Of the many books on recession history that I have read, “The Greatest Trade Ever” didn’t really stand out. My favorite book on recession is “A colossal failure of common sense” which chronicles the fall of Lehman Brothers. But, “The Greatest Trade Ever” was still an interesting enough read, managing to keep me hooked till the end.
The book is the story of how John Paulson bet big against the mortgage markets and walked away with billions of dollars. The amazing part about this story is that Paulson was a merger & acquisitions specialist hedge fund runner – with barely any clue of how the mortgage bond markets worked. But coming together with Pellegrini, the number cruncher behind Paulson’s funds’ bearish strategies, Paulson managed to deliver unprecedented gains at a time when nearly everybody was, quite literally, losing their house.
By now, I have read so many books on the 2008 recession that the names of its heroes and villains are familiar to me. For those, who pick this book up without having read anything at all about the recession, you will find it a great read; as opposed to me, who had already read the stories of Michael Burry and Greg Lippman, two to three times over and so, went through a little bit of déjà vu when I read several bits.
'The Greatest Trade Ever' is not nearly the greatest book ever on the recession. I would recommend “A colossal failure of common sense” and Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short” over Zuckerman’s effort. But standalone, the book is still eminently readable.
For what it's worth, the stories of Burry, Lippmann, etc. first appeared in this book. You just happened to have read them elsewhere by those who wrote subsequent books. Cheers!
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