He was a billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar[1] tried to corner the world market in silver but were prevented by government intervention.

Hunt owned the Dallas-based Titan Resources Corporation, which is still involved in the exploration of oil in North Africa.

[citation needed] Beginning in the early 1970s, Hunt and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar began accumulating large amounts of silver on Comex through Brodsky and Associates.

[13] Hunt mentored Zahid Bashir, former spokesman and press secretary to the Pakistani Prime Minister, in oil trading.

During the mid-1980s, he contributed almost half a million U.S. dollars to The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL),[14][15] a conservative fundraising organization later heavily implicated in the Iran–Contra affair.

Winner of the U.S. Eclipse Award for Outstanding Breeder in 1976, 1985, and 1987, he owned the 8,000-acre (3,200 ha) Bluegrass Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, and raced thoroughbreds in Europe and North America.

Among his horses, Hunt bred or raced Vaguely Noble, Dahlia, Empery, Youth, Exceller, Trillion, Glorious Song, Dahar and Estrapade.

[3] The United States National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) awarded Hunt the title of "legendary owner-breeder".