Not Soros. I remember reading a story of a trader who averaged down on Russian bonds and ended up losing $100mm+ or something like that because they thought the outcome an impossibility. Racking my brain but I can't think of who it was. Maybe it wasn't the 90s.
I dunno if you can pin point a trader, but you could be referring to the bailed out hedge fund Long Term Capital Management? Could be others too for sure though so dunno.
it was 1998...might have been Victor Niederhoffer...he went belly up on far eastern stuff like Thai baht etc but maybe on russian bonds as well?
You guys both jogged my memory. It wasn't Victor, but Victor's wiki page references Fooled By Randomness which has the story I'm thinking of. Taleb talks about a guy "Carlos the Emerging Markets Wizard" who seems to be a guy from LTCM