George Soros
George Soros is perhaps the world’s most famous trader and speculator. Investors in his flagship ‘hedge fund’, the Quantum Fund, enjoyed returns of 32% per year from its inception in 1969 to 2001. Like many hedge funds these returns were achieved with a significant amount of debt.
Soros became famous largely because of his huge short term bets on currencies. His most famous trade involved risking $10 billion on a devaluation of the British pound, which resulted in Quantum making a $1 billion profit, virtually overnight. The record of the Quantum Fund faltered in the late 1990s, as it lost vast amounts in the Russian debt crisis and then in United States technology stocks. Still, Soros remains revered by traders the world over. But he’s now become a critic of the system in which he was a participant, as a reading of his books show.
