The Great Speculator - The Mysterious Life of George Soros | A Documentary

[Music] watch excuse me the government raises interest rates twice in one day to 15 in its all-out battle to prop up sterling but after a frantic days trading the pound plunges again today has been an extremely difficult and turbulent day george soros made a billion dollars almost overnight this is the infamous black wednesday of 1992. losing 3.5 billions the bank of england is in defeat at the hands of george soros what's it like to have a lot of money it gives you a degree of freedom and it also gives you a degree of power we all need to wake up to who george soros is and how big his organization is a major takedown of george soros is in process george soros is one of the richest men in the world he would be blamed for the financial collapses in thailand malaysia indonesia japan and russia [Music] please [Music] george soros childhood is anything but normal his father tevadar soros was a prisoner of war during world war one and spent three years on the run in siberia by the time his second son george soros was born in 1930 his built a successful career as a lawyer in budapest well he was a prisoner of war in russia and he escaped and he lived through the russian revolution and he came back from that a changed man tivorar spent a great deal of time teaching george about the art of survival i mean he went through a horrendous experience and that taught him a lesson which then came in very useful he in turn taught me a lesson which came in useful to me his father's pragmatism and survival instinct will be the building blocks for success later in life but the peace and prosperity his family enjoys is short-lived [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think hitler is uniquely the most genocidally evil dictator that there ever was and fundamentally he was gonna kill as many people who were outside of his master race principle as he possibly could and he did hitler's conquest had wiped out millions of jews in western europe his next target is hungary a country housing the largest jewish population in eastern europe nazi authorities start distributing deportation notice to local jews but such a deportation notice is a death sentence in disguise the young george soros is asked by the nazi authorities to deliver the notice to the jewish community having suffered the worst of war soros father is determined to survive again by any means necessary basically that there are times when the normal rules don't apply you see the way you've looked at the world it's just not applicable because the world has changed so he sold his real estate holdings and starts hiding his family in different locations around the country under false identities and by bribing authorities by the time nazis retreated from hungary all the jewish children of soros age are severely traumatized some even bring handguns to the classrooms but not george soros he finds the whole experience of the war during 1944 throatling it's obvious now that sorrows may have a different personality than most people like him thrive by taking huge risks and is a common characteristic of many great traitors but soros happiness is only temporary after one evil is defeated a worse one has taken its place [Music] the occupation by russians will forever scar soros family suddenly two russian soldiers stepped in front of us and they led me down the one step in front of my head with his weapon they raped me two of them and that's how it happened after that sorrows is never the same he's deeply troubled and starts questioning the nature of reality you're going to see very likely the um many of the patterns you'd seen ongoing see ptsd that they'll be emotional numbing that there'll be a fear and a confusion about close relationships it's not unusual to see dissociative symptoms and dissociation is when a person almost breaks away it's as though they break away from their own reality or break away from themselves is they're not almost they're not present in the situation anymore they've gone someplace else the young george is desperately trying to break away from this unforgiving chaos of life after his 17th birthday he leaves his family behind and embarks on a journey to the west by the time soros arrives in london he is penniless to make ends meet he becomes a waiter and saves money by eating leftovers from customers after all the suffering sorrows has endured there is a light at the end of the tunnel he's accepted to the london school of economics london school of economics is perhaps the best school to study economics but what really made this school special was the amount of world leaders it has created but initially sorrows is a loner thrown into the world of unknowns the only thing that he can do is to devote all of his time to his coursework he study under the famous philosopher carl popper so i think popper was was a genuine contribution to our understanding of what we're doing his problem was to discriminate between einstein on the one hand and marx and freud on the other as far as he was concerned marx and freud were sort of pseudoscience and einstein was real science but the question is what was the difference and it was his notion of the concept of falsifiability sorrows finds popper's ideas intriguing i was very much influenced by karl popper who taught me that that perfect knowledge is not attainable we all act on the basis of an imperfect understanding of reality while before sorrows was aimless now he finds his mission in life becoming a philosopher just like his mentor carl popper the soros quickly finds out that there is no way he can afford a graduate school the shorter money money