Gold to soar! Billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson must have received the memo… Paulson is famous for making a fortune shorting the subprime mortgage market before it collapsed. He made another fortune going long financial stocks after the crash. Then, he turned his focus to gold, betting huge sovereign debts and weakening currencies would send the precious metal soaring. He also believes gold stocks are historically cheap.
In fact, he has an entire fund dedicated to gold… and it's down 23% this year. But Paulson is doubling down. He purchased an additional 4.5 million shares of SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). It's his firm's single largest position. He also bought more shares of the mining company NovaGold Resources, according to yesterday's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gold-related securities now make up 44% of the $21 billion in equity assets his firm, Paulson & Co., has under management.
And though it's a smaller position, Soros Fund Management – the hedge fund started by billionaire George Soros – doubled its position in GLD to 884,400 shares in the last quarter.