Don't listen to buddies: Paulson’s Friends Pitied His Subprime Bet

"As one of the few winners from the financial crisis, John A. Paulson looks pretty smart. His hedge fund firm, Paulson and Company, netted $15 billion betting against the subprime mortgage market — and he continues to profit from his wager on gold.

But in audio recordings recently released by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Mr. Paulson reveals just how much flack he got from professionals and peers, who in the early days of the turmoil derided his big bet as the misguided move of a “novice.”

“Most of them, when we did express our viewpoints, thought we were inexperienced novices in the mortgage market,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview with the commission in 2010. “We were very, very much in the minority. If I said a thousand-to-one, we were the one. Even friends of ours thought we were so wrong, they felt sorry for us.”"