copula function brought about the financial crisis” ↗That was illustrated quite well in Greatest Trade Ever / Big Short / [insert other books about housing meltdown here], but in that case it was more that the market stayed both irrational and criminally manipulated too long.
on “The Battle Between Emotion and Reason in Financial Markets” ↗