The Greatest Trade Ever Read Online Free PDF Page A

confining for a young man just beginning to enjoy his independence. Paulson wasn’t allowed to date without a chaperone and could choose only young women from the right families, as designated and approved by his uncle.
    One day, Paulson met a pretty sixteen-year-old at one of his job sites, a young woman who turned out to be the daughter of the chief of police of Salinas. He invited her back to his apartment for dinner, asking his cook to whip up something special. The cook quietly called Paulson’s uncle to tip him off. Soon an associate of Paulson’s uncle came to the door. “What’s going on in there?! What’s going on?!” he demanded. He pulled aside Paulson and said, “We can’t have that type of person here.”
    The young woman fled the apartment, running into the night.
    Eager to be on his own, Paulson moved to the capital city of Quito, before traveling elsewhere in Ecuador. When he soon ran out of money and needed to drum up some cash, he discovered a man who manufactured attractive and inexpensive children’s clothing; Paulson commissioned some samples to send to his father back home in New York. Alfred took the samples to upscale stores such as Bloomingdale’s, which ordered six dozen shirts, thrilling the Paulsons. The shirts continued to sell and Paulson hired a team in Ecuador to produce more of them, spending evenings packing and shipping boxes of the clothing, learning to operate a business on the fly.
    Later, though, as orders piled up, Paulson missed a key delivery date with Bloomingdale’s and the store canceled its order. He was stuck with one thousand unwanted children’s shirts, which he had to store in his parents’ basement. Years later, whenever Paulson needed a little extra spending money, he would return to Queens, grab some shirts out of a box, and sell them at various New York retailers.
    Another time during his two years in Ecuador, Paulson noticed attractivewood parquet flooring in a store in Quito. He tracked down the local factory that produced it and asked the owner if he could act as his U.S. sales representative, in exchange for a commission of 10 percent of any sales. The man agreed, and Paulson sent his father a package of floor samples, which Alfred showed to people in the flooring business in New Jersey. They confirmed that the quality and pricing compared favorably with that available in the United States. By then, Alfred had left Ruder Finn, Inc. to start his own firm, but he made time to help his son. Working together, the Paulsons sold $250,000 of the flooring; his father gave John their entire $25,000 commission. The two spoke by phone or wrote daily while John was in Ecuador, bringing them closer together. It was John Paulson’s first big trade, and it excited him to do more.
    “I found it a lot of fun, and I loved having cash in my pocket,” Paulson recalls.
    Paulson realized that a college education was the best way to ensure ample cash flow, so he returned to NYU in 1976, newly focused and energized. By then, his friends were entering their senior year, two years ahead of Paulson, and he felt pressure to catch up. His competitive juices flowing, Paulson spent the next nineteen months accumulating the necessary credits to graduate, taking extra courses and attending summer school, receiving all As.
    Among his classmates, Paulson developed a reputation for having a unique ability to boil down complex ideas into simple terms. After lectures on difficult subjects like statistics or upper-level finance, some approached Paulson asking for help.
    “John was clearly the brightest guy in the class,” recalls Bruce Goodman, a classmate.
    Paulson was particularly inspired by an investment banking seminar taught by John Whitehead, then the chairman of investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. To give guest lectures, Whitehead brought in various Goldman stars, such as Robert Rubin, later secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, and Stephen Friedman, Goldman’s future