George Soros: The man who made $18.6m profit in 36 hours

HE is regarded as the man who broke the Bank of England, and soon billionaire George Soros could be known as the man who made $18.65m profit in just 36 hours.

HE is regarded as the man who broke the Bank of England, and soon, 82-year-old billionaire George Soros could be known as the man who made $18.65m profit in just 36 hours.

Rumours were rife yesterday that the Hungarian-American business magnate was planning a raid of our dollar ahead of the RBA interest rate cut announcement.

Speculation built further after it was rumoured a large number of trades shorting the dollar totalling $US1 billion being placed via Hong Kong and Singapore by the business magnate’s Soros Fund Management.

If the rumour is true, it would mean Mr Soros would have pulled off a gamble not once but in fact three times with different foreign exchange brokers in Asia, pulling in cool $US60million in total, Fairfax reports.

The Aussie dollar was trading $US1.0320 on spot markets at the time, but fell on the back of bad jobs and retail data.

Meanwhile the Australian dollar fell to a fresh two-month low during overnight trade, before recovering most of its lost ground amid gains on US share markets.

The currency fell to 101.55 US cents early this morning as traders in Europe and the US reacted to the Reserve Bank of Australia cutting its key interest rate to a record low of 2.75 per cent.

Shorting the dollar or short selling involves the practice of selling securities - in this case the Australian dollar - or other financial instruments that are not currently owned, with the intention of repurchasing them at a lower price.

Mr Soros is famously known as the man who broke the Bank of England after made a $1 billion profit when he shorted the British Pound in 1992, using the German Mark.

The billionaire is also regarded as a huge philanthropist having given away more than $8 billion to human rights causes.