Scott Bessent made billions on Wall Street with these big bets

Little has been reported about Bessent’s personal wealth. And unlike hedge fund buddies like Ray Dalio and Ken Griffin, he doesn’t appear on billionaire lists from Bloomberg or Forbes. But some details of his net worth will emerge later as he is required to divest certain holdings to avoid any potential conflicts of interest while the finance chief.

Key Square did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his fortune or assets to be divested.

For now, a look at Bessent’s winning bets while working in finance gives an insight into how I made his fortune.

The South Carolina native and Yale graduate started out as a securities analyst and options trader at a Saudi family’s investment arm, according to The Wall Street Journal. He later interned with Jim Rogers, worked for short seller James Chanos, and then joined Soros Fund Management in 1991.

It was then that Bessent made one of his most famous efforts. While at the firm’s London office, he helped short the British pound in 1992, netting Soros a profit of more than $1 billion. In Britain, the trade is infamous and led to “Black Wednesday”, when the pound was decoupled from European currencies.

After working for Soros, he became a senior partner at Protege Partners and then started his own firm, but had to return clients’ funds in 2005. Journal reported.

In 2011, he returned to Soros and served as chief investment officer of the hedge fund-turned-family office. During his second stint, he made about $10 billion in profits for Soros, according to Bloomberg. Among his big bets was a short against Japan’s yen, which in 2013 produced an unexpected drop of $1 billion.

He left in 2015 to launch Key Square, which bets on global macroeconomic trends, raising $4.5 billion, including $2 billion from Soros. Key’s main fund saw returns rise 13% in 2016 after Bessent again bet on the British pound falling, this time following the Brexit vote to leave the EU, This is what sources told Reuters.

Bessent scored another victory later in 2016 by correctly predicting a rally in US stocks and the dollar following Trump’s first presidential election victory. Returns were mixed from 2017 to 2022, but had double-digit increases in 2023 and 2024, according to Reuters.

This year, as in 2016, Key Square bet that US stocks and the dollar would jump after a Trump victory, which would contribute to the firm’s big 2024 profits, the report said. Despite recent returns, Key Square has seen assets under management fall to $577 million by December 2023 from a peak of $5.1 billion at the end of 2017, the report said.

Under a prior agreement to return his money, Soros withdrew most of his capital from Key Square in 2018 and no longer has any money managed by Bessent, sources told Reuters.

Key Square did not immediately comment on the Reuters story.

Bessent’s experience in finance helped him garner positive reactions from Wall Street after he was nominated to lead the Treasury Department. But more importantly for Bessent, his experience helped him secure the president-elect’s trust.

“Scott is widely respected as one of the world’s leading international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists,” Trump said in a statement posted on social media Friday. “Scott’s story is the American dream.”

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