was very serious it was very important for me to make a living i developed my philosophy in college while i was also earning my way through college by working in various jobs for instance i had the waiter in a nightclub while i was studying during the day he needs to make a living fast upon graduation he senses there's a good money to be made in finance he was really taking the initiatives he wrote a letter to every managing director of every bank in london hoping to find a job it worked a merchant bank offers him a job as a trainee he happily accepts it he works as a trader specializing in gold stock arbitrage trying to take advantage of the price discrepancies in different markets but he's a terrible at the job in just two years he quits after world war ii the u.s emerged as the most powerful nation on the planet the economy overall grew by 37 percent during the 1950s thanks to eisenhower's administration inflation was low and so was the unemployment rate people around the world are eager to come here to pursue their american dream sorrows is one of them in 1956 he moved to new york city working as an arbitrary trader for several financial firms i had a very modest ambition i just wanted to five years in america and earn at the time i said a hundred thousand dollars and then i could live on the on the income from that american industry has grown with prodigious speed to its immense size of today and the capital to build the nation from a raw frontier to the greatest industrial giant in the world but he struggles to find an edge in the industry the job of arbitrary trader makes startups think about how different assets relate to each other at the time very few investors thought about world finance as a interconnected system but soros was one of the first to have that sort of system view sorrows is going to find a new approach to investing although he was educated as an economist he finds classical economic ideas not useful at all in the real world my interpretation of financial markets directly contradicts the efficient market hypothesis which has been the prevailing theory about financial markets that theory claims that markets tend towards equilibrium deviations occur in a random fashion and can be attributed to extraneous shocks if that theory is valid mine is false and vice versa instead soros finds out that the real world of finance resembles that of a chaotic system almost any human enterprise is inevitably driven by two forces reality and the expectation by the participants they are interdependent but since human perception are biased and flawed there will always be a gap such a gap represents trading opportunities soros probably didn't know at the time his theory of reflexivity resembles that of a chaos theory without a doubt chaos is the natural state of affairs of human beings if i'm afraid of um being mugged in new york city walking down the street i will become very very cautious as i become cautious i become a target therefore i am inviting the very thing that i'm afraid of soros believes that our reality is more dynamic and chaotic than what people believes their biased perception of reality will cause them to behave irrationally creating an opportunity for him to exploit sorrow's insight puts him 10 steps ahead of everyone else on wall street by 1969 he has saved 250 thousand dollars for himself as a trader but to test his theory he needs a larger sum of money that is not a small amount for someone living in the 1960s but still not enough to start his fund but over the years as a trader soros has built a strong relationship with many wealthy european investors they put up six million dollars into soros funds he has a simple investing proposition looking for a reflected boom bust trend riding it on the way up and shorting it on the way down his timing couldn't be more perfect in 1969 real estate investment trust was a new hot investment vehicle reits have proven themselves to be an attractive method by which investors can own commercial real estate soros recognizes that this new asset class will likely experience a boom bust cycle he predicts that it will crash in three years but before it actually happens it will keep going up to write this trend he started heavily buying reits sorrow's a speculator he buys these real estate trusts not because he likes properties but simply because he sees an opportunity to cash in charles is right he makes one million dollars on the way up but he makes even more money by shorting them when his predictions come true three years later soros hedge fund nearly doubles every year managing 50 million dollars by 1973. one of the shocking traits of soros investment style is that he doesn't bet as often as a day trader but when he does make a bet it's usually very large sometimes risking his entire portfolio but his phone soon grows larger than what what man can handle he needs to find a partner someone who can operate at his level jim rogers seems like the most unlikely partner for george soros raised in demopolis alabama jim rogers grew up during a bumpy time in the american south a brilliant student jim rogers spent his college years in oxford studying politics economics and philosophy like soros rogers has more of a global view of the financial market meaning that he thinks about the world markets as a interconnected system with each element affecting the other this very much resembles soros thinking now what does this mean for you your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today after nixon broke the u.s tradition by attaching u.s dollars to gold the financial market is never the same and by 1971 it was clear the dollar could no longer be exchanged into