Biography & Early Wealth Journey

Andrew Hall

Back in 2003, oil trader Andrew Hall purchased inexpensive long-dated oil futures that would cash in if the price reached $100 at some point over the next five years. That paid off well for him as in 2008, in the nick of time on his bet, oil reached $100 and Hall cashed in on $100 million for his employer, Phibro, and got a giant portion of that $100 million for himself as well.

George Soros (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Primary Income Streams & Multi-Million Contracts

Neil Woodford

Twenty years ago, British hedge fund manager Neil Woodford invested in tobacco stocks, which were falling in price before the first dot-com bubble burst. By 2014, his bet had paid off with annual returns to his fund of more than 20% from British American Tobacco.

Back in the previous financial crisis in 2009, hedge fund billionaire David Tepper made a very savvy bet. He made big investments in Bank of America and other then-struggling companies. He basically bought an enormous amount of distressed bank assets. That ended up netting his hedge fund $7 billion.

Simon Cawkwell

Trending Wealth Dossiers:

Real Estate, Luxury Assets & Personal Investments

Simon Cawkwell is a British spread-better who in 2007 predicted the failure of the bank Northern Rock. He made a $1.2 million profit by short-selling shares of the doomed to fail bank.

Kyle Bass

Few people won in the 2007-2008 housing crisis. However, hedge fund investor Kyle Bass did. He made $4 billion by buying credit default accounts after the housing market collapsed in the last recession in the U.S.

All the way back in 1990, investor Louis Bacon invested in oil after betting that the first Iraq War would impact the cost of oil. He was correct. He saw an 86% return on his investment.

Wealth Trajectory & Future Earnings Projections

In 1987, hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones was one of the few people to predict the Black Monday crash. He saw it coming, shorted his holdings on the stock market, and saw a 200% return for his investors and a $100 million paycheck for himself.

Andrew Krieger

Another bet placed back in 1987 was when Andrew Krieger, a currency trader, took a short position against the New Zealand dollar worth hundreds of millions. He made $300 million for his employer Bankers Trust when his sell positions were more than the entire money supply of New Zealand.

George Soros was born in Hungary and survived the Nazi occupation during World War II. He emigrated to London where he worked as a waiter and train porter while studying at the London School of Economics. He moved to New York City and started his first hedge fund in 1969. That fund was enormously successful and came to be known as the Quantum Fund. He made a huge splash during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis when he made $1 billion in one day after anticipating the British government would devalue the pound. He became known as the "man who broke the Bank of England."