Imagine yourself back in 2009, when the global financial crisis hit like a sledgehammer. The Dow Jones was on the floor, and some of the biggest banks on Wall Street closed their doors for the final time. As money and trust continued to flow out of the banks and talk of nationalization reared its head, you would have been stupid to buy bank stocks…….but one man did. David Tepper began his financial career with an MBA and a treasury position at Republic Steel. He was recruited by Goldman Sachs in 1985, but in 1992 he decided to leave and set up his own fund, Appaloosa Management. In 2009, while everyone else was distracted by what was happening on Wall Street, Tepper saw the big picture and decided to buy some of the biggest banks' common stock at very low values. His firm purchased Citigroup shares for just 19¢ on the dollar, Bank of America shares for a meager 12¢ on the dollar, and $1 billion worth of AIG’s commercial mortgage securities for a mind-blowing 9¢ on the dollar. He sat back through 2009 and watched them double, then triple, and in Bank of America’s case quadruple in just a year. Tepper made a staggering $7 billion from his gutsy move, and today the trade is considered the greatest stock market trade ever made.