gold and that began the modern age of inflation by 1972 soros and rogers sensed that there will be a structural change in the banking industry that no one has caught on banking industry before the 1980s was very regulated and it wasn't very cool to become a banker the beginning of the 1970s the american banking system was still frozen into immobility the industry was highly fragmented and regimented adult business attracted dull people who were more concerned with job security than with profits bank shares were traded by appointment but i detected some signs of life with easy money flowing into the market soros realizes that a banking sector is set to boom he instructs his trader to buy as many shares as possible in major banks generating 50 profit in less than a year some banks were poised to embark on balanced growth by equity leveraging i.e selling shares at the premium the bouquet of shares of bank shares i recommended did in fact rise by some 50 percent in that year while the 70s has been a difficult period for america soros made more money than anyone in finance he's truly the pioneer in macro investing in 1970s he invests in japanese dutch and french stocks and at some point he put one third of his portfolio in japanese stocks which doubled in a year in the first decade of his fund it went up three thousand percent an unparalleled feat on wall street by 1980 soros fund has 381 million dollars under management he renamed his phone to quantum fund reflecting the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics as a child sorrows fantasize about being a god i did have juvenile fantasies of saving the world so i had that the sort of what i called messianic fantasies which i think most adolescents have i've been somewhat more successful of actually acting out those fantasies to sorrows his track record shows that he may indeed be special he's able to see how the world works better than anyone but the market is about to humble his oversized ego the 1970s will forever be known as the decade of soaring inflation the fed tried to intervene in 1973 by raising interest rates but it created a mass unemployment by the beginning of 1979 inflation jumped 8 from the year before at the same time the us dollar is losing its value fast finally fat chairman paul volcker decides that inflation must come down even at a cost of creating unemployment you know you can't deal with that problem by simply saying we're going to let inflation go ahead while most investors see hyperinflation as a bad thing but sorrows sees it as an opportunity similarly right now in u.s inflation has gotten to a 32-year high but most people don't know about one asset class that has performed well during hyperinflation throughout history it is contemporary arts contemporary art prices appreciated by 23.2 percent versus 3.8 percent for the s p 500 during periods of 3 inflation or higher which is right now most people see contemporary art as something nice to hang on the wall but billionaires like soros see them as a great place to store and grow wealth why it is because contemporary art has outpaced sap 500 from 1995 to 2020. for example if you look at the rockefellers they'll mask more art collections than anyone right now you can become art investors like soros larry fink and me with a new app called masterworks dot io masterworks allows anyone to invest in multi-million dollar paintings by famous artists like warhol banksy and picasso just like picking stocks online and they recently raised 110 million dollars in sears a funding at a valuation over one billion dollars so you know that this market has a ton of potential this is how it works masterworks will buy physical painting securitize it with scc and issue shares representing an investment on their app that way you know that it is an sec approved investment and it is safe the securitization process also let you invest in paintings by picasso and banksy for a fraction of the original cost instead of spending millions of dollars you can either hold your shares until masterwork sells the painting or sell to other masterworks members on their platform once they sell the painting they will give you your share of the profit for example masterworks investors saw 32 percent analyze appreciation from the sale of their banks in painting now the fees which almost doubled the return of s p 500 and in 2021 investors are set to receive a 31 annualized appreciation for the sale of their george condo painting i'm a proud investor in basquiat on masterworks platform and i invite you to join me with me through the link in the description my viewers can skip the waitlist and invest alongside me and other billionaires in a few clicks sorrows is certain that pope volcker's action will spell doom to the u.s economy the way the fed increases interest rate is by selling the chartered bills at the market sometimes at a lower price thus the interest rate will increase sorrows is expecting an inverted yield curve to happen the inverted yield curve happens when there's a stronger demand for long-term bonds versus short-term bonds and stocks that's exactly what soros expects to happen so he goes long on long-term bonds and sells short of stocks and short-term bonds but his timing is wrong the economy however remains strong far longer than he anticipated when sorrow's prediction doesn't happen in time his phone loses 80 million dollars in 1980. this is his first major loss i think it hurt him deeply and also teach him a lesson about the business of running a hedge fund after losing 22 percent in 1980 half his investors cashed out as an expert in boom and bust he realizes that this may be the end for him and it's time to retire