ONE
STANTON HEIGHTS
EXT. STANTON HEIGHTS — PITTSBURGH — 1970 — DAY
A working-class neighborhood on Pittsburgh's east side. Row houses. Steel mill smoke in the distance. A twelve-year-old DAVID TEPPER walks home from school, backpack slung over one shoulder. He passes men heading to and from the mills. This is Pittsburgh before the steel industry collapsed.
YOUNG DAVID
(to a FRIEND) My dad says the Steelers are going to win it all this year.
FRIEND
Your dad says that every year.
YOUNG DAVID
Yeah, but this year I bet him five bucks. If they win, I double my money.
Even at twelve, David Tepper is thinking about asymmetric bets.
CUT TO:
INT. TEPPER FAMILY HOME — PITTSBURGH — 1973 — NIGHT
HARRY TEPPER, 50s, an accountant, sits at the kitchen table with the family checkbook. ROBERTA watches from the stove. DAVID, now 15, enters.
DAVID
Dad, you always said I should learn about money. I want to buy a stock.
HARRY TEPPER
(amused) A stock? With what money?
DAVID
I saved up from the paper route. Sixty dollars. I want to buy Pennsylvania Engineering.
HARRY TEPPER
Why that one?
DAVID
Because it's cheap. The company makes things people need. And nobody is paying attention to it. That's where you find the deals — where nobody is looking.
Harry looks at Roberta. She shrugs. Harry opens the newspaper to the stock listings.
HARRY TEPPER
(quietly, proudly) All right. Let's call the broker.
INT. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH — 1978 — DAY
TEPPER graduates with an economics degree. He heads to Carnegie Mellon's business school — the GSIA, now Tepper School of Business (later renamed in his honor). He thrives in the analytical rigor.
Carnegie Mellon taught me to think in probabilities. Not: will this stock go up? But: what is the probability it goes up, by how much, and what do I lose if I am wrong? Everything is expected value. Everything is risk versus reward. That mindset — that cold, mathematical approach to chaos — that is what separates traders from gamblers.
TWO
GOLDMAN
INT. GOLDMAN SACHS — NEW YORK — 1985 — DAY
GOLDMAN SACHS — 1985
TEPPER, 27, arrives at Goldman Sachs. The trading floor is enormous. The culture is elite, Ivy League, old money. Tepper is none of these things. He is loud, direct, and from working-class Pittsburgh.
GOLDMAN COLLEAGUE
(whispering to another) Who is the new guy? He talks like a steel worker.
OTHER COLLEAGUE
Carnegie Mellon. Not Harvard. Not Wharton. The credit desk hired him because he can apparently read a balance sheet faster than anyone they have ever seen.
TEPPER sits at his desk. He is already analyzing distressed debt — bonds of companies in or near bankruptcy. It is the market's garbage heap. He sees gold.
TEPPER
(to JACK WALTON, a colleague) Everyone wants the high-grade stuff. Triple-A. Investment-grade. Safe. Boring. The real money is in the distressed paper. Companies that are beaten down but not dead. You buy their debt at thirty cents on the dollar and when they restructure, you get par. That's a three bagger.
INT. GOLDMAN SACHS — 1992 — DAY
1992
TEPPER has made Goldman hundreds of millions. He is one of the top performers on the trading floor. It is partnership announcement day. A list is posted. Tepper scans it. His name is not on it. He has been passed over.
TEPPER
(storming into JOHN KEAN's office) I made this firm more money last year than half the partners combined. And you passed me over?
KEAN
David, it is a process. Your numbers are excellent, but partnership requires —
TEPPER
Requires what? A different last name? A different school? A different accent?
KEAN
It requires patience.
TEPPER
(leaning in) I do not do patience. I do results. And if Goldman does not value results, I will go somewhere that does.
He walks out. He never looks back.
CUT TO:
INT. SMALL OFFICE — SHORT HILLS, NEW JERSEY — 1993 — DAY
1993 — APPALOOSA MANAGEMENT
A modest office in a New Jersey strip mall. TEPPER and JACK WALTON sit at cheap desks. A sign on the door: APPALOOSA MANAGEMENT. Named after the horse breed. Tepper wanted something that started with A so it would be listed first in directories.
WALTON
Fifty-seven million to start. Not bad. But Goldman manages billions.
TEPPER
Goldman also has ten thousand employees and a partnership that moves at the speed of bureaucracy. It is just us. We see an opportunity, we take it. No committees. No politics. No waiting for someone to decide I am worthy.
THREE
THE TRADE OF THE CENTURY
INT. APPALOOSA MANAGEMENT — FEBRUARY 2009 — DAY
FEBRUARY 2009 — THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
The world is in freefall. Lehman Brothers is dead. AIG was bailed out. Bank of America, Citigroup — the entire financial system is teetering. Bank stocks have fallen 80-95% from their peaks. The market is in panic. TEPPER stares at his screens. His eyes are alive.
