He made $100 million in a single day while cameras were rolling, then spent years trying to erase every copy of the film. In 1987 a 32-year-old named Paul Tudor Jones was running $125 million out of a small New York office. A PBS crew followed him for months... as he stared at one chart: the 1920s Dow overlaid on the 1980s. Correlation: 92 percent. He told them the market would climb toward 3,200, then produce an “earth-shaking” crash that would dwarf anything in living memory. Ten months later Black Monday arrived. The Dow dropped 22.6 percent in one session. Almost the entire Street was wiped out. Jones made roughly one hundred million dollars that day. Afterward he did everything possible to kill the documentary. He bought every VHS copy he could find and demanded PBS stop airing it. For decades the only way to see *Trader* was through bootlegs that changed hands for hundreds of dollars among traders who treated it like sacred text. Inside the footage he delivers the single rule that actually built the fortune: “I risk 10 cents to make eight bucks.” Everything else is noise. The full hour is free on YouTube right now. Seventeen thousand views. Almost no one currently managing serious money has ever watched it.show more

This is less impressive when you find out he was managing a fund of like 150m so he basically doubled his money. Great management during a crash, of course. But they kind of made it sound like he bought a dip and made his fortune from nothing.

The 1920s overlay was one of hundreds of correlation charts on Wall Street that year. Confirmation bias remembers the one that worked

@grok is there anything worth knowing in this video that you can sum up for me right here?

Yes. The core lesson is the risk asymmetry he spells out: risk 10 cents to make eight bucks. He overlaid 1929 charts on the 1980s Dow (high correlation), predicted the crash, shorted hard, and made ~$100M on Black Monday. The film repeatedly shows the real edge—protect capital first, assume every position is wrong, cut losers immediately, only take high-reward setups. Defense built the fortune.

@CGELleyo @kaienphase What’s the criteria of taking the trades?? Is he following any pattern for it??

He only takes trades with extreme asymmetry—risk ~10¢ to make $8 (or at least 5:1). Define the stop first, size tiny until proven right, never average losers. Patterns: yes. Heavy technicals + historical analogs (1929 overlay on 1987 was the big one), Elliott Wave, 200-day MA as filter, and price action at turns. Defense and defined risk come before any setup.

The post is based on a real and remarkable story, but several details are exaggerated or presented more definitively than the evidence supports. The core story is true; the viral version turns it into a legend. What is solidly true Paul Tudor Jones really was filmed before the 1987 crash. The film was Trader: The Documentary, produced by Michael Glyn and broadcast on PBS in 1987. It was filmed before Black Monday, making the footage genuinely extraordinary in retrospect. WorldCat also confirms that a VHS edition existed in 1987. Jones and his colleague Peter Borish really did compare the market’s behavior before the 1987 crash with the period preceding the 1929 crash. Borish’s chart comparison became an important part of their thesis. The documentary captures Jones discussing an impending major decline. And the famous prediction is genuine. In the film Jones says: “There will be some type of a decline… in the next 10 to 20 months” and describes it as “earth-shaking” and capable of producing headlines that would dwarf previous events. Then, on October 19, 1987, the Dow fell 22.6% in a single session, still the largest one-day percentage decline in its history. Jones was positioned heavily short and profited enormously. Contemporary reporting says his fund gained 62% during October 1987. The biggest correction: “$100 million in a single day” The reported figure is approximately $100 million from the 1987 crash/trading campaign, but it is not well established that Jones personally made $100 million on October 19 alone. More reliable descriptions say that Tudor’s 1987 performance produced approximately 125.9% after fees, with an estimated $100 million earned. Other accounts say he tripled his money during the crash, without giving a basis point for the starting funds prior to them being “tripled.” Contemporary/retrospective sources put Tudor’s capital around $125-130 million, so the general magnitude is reasonable. One account specifically describes Tudor as managing around $130 million and having only about 22 employees. 🤷🏻‍♂️💵💰📈 The 3,200 Dow prediction also needs correction. The “92% correlation” claim This is probably the weakest numerical claim in the post. The 1929/1987 market comparison absolutely happened. Peter Borish constructed the comparison and it was central to their thinking. But saying: “Correlation: 92 percent.” implies a precise statistical calculation that aren’t found adequately substantiated in reliable sources. You can accurately say: "Peter Borish overlaid the market's 1987 behavior against the pattern preceding the 1929 crash, and the similarities were striking enough to convince Jones that a major decline was approaching." That's actually more compelling because it's verifiable without pretending to have a precise statistical measurement. Did Jones really try to destroy the documentary? This part has substantial support, but "bought every VHS copy he could find" is probably too strong. A 2012 New Yorker article reported that after Trader aired, Jones reportedly had it taken out of circulation and bought copies he encountered. So: "He tried to suppress the documentary"is supported however saying "He bought every copy in existence" is a bit of an exaggeration. And there's a fascinating irony here: the film wasn't truly "erased." A legitimate VHS edition existed, libraries catalogued it, and copies survived. The "sacred text / hundreds of dollars" part There's some truth behind this too. By the 2000s, Trader had become notoriously difficult to find. Contemporary trading websites described people paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for copies, and online uploads were periodically removed following copyright complaints. But: "the only way to see Trader was through bootlegs" is too absolute. It was available on VHS, in institutional/library collections, and later circulated digitally. The "10 cents to make eight bucks" line is a genuine quote! 🙌🏻

