Three New York traders celebrated one of the biggest windfalls in Wall Street history after making a £2bn bet that sub-prime mortgages would fall in value.
The trio at Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, watched their winnings grow as the rising numbers of mortgage defaults caused chaos in a worldwide financial crisis.
Dan Sparks, 40, Michael Swenson, 40 and Josh Birnbaum, 35, bet that the sub-prime mortgage market was in trouble and scooped four billion dollars (£1.96bn) for the bank, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Their win, one of the biggest windfalls in the securities industry in years, has wiped out between 1.5 billion dollars (£0.73bn) and two billion dollars (£0.98bn) of mortgage-related losses elsewhere at the bank.
Goldman Sachs is now expected to report a record 11 billion dollar (£5.3 billion) annual profit - and the three traders are in line for bonuses of between five million dollars (£2.45m) and 15 million dollars (£7.34m).
The Wall Street Journal revealed how Mr Swenson would leave his home early enough to travel to the office from New Jersey and fit in a workout at the gym before arriving at his desk by 7.30am.
Mr Sparks, who commuted in to Manhattan from New Canaan, Connecticut, would leave his house by 5.30am.
With no time for breaks, the trio ate breakfast and lunch at their desks - a chicken and vegetable salad from a nearby deli for Mr Swenson and a chicken or turkey sandwich for Mr Birnbaum.
They often worked past midnight and missed weekend trips with their families as they battled with their bosses to keep their bets from being whittled away by more conservative risk managers.
Investment banks tend to keep a tight leash on traders, with memories of Nick Leeson's losses of £827m from unapproved trading which sank Barings Bank in 1995 at the forefront of their minds.
