Elite traders like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller excel at taking risks, calling the shots, and spotting paradigm shifts, BlackRock's Rick Rieder says

• The world's best traders have several common traits, BlackRock's Rick Rieder says.
• Ray Dalio, David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones, and Stanley Druckenmiller are decisive and take risks.
• The billionaires differ in their specialties but they all closely study the markets, Rieder says.

The world's best traders excel at betting big, calling the shots, and grasping the forces driving financial markets, BlackRock's Rick Rieder says.

The CIO of global fixed income at the world's largest asset manager recently laid out on the "Richer, Wiser, Happier" podcast what elite investors like Ray Dalio, David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones, and Stanley Druckenmiller have in common.

"They all take a lot of risk," Rieder said. "They all like having the ball in their hand at the end of the game. They like being the decision maker. They like being the one who is at the inflection point, like to be the person willing to take that risk."

The traders differ greatly in their investment philosophies and methods of generating returns, Rieder noted. But they're all "pretty extraordinary" in terms of their risk appetite and desire to make decisions, and they all underpin their actions with extensive research, he said.

"They're incredible students of the markets," Rieder said, adding that their specialties range from technical analysis to big-picture themes, historical parallels, and distressed assets.

"Once they understand the news and what's a critical inflection point ... they're really, really good in different ways at saying, 'Okay, this is a regime evolution, time to go,'" he aid.

The billionaires showcased their audacity, decisiveness, and opportunism during the artificial-intelligence boom this year. Tepper's Appaloosa Management, Jones' Tudor Investment Corporation, Dalio's Bridgewater Associates, and Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office have all bet on microchip-maker Nvidia and OpenAI-backer Microsoft this year, two of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI frenzy so far.