Paulson Forgoes Prognostication As Greatest Trade Sequel Flops

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-28/paulson-forgoes-prognostication-as-greatest-trade-sequel-flops.html


John Paulson, founder of Paulson & Co., one of the world’s largest hedge funds, has close-cut black hair, dark eyes and a soft voice. There’s a fuss when he arrives, befitting a man who made one of the biggest fortunes in Wall Street history, as his general counsel and PR consultant jostle for seats next to him.

Paulson’s decision to buy credit-default insurance against billions of dollars of subprime mortgages before the market collapsed in 2007 earned him almost $4 billion personally and transformed him from an obscure money manager into a financial legend, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its July 2 issue. Then came the kind of disastrous run that can unmake a career. In 2011 he lost billions

“We clearly stumbled last year,” Paulson says. “We became overconfident as to the direction of the economy and took a lot of risk.”
On this June afternoon, Paulson, 56, sits in his midtown Manhattan offices, surrounded by his dozen or so Alexander Calder watercolors, which serve as a kind of millionaires’ wallpaper in primary colors. The space isn’t the high-tech cockpit one imagines for a financial wizard at the levers of the world’s money flow.