ANALYST
David, Bank of America is at three dollars. Citi is at one dollar. The market thinks they are going to zero.
TEPPER
The market is wrong. The government will not let them fail. Geithner, Bernanke, Summers — they will print whatever it takes. The stress tests are coming. When those banks pass, and they will pass, these stocks triple. Maybe more.
WALTON
And if the government lets them fail?
TEPPER
Then we have bigger problems than our portfolio. If Citi and BofA go to zero, the entire economy goes to zero. Cash will not save you. Gold will not save you. Nothing saves you. So the bet is asymmetric — if we are right, we make a fortune. If we are wrong, the world ends and it does not matter anyway.
He starts buying. Billions of dollars of bank preferred stock, common stock, and distressed financial debt.
INT. APPALOOSA — MARCH-DECEMBER 2009 — MONTAGE
MONTAGE: Tepper watches the stress test results — every major bank passes. Bank stocks begin to rise. Three dollars becomes six. Six becomes twelve. Citi restructures. Financial debt that traded at twenty cents rallies to par. Month after month, Tepper's positions soar.
TEPPER
(fist pump) That's what I am talking about!
By year end, Appaloosa has made approximately $7 billion in 2009. Tepper personally earns about $4 billion. It is the single greatest year any hedge fund manager has ever had.
People ask me if I was scared. Of course I was scared. But being scared and being paralyzed are two different things. I was scared and I bought anyway. Because the math was the math. The government was going to save the banks. The stocks were at liquidation prices for going-concern businesses. You did not need to be a genius. You just needed to not be frozen.
CUT TO:
INT. TEPPER'S OFFICE — 2012 — DAY
A brass sculpture of a pair of testicles sits on Tepper's desk. He famously rubs it for luck before big trades. An INTERVIEWER stares at it, bewildered.
INTERVIEWER
Is that... what I think it is?
TEPPER
(grinning) It is exactly what you think it is. This business takes brass ones. I keep them on my desk as a reminder.
INTERVIEWER
You made four billion dollars in one year. What do you do with that kind of money?
TEPPER
You give it away. I grew up with nothing. My dad was an accountant who never made it big. My mom worked her whole life. Pittsburgh kids like me — we remember where we came from. Carnegie Mellon — I gave them sixty-seven million. They renamed the business school after me. A kid from Stanton Heights with his name on a building. My dad would have loved that.
FOUR
THE PANTHER
INT. NFL OWNERS' MEETING — 2018 — DAY
MAY 2018
TEPPER shakes hands in a conference room. He has just purchased the Carolina Panthers for $2.275 billion — the most expensive transaction in NFL history at the time.
NFL COMMISSIONER
Welcome to the NFL, David.
TEPPER
Thank you. I have to tell you — growing up in Pittsburgh, the Steelers were everything. Sunday afternoons with my dad. Now I own a team. Not the Steelers, but still — I own an NFL team. That kid from Stanton Heights... (he trails off, genuinely moved)
INT. BANK OF AMERICA STADIUM — CHARLOTTE — GAME DAY — 2019
TEPPER sits in the owner's box. The Panthers are playing. He is not sitting calmly. He is on his feet, screaming, pounding the glass. He is every bit the kid from Pittsburgh.
TEPPER
(screaming) Run the ball! RUN THE BALL!
An ASSISTANT hands him a note about a market position. He glances at it, scribbles a number, hands it back, and returns to screaming at the field.
EXT. PITTSBURGH SKYLINE — EVENING
The city where David Tepper grew up. The mills are mostly gone now. But the work ethic remains. The toughness remains. The camera finds the neighborhood of Stanton Heights.
TEPPER (V.O.)
Goldman Sachs passed me over for partner because I did not fit their mold. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. If they had made me partner, I would have spent my career making other people rich. Instead, I built Appaloosa. I made the greatest trade of the financial crisis. I gave hundreds of millions to the school that educated me. I bought an NFL team. And I did it all as a kid from Stanton Heights who was not good enough for Goldman Sachs.
A beat.
TEPPER (V.O.)
Thank you, Goldman. Truly.
FADE TO BLACK.
David Tepper's Appaloosa Management has generated over $30 billion in profits since its founding in 1993. His 2009 trade on bank stocks during the financial crisis — earning approximately $7 billion — is widely considered one of the greatest trades in Wall Street history. Tepper donated $67 million to Carnegie Mellon University, which renamed its business school the David A. Tepper School of Business. He purchased the Carolina Panthers in 2018 for $2.275 billion. His net worth is estimated at over $20 billion. He remains based in Florida and continues to manage capital through Appaloosa.