The term "trader" is used to describe someone who works in the investing industry. However, a "trader" does not really make investments. “Investors make well-informed judgments based on a thorough examination of a company's financial fundamentals.

Traders utilize technical analysis to place short-term bets to profit from market volatility. The early 2000s were when people were more likely to quit their jobs and work from home trading for a living. It was impossible to lose money because of significant stock markets and real estate bubbles. However, the heyday of the golden period has passed.

Paul Tudor Jones (1954–Present)

After shorting the 1987 stock market crisis, Paul Tudor Jones founded Tudor Investment Corporation, an $11.2 billion hedge fund. 34 A bear market would compound the impact of portfolio insurance, which Jones was able to forecast. Purchasing index puts, a standard risk management strategy, is a way to reduce the risk of one's portfolio.

Investors will thus use their put options in a bear market to push the market down even further. On Black Monday of 1987, Jones was able to treble his money from short bets, making him one of the most successful short sellers in history. Jones has a net worth of $7.3 billion as of May 2022, and he is now running his hedge fund.

George Soros (1930-Present)

To many, George Soros is best known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England," a moniker he has earned throughout his trading career. When the pound depreciated in 1992, Soros placed a $1 billion wager that it would. During that period, the British pound was included in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a tool for ensuring financial system stability by limiting the trading range of its listed currencies.

After they realized it wasn't strong enough to stay in the ERM, Soros and his partners built up a $10 billion short position on the pound at his hedge fund, the Quantum Investment Fund. Soros has a net worth of $8.5 billion as of May 2022 and is no longer working.

John Paulson (1955-Present)

In 2007, John Paulson made a fortune shorting the real estate market through the collateralized-debt obligation (CDO) market, dubbed the "biggest trade ever." Until the financial crisis of 2007, Paulson & Co. was a little-known Wall Street firm created by Paulson in 1994. Paulson's funds made an estimated $15 billion in 2007 due to their foresight into the real estate asset bubble, while Paulson himself walked away with $3.7 billion. 1011 During this period, Paulson was a target of the U.S. government's wrath for earning enormously while the world economy was in freefall. Paulson has an estimated net worth of $4 billion as of January 2022.

Richard Dennis

Richard Dennis was one of the few traders who could take a little sum of money and transform it into millions. According to Dennis, he borrowed $1,600 at the age of 23 and converted it into $200 million in trading commodities. Dennis is known as the "Prince of the Pit." Furthermore, he only exchanged $400 of the $1,600 available.

In addition to his success as a commodities trader, he also founded the Turtle Traders Group, which became a household name. Using small contracts, Dennis began trading on his account at the Mid America Commodity Exchange. In 1973, he earned $100,000. The next year, he made $500,000 in gains after taking advantage of a booming soybean market. By the end of the year, he had amassed an impressive net worth of $1 million.

The Black Monday stock market crisis of 1987 and the burst of the dot-com boom in 2000, on the other hand, cost him a lot of money. Despite his reputation for making and losing a great deal of money, Dennis is also known for their experiment. Few people were instructed in futures trading by William Eckhardt, but they were successful. According to a former pupil, these so-called Turtle Traders made $175 million in four years.

Jesse Livermore

"The Great Bear of Wall Street" was the moniker given to Jesse Livermore when he entered the stock market at the age of 15, made a fortune, lost it all, recouped his losses, and emerged victorious from two significant crises by following his own rules.

In Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, Livermore was born in 1877. To this day, he's most known for his enormous risk-taking, derivatives, and commodities, and for both sustaining and rising to great wealth.

He left home by carriage to avoid the farming life his father had intended for him and instead found employment at Paine Webber, a Boston stockbroker, publishing stock quotes. At the age of 15, Livermore purchased his first stock and made a profit of $3.12 off a $5 investment.