Nine years have passed since the subprime mortgage crisis. With the hot screening of the movie "Big Short", people have begun to discuss this topic again. The author has finished reading the original work very early, and now I follow the trend to write a film review that is not a film review. I don’t talk about the plot and performance of the film, but only talk about the characters, background and story of the decisive battle. This is not only a review of the past, but more importantly. It is to strengthen the judgment of the general trend in the current confusing and confusing macro environment to avoid falling into the trap of conformity.
1. Who is the real big short?
The four short-selling subprime teams in the movie "Big Short" are: ① Michael Burry, fund manager of Scion Capital; ② Greg Lippmann, a trader at Deutsche Bank, whose name was changed in the movie. Jared Vannett ③ Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners LLC, renamed Mark Baum in the movie ④ Jamie Mai, Charlie Ledley and Ben Hockett of Cornwall Capital.
What is the final benefit of these four people? Michael Burry's fund earned US$750 million for investors in 2007 with a scale of 600 million; Greg Lippmann is not an investor, but a trader and market maker of the short-selling tool CDS. He received a bonus of US$47 million in 2007. ; Cornwall Capital of the two boys Jamie and Charlie made a profit of 80 million US dollars, which is not large, but considering that they only have 30 million US dollars in principal, this return is also very impressive; how much money Steve Eisman made is not disclosed specifically, but His fund has a maximum size of US$1.5 billion, and the fund's income in 2007 and 2008 should be similar to or slightly less than that of Burry's fund. Taken together, the four men and horses made a total of less than 2 billion U.S. dollars.
US$2 billion is an astronomical figure in the eyes of ordinary people, especially when it was realized in 2007, when it was all over the place, but in fact, US$2 billion is only a fraction of the money made by the real "big short" John Paulson. As the largest short position in history, Paulson's fund company Paulson & Co. made 12 billion US dollars by shorting CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) in 2007, and made more than 8 billion US dollars by shorting banks in 2008. In addition, some other investors in the hedge fund field have also made short-term profits in a low-key manner. For example, Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners also listened to Greg Lippmann’s explanation and promotion of CDS. Contrary to the continuous questioning and shouting of Jared Vannett by the Mark Baum team in the movie, Falcone immediately bought a large amount of CDS over 1 billion US dollars. The 2007 returns of the two major funds exceeded 100%. In addition, the investment guru Soros, through his nephew Peter Soros (who is a friend of Paulson), asked Paulson for lunch. After learning about his investment ideas, he also began to short subprime mortgages. He also made a profit in the three months at the end of 2007. Billion dollars. The following picture shows the performance of major hedge funds in 2007 (considering the size, statistics are incomplete), the products marked in yellow are Paulson&Co.'s products.