Lol at the newspaper headline about 10 minutes in about the US being 2 trillion in debt. Ah the good old days.

The horse-riding cutaway after all that chart staring is ridiculous. 80s finance cinema was built different 😭

@misterjarebear He asked for it to be deleted because he started going poop years later. Lost his edge and got superstitious. The documentary doesn’t reveal anything. His yearly returns got crushed down to like 2-6% per year sometimes after his peak. Holding Bitcoin outperforms

This is how most white people get rich honestly. Most of them never worked a hard day in their lives.

Everyone knows the secret was in the shoes.

@grok is there a youtube link to this?

risk 10 cents to make eight bucks everything else is noise

@RPMComo Maybe he doesn’t want the public admission that he had planned to quit once he reached a goal that he’s almost certainly already achieved?

There was reason why he deleted it he got lucky that day, its teaches you bad process and ego.

@grok verifica la veracidad y utilidad del contenido del video

“Risk 10 cents to make eight bucks” says more than the whole documentary. He spent decades trying to bury the exact footage that made him a legend.

Back when the stock market was honest

@grok why is Jones trying to wipe this video out? He was correct wasn’t he?

勝率より、負け方を先に決める人の方が長く勝ち続ける気がしませんか🤔

Why delete

Cycles in statistics and waves in nature are reproductible if the parameters are nearly equal. This is remarkable

Banger post

This is just amazing, a must-watch.

@EdgeCGroup have you seen this film?

Paul Tudor Jones now runs a company worth $8B.

Never knew this f*cker Paul Tudor Jones was born and raised in Memphis, TN lol He came from old money.. They were not stinking rich but his family owned a newspaper in Memphis, and his cousins were the Dunavants who were one of the world's largest cotton merchants.. He went to MUS in high school where all the rich kids still goes, before launching his career on Wall Street. He is now worth about 8 billion dollars.

Ive watched it twice. PTJ is great!

Why would he want to stop the documentary from being seen?

Lol this is such a joke, how about do something that matters like make art or help somebody?

Made $100M on Black Monday, then spent years trying to bury the tape.

the way he bought up every vhs copy like a man covering up a crime scene tells you everything about how real the edge was

Profit from misfortune.... Morally ambiguous....

Made a correlation between 1920 and 1980. :/ Really? I hope he made on returns, not prices.

The question is how much did he waste trying to be right? He said he wanted a $0.10 to $8 risk reward and it took him 10 months for this to happen. He ended up getting about $.67 for the $.10 risk assuming the entire $15M was invested in the short.