One Man Broke The Bank of England

He Made Servants Millionaires. Then Lost Everything - John Law Chapert 2 The Bubble That Bankrupted France

Part 2 of the John Law story. By December 1719 John Law was the second most powerful man in France: Contrôleur Général des Finances, head of the Banque Royale, and master of the Compagnie des Indes. Mississippi Company shares had climbed from 500 to 18,000 livres in eighteen months. The word *millionaire* was coined in Paris coffee houses to describe the fortunes his paper had created.Then on New Year's Day 1720 the Prince de Conti arrived at the bank with three empty wagons and demanded gold. Within a year, the architect of modern central banking fled Paris in an Italian abbot's robes. He died nine years later in Venice — owning eighty-four paintings and debts of one and a half million livres. 🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#JohnLaw #MississippiBubble #StockMarket #FinancialHistory #PaperMoney #Bubble #FinancialCrisis #History #Sleep #Documentary

From Death Row To Central Banker - John Law Chapter 1

Part 1 of the John Law story. In 1694 a twenty-two-year-old Scottish goldsmith's son killed a London dandy in a duel, was sentenced to death, then vanished from Newgate Prison five days later. He resurfaced in Amsterdam studying the Wisselbank, then in Paris with a radical idea: paper money. By 1716 the convicted murderer had opened the first central bank in French history. Within three years he controlled France's currency, its treasury, and its colonial empire — and coined the word *millionaire*.🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#JohnLaw #FinancialHistory #StockMarket #MississippiBubble #CentralBanking #Money #History #Sleep #Documentary #SleepyStockMarket

He Arrived In The USA With $2 Then Stole $20 Million

In 1920, Charles Ponzi promised 50% returns in 45 days — and 40,000 people handed him their savings. By July 1920 he was collecting $1 million per day, but auditors found just $61 worth of postal coupons when his scheme required 160 million. When Ponzi was arrested on August 12, 1920, investors had lost $20 million — over $300 million in today's money — and most never recovered more than 30 cents on the dollar. The same mechanics resurfaced in Bernie Madoff's 2008 collapse, which cost investors $18 billion. 🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SLEEPY STOCK MARKET Fall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #CharlesPonzi #PonziScheme #FinancialFraud #TrueHistory #BernieMadoff #1920s #FinanceHistory #Scam #WhiteCollarCrime #HistoryShorts

Bruce Kovner: From a $3,000 Credit Card to $14 Billion

Bruce Kovner borrowed $3,000 on a MasterCard in 1977 to bet on soybean futures — and it changed everything. A Harvard dropout and former NYC taxi driver, Kovner founded Caxton Associates in 1983 with just $12 million and turned it into one of the most profitable hedge funds in history, returning $12.8 billion to clients by 2010. At its peak, Caxton managed over $14 billion, posting a 55.6% average annual return in its first decade. The man who once drove cabs now chairs his own family office and donates rare music manuscripts to Juilliard. 🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#BruceKovner #HedgeFund #CaxtonAssociates #TradingStory #MacroTrading #WallStreet #InvestingHistory #BillionaireStory

PLATT - THE TRADER WHO FIRED HIS OWN CLIENTS

In 2015, Michael Platt returned $8 billion to investors and shut Blue Crest Capital to the public — then reportedly made over 50% per year. Born in Preston in 1968, Platt built BlueCrest from zero into a $35 billion hedge fund giant after leaving JP Morgan with co-founder William Reeves in 2000. His fund returned 54% during the 2008 financial crisis while competitors collapsed. By 2025, his net worth reached $18.8 billion — built almost entirely after he stopped managing other people's money. 🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#MichaelPlatt #BlueCrest #HedgeFund #GlobalMacro #Finance #WallStreet #Trading #HedgeFundManager