In 2005—the figures for 2006 are not yet available—Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, of Stamford (he himself lives in Greenwich), made an 18 percent profit on its investors’ $8.5 billion, meaning that Cohen’s income for that one year was in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. This and the figures that follow are the calculations of Trader Monthly and Alpha magazine, a niche publication created for the hedge fund industry. No magazine was ever named with greater psychological accuracy, as we are about to see.

Neck and neck with Cohen were James Simons of East Setauket, New York (between $900 million and $1 billion), and Paul Tudor Jones II of Greenwich (between $800 million and $900 million). Further back in the field, nose to nose at $500 million to $600 million each, were Eddie Lampert of Greenwich and Stephen A. Feinberg and Bruce Kovner of New York City. But all six were far, far behind the old man, T. Boone Pickens, who you’ll recall made $1.5 billion in 2005.

Second, hedge fund managers are possessed by a previously unheard-of status fixation. The bellowing door-banger had that status fixation and then some. In Greenwich such characters are not shoehorned into the same buildings as ordinary rich people, which is to say, those with older and far less money. Given Greenwich’s zoning, these people are not likely to express that status fixation neighbor to neighbor. It comes out in other ways.

While fathers all over America tend to become overzealous, even violent, these days in trying to turn their children into little sports superstars, in Greenwich a father who is one of these people will try to take control of every element in a game: his child’s teammates, their coach, the opposing team’s coach, its players, and most definitely the referees. In a famous instance, one of these people came to watch his teenage daughter play in an ice hockey game against a team from neighboring Port Chester, New York, a town known in Greenwich as the place where one’s plumbers, electricians, computer swamis, roofers, glaziers, air-conditioning mechanics, wall-to-wall-carpet humpers, and household servants live. The man began bellowing so loudly, nobody at the rink could shut out the sound. He upbraided the referees for their poor eyesight and worse judgment. He told his daughter’s coach how to play her and all her teammates and kept him abreast of his mistakes in strategy. He scolded the Port Chester coach and the players for their incessant cheating and malicious roughness. Finally a Port Chester player, a big girl, an Amazon on ice, skated to the stands, charged up the stairs on her skates, and accosted the Mouth, putting her gloved fist six inches from his face and saying, “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna come back and beat the shit outta you!” He shut up.

The tales are endless: the hedge fund founder desperate to get his son into one of Greenwich’s socially swell private schools who clips a six-figure check to the first page of the application, witlessly forcing the school to reject both his son and his check or lose all credibility—

The lone-wolf entrepreneur who keeps an old-money matron and charity fundraiser waiting outside his office in Greenwich for an hour, remains reared back in his chair with his feet propped up on top of his desk as she comes in, listens to her pitch with his feet on top of his desk, utters a sum total of two words, “Not interested,” with his feet up on top of his desk, and offers no farewell, not even a Godspeed tap-tap of the shoes on his feet up on top of the desk—

The many of these people who spend entire meetings with eyes cast down at their BlackBerrys, thumbing out text messages to God-knows-what-people elsewhere—

The hedge fund manager who, during a 40-minute meeting, takes four telephone calls from his wife on the subject of a dinner party they’re planning, down to the level of who should sit next to whom, whether to serve the champagne in the new flutes or the art deco bowl-and-stem glasses, whether or not endive works as an hors d’oeuvre or is it a little too bitter?—

The hedge fund managers who hold meetings with their shirttails hanging outside their jeans, like college boys—

The former manager of Tremont Capital Group who came to meetings with the fund’s investors barefoot—

The twinkie wives of these people who arrive at real estate offices seeking to-die-for houses and apartments wearing jeans and stiletto-heel boots, with gotta-be-blond hair streaming down to their shoulder blades, holding a baby on a cocked hip with one hand and a cell phone to the ear with the other while a limousine waits outside, motor running—