Hampton Style - August 1, 2008 -

John Paulson isn't the only wunderkind in our midst: meet the top earners of the world's top-earning field. Many of them are younger than you would expect-several, unexpectedly, have patrician backgrounds. All have an uncanny knack for making money in the swashbuckling, $2-trillion-dollar, pressure-cooker community of hedge funds. Which perhaps explains why they all gravitate to our serene shores. High-ticket real estate in the Hamptons-the kind this group is snapping up in droves-is really about exalted leisure time. And what better luxuries are there than time, and leisure? On the following pages are the 11 top-earning hedge-fund managers residing in the Hamptons: "Hedgistan East."

Age: 51
Firm: Moore Capital Management
Estimated Income (2007): $400-$500 million
Recent Coup: One of his largest funds, Moore Global Investments, returned nearly 20 percent, while his global fixed-income fund was up 14 percent. An emerging markets fund returned 45 percent.
Verbatim: "America has convinced all seven billion of the world's inhabitants to live like westerners. And now that they've taken the bait, we realize it is impossible on this small earth."

Age: 32
Firm: Tiger Global Management
Estimated Income (2007): $350-$400 million
Recent Coup: His fund was up 91 percent before fees and finished the year with more than $5 billion. He also developedseveral private equity funds.

Age: 55
Firm: Duquesne Capital
Estimated Income (2007): $500-$600 million
Recent Coup: His Windmill Master Fund, said to have assets worth $10 billion, made heavy returns in 2007.
Verbatim: "This business is a bit like a drug: When you are doing well, it's hard to quit."

Age: 51
Firm: Highbridge Capital
Net worth: $1.7 billion.
Recent Coup: Dubin pocketed a nice payday when JP Morgan bought controlling interest in his Highbridge Capital Management.
Verbatim: "Most people react after the fact. If they see on the cover of Time magazine that the market is going up, they buy, and when there's a correction, they panic and sell."

Age: 45
Firm: Level Global Investors
Estimated Income (2007): $75-$100 million
Recent Coup: His Level flagship fund was up 24 percent.
He had a great position last year, with short financials and all the right tech names.

Age: 72
Firm: Icahn Capital Management
Net Worth (2007): $14 billion
Recent Coup: In 2007, Icahn Enterprise made $700 million on Stratosphere in Las Vegas.
Verbatim: "You learn in this business: If you want a friend, get a dog."

Age: 46
Firm: Third Point Management
Estimated Income (2007): $200-$250 million
Recent Coup: The MasterCard IPO helped his $5.9 billion fund rise 16.9 percent. Verbatim: In a letter to a business executive: "It is time for you to step down from your role as CEO and director so that you can do what you do best: retreat to your waterfront mansion in the Hamptons where you can play tennis and hobnob with your fellow socialites."

Age: 52
Firm: Paulson & Co.
Estimated Income (2007): $3.7 billion+
Recent Coup: Brilliantly bet that the mortgage market would disintegrate; set up limited partnerships and gained high-net-worth investors to join him on testing his hypothesis; shorted the riskiest CDOs; swapped credit defaults.
Verbatim: "We try to minimize the impact of market risk by being fully hedged on the merger arbitrage positions and by eliminating deals that have financing contingencies, market-outs, walk-away clauses or other type of market-related outs."

Age: 52
Firm: Perry Capital
Estimated Income (2007): $300-$350 million
Recent Coup: Now with assets worth $15 billion, his Perry Partners International fund returned 12.9 percent and a CDS trade he made panned out very well.
Verbatim: "There are a lot of guys who had good ideas, who were first, and who raised $1 billion, guys who are now out of business."

Age: 47
Firm: Sandell Asset Management
Estimated Income (2007): $75-$100 million
Recent Coup: His $5.5 billion Castlerigg International Fund had a 10.5 percent return in 2007.
Verbatim: "Energy companies are not going out of business, because the government would step in to prevent that," he says, explaining why this can be an attractive field.

Age: 77
Firm: Soros Fund Management
Income (2007): $3 billion
Recent Coup: His 2008 book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, predicts an economic superbubble that is about to collapse. His two previous books also predicted similar doomsdays that actually came through. On his clairvoyance and confidence in the coming crisis: "[After] the boy cried wolf three times ... the wolf really came." And thanks to his friend John Paulson, from whom he learned about sub-prime mortgages over lunch, he banked the biggest payday ever recorded on Wall Street last year. Verbatim: "Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality distorted by a misconception."