Big Booster

Read his story: It's the morning after his 78th birthday, and T. Boone Pickens is staring at a monitor, watching the energy futures market. He's already been to the gym, done his daily workout. Now it's time for bid-ness.

The prices of crude oil and heating oil and gasoline and everything else move up and down. Outside his spacious office, the staff at BP Capital — the $2 billion-plus fund that Pickens runs — move swiftly around the building. The décor reflects the atmosphere: serious and casual, like the man himself. Near a framed copy of Pickens on the cover of Time is a trophy case filled with Oklahoma State memorabilia.