due to a disappointing year in 1980 george soros emma retires and marries his second wife the 28 year old susan weber he left quantum fund at the hands of his replacement jm markets jeep marcus was a 33 year old mutual fund manager who made 69 percent return in 1982. charles fund has a massive comeback in 1982 generating 56.9 percent he believes that marcus will continue this track record in the years to come [Music] while in 1983 quantum phone was up 25 percent he only achieved a 9 gang the year later to sorrows and his investors it is a big embarrassment he now believes perhaps no one can be as good as he is by the end of 1984 he comes back after three years of retirement the highest order of business before the nation is to restore our economic prosperity reagan's principles were number one lower marginal tax rates number two deregulate number three hold down government spending number four follow a monetary policy that will bring you low and low inflation the way reagan wanted to keep a low inflation is by having a strong dollar that means the u.s can import cheaper goods thus the price level will decrease but sorrows has a different idea in the wake of reagan's high spending note taxing policies from the early 1980s the united states soros believes is heading for depression by 1985 soros has come back from his retirement he sees reagan's policy on keeping a strong dollar a disaster for america but also a great opportunity for him to cash in he goes long on the japanese yen and deutschmark while shorting us dollar and crew oil his prediction starts to materialize on september 22nd 1985. the central banks around the world start pushing the dollar down by late october the dollar falls 13 against yen and a year later 25 percent altogether sorrows made 150 million dollars profits a shocking 122 percent return to make profits in currencies soros had to borrow a lot of money sometimes using 10 times leverage the danger is that if the market goes against him it can literally destroy him after making large profits in 1986 soros believes that his doomsday prediction is temporarily delayed so he goes on a buying spree of u.s equities hoping to catch one last ride before it crashes but his timing is wrong again the dow could not be saved even by falling long and short-term interest rates and closed with a lost guest sky of 300 points at 1950.76 the black-mounted crash caught sorrows by surprise he's trapped in a liquidity squeeze the predator is now a prey when sorrows was dumping his asses in the market all the traitors sensed that a big whale was in trouble so everyone just waited [Music] so sorrows was able to sell his smp futures at a price level of 1.95 but when the market closes it goes right back to 240. so he was clearly taken advantage by wall street traders [Music] in fact the crash wiped out sorrow's entire profit for 1987. sorrows was right about the crash but was dead wrong about the sequence of events that happened after taking a loss in october sorrow's other investment came into fruition generating a 14 overall return for that year the 1987 crash makes sorrows once again want to retire so then about 15 years let's say later i started thinking why should i keep kill myself making money sorrow's investment strategy is very nerve-wracking to say the least and as people grow older the risk-taking tendency tends to decrease i was walking on the street from one bank to another trying to make the arrangement and i thought i was going to have a heart attack and that's when i realized this tension to make money is really not worth it if it's going to kill me that's when i decided to actually change course when i decided to actually return to philanthropy without audacious risk taking soros knows his phone's performance will suffer to retire in peace and to maintain the fund's performance sorrow needs to find a younger version of himself to take his place by the fall of 1988 he found his man like sorrows stanley druckenmiller has a humble beginning he grew up in a single parent family he didn't go to any fancy ivy league college and in fact to make money he had to open a hot dog stand on campus darken miller's career takes off immediately after graduation by 1988 his strategic aggressive investing fund becomes the highest performing fund in the industry drunken miller was admired of sorrows long before they met they're very similar in a lot of ways both have a big disregard for academic finance and they're all big picture thinkers and are also very practical after spending one year mentoring druckenmiller charles finally given the full reign of quantum fund up until that point i had a very good record but it was only after i was with george that i learned how much you should really press a bet when your confidence level is extremely high i did find where before i was there don't get me wrong but but it was amazing to watch that man when we had something we really believed in to see the way he would he would size risk and reward [Music] after retirement soros starts spending most of his time with his charity i started out with a framework that i really developed as a student when i was influenced by karl popper open society and his enemies and i set up a foundation to foster the open societies the fund's performance has actually gotten better after he left so people speculate that soros uses a charity to get access to world leaders in order to have a better information about the world economy but really the stellar returns of quantum fund after 1990 is all because of one man dragon miller [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 30min 1sec (1801 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 28 2021