A formerly mid-size hedge fund manager of several decades experience who bet very big on a collapse in housing and housing related debt instruments. He made billions for himself and his investors.
Ah, he’s the guy that got all the money that everybody else lost betting that housing would never go down.
He’s having a bad year, from what I understand, except his gold investments have done OK:
“FORTUNE — It’s tough to be the king. John Paulson, current monarch of hedge funds, is having a challenging year, according to recent press reports. Bloomberg News recently reported that Paulson’s $9 billion Advantage fund was down 5.8% in the first six months of the year. His Advantage Plus fund was down 8.8%. And while his Recovery fund was reportedly up through June, it suffered a 12.4% decline that month. The lone bright spot: his gold fund, up 13% for the year.”
But that’s the nature of contrarian bets. You only need to hit a couple of times and it won’t matter how often you fail.
It will be interesting to see if housing really is at bottom and ready to shoot up, or not. I guess the point is that if inflation is about to run wild, it’s good to own physical assets like housing. Or cans of food.