... Early on, Simons made a decision to dig through mountains of data, — Gregory Zuckerman

"... When Asian markets crumbled in 1997, Mr. Tepper added Korean stocks to a portfolio laden with Russian debt. The moves led to hundreds of millions of dollars in profits when markets rebounded two years later. He scored big on junk bonds in 2003, and his 2007 wager on steel, coal and other resource companies paid off in 2008 when commodity prices soared. But because he sometimes places more than half of his portfolio in a single trade idea, Mr. Tepper also is prone to brutal, abrupt losses."

"On Wall Street, the losers in the collapse of the housing market are legion. The biggest winner looks to be John Paulson, a little-known hedge fund manager who smelled trouble two years ago. ... Like many legendary market killings, from Warren Buffetts takeovers of small companies in the 70s to Wilbur Rosss steelmaker consolidation earlier this decade, Mr. Paulsons sprang from defying conventional wisdom. In early 2006, the wisdom was that while loose lending standards might be of some concern, deep trouble in the housing and mortgage markets was unlikely. A lot of big Wall Street players were in this camp, as seen by the giant mortgage-market losses theyre disclosing."