John Paulson

[winston]

Presenting John Paulson's Complete Les Echos Interview In Which He Is Bearish On Housing, Bullish On Gold
by Tyler Durden

Specifically, Paulson is now far more bearish on US housing, blaming it on Frank-en-Dodd, and he continues to be as bullish as ever on gold.

To wit: "Over time, the price of gold will rise in proportion to the creation of paper dollars. In an inflationary environment where the demand for protection increases, the price of gold can rise even further. Historically, gold has always been a safe haven against inflation and a safe haven in times of political instability. Today we face both risks."

As for whether or not we will have QE3: Paulson is not the guy to ask. He is as confused as the Fed presidents.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/presen ... llish-gold?

[winston]

John Paulson: Gold Could Hit $4,000 an Ounce By Forrest Jones

Gold could hit $4,000 an ounce over the next three to five years, says hedge-fund manager John Paulson. Gold is currently trading around $1,500 an ounce.

The United States and the United Kingdom have flooded their respective economies with money in order to fuel a more-robust economic recovery.

That rush of money will apply inflationary pressures on those economies, making gold poised to the hit the $4,000 mark in a few years, Paulson says, according to The Wall Street Journal.

John Paulson, head of the hedge fund that bears his name, was the top-earning manager of 2010, according to AR Magazine.

He raked in $4.9 billion in 2010 thanks to bets on gold at Paulson & Co., shattering his record in 2007, when he earned $3.7 billion by betting that housing market was about to collapse.

Precious metals have been soaring lately, as investors buy them as a hedge to volatility in currency markets.

"There’s been a resumption of sovereign risk worries in Europe, safe haven buying related to Japan and more recently, discussions over U.S. debt," says James Steel, precious metals analyst at HSBC in New York, according to the Financial Times.

Silver is trading at over $49 an ounce, its highest level since a supply squeeze in 1980, prompting some to point that a correction is due.

In fact, silver has gained more than 160 per cent in the past year thanks in part to heavy individual interest.

"Should that retail interest in silver slow down just a little bit, we would expect prices to correct quite sharply," says Suki Cooper, precious metals analyst at Barclays Capital, according to The Financial Times.


http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Joh ... /id/395099

[winston]

"It's an honest mistake"

" He stands corrected"


A fantastic opinion piece on John Paulson's "epic disaster" in China
From The Reformed Broker:

There's a major test coming up this week for denizens of the financial blogging complex...we're going to separate the tourists from the locals, the chattering classes from those who've actually seen combat.

The news is out that hedge fund giant John Paulson has "taken a bath" in shares of Chinese über-fraud Sino-Forest ($SNOFF). Estimates put his loss for investors in his fund at $720 million. Even for a $37 billion manager, this is an epic disaster. The fund in question is said to have lost 13% just in the last month.

This is a huge story with one very obvious angle that will be difficult for the clickwhores to resist:

Is John Paulson, who emerged from the financial crisis with $30 billion in gains, a one-hit wonder?


http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/0 ... ento-mori/

[iam802]

In the next decade, the new rising 'funds managers' will be from China as well

They will share stories on how they profit when others make honest mistakes.

[iam802]

Exclusive: Paulson says bets were too aggressive

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/ ... MQ20110721

(Reuters) - A humbled John Paulson told investors on Thursday he was "too aggressive" with some of the stock bets in his flagship funds and he is trimming back some of his riskiest holdings.

The hedge fund manager told clients in a conference call that he was dialing back the risk by moving away from bank holdings with heavy mortgage exposure.

The investor call came after a tumultuous first half of the year for Paulson, whose flagship Paulson Advantage fund lost about 12 percent. A related fund called Advantage Plus was off 18 percent.

He told investors that in the wake of the Advantage funds' hefty losses on Sino Forest, a Chinese lumber and forestry company, he intends to beef up his Asian research team. Paulson did not point fingers at anyone for the Sino Forest debacle. But the manager said his 120-person firm needs to know the region better before it takes new bets.

"We'll have to strengthen our research capabilities there," Paulson said on the conference call for investors which Reuters heard portions of.

The billionaire trader said on the call that investing with him would never be free from turbulence, but he said that global economic factors have made this year's ride bumpier than he is willing to stomach.

Europe's debt crisis, fears about new financial market regulation and a slow U.S. economic recovery created problems for the New York-based firm, said Paulson, one of the world's most closely watched investors.

But some of the losses, like Sino Forest, were of his own making. During the call, he took about 100 minutes to explain to investors his missteps and how he was reshaping the portfolio in response the funds' poor performance this year.

The timing of the call was critical because it came as large institutional investors like state pension funds and wealthy private investors have only a few weeks left to put in a request to withdraw money from the funds. Already, some investors have told Reuters they intend to put in redemptions by the middle of August.

TALK OF THE TOWN

Until this year, Paulson was the toast of the $2 trillion hedge fund world after his big gamble on the collapse of the U.S. housing market made him a billionaire many times over. Paulson now says that his timing may be off on his bet that U.S. economy is poised for a strong rebound.

Paulson conceded that his research analysts were hearing rumblings about problems at Sino Forest for months and that his trading desk received requests to borrow the stock to short it. Indeed Paulson was trimming the position when the Muddy Waters research report alleging account problems hit.

"I should have been more receptive to this information," Paulson said.

LESS LONG

The Advantage Funds oversee roughly $18 billion in assets, a big portion of Paulson & Co's roughly $38 billion in assets.

Paulson said he cut the net long exposure from roughly 81 percent to about 60 percent, and plans to cut it more. "Eighty-one percent was way too high. We cannot operate the fund at that level," he said. "I'd like to bring the risk down further to about 50 percent."

As a long-time owner of large financial companies such as Bank of America (BAC.N) and Citigroup (C.N), Paulson said the former -- his sixth largest position at the end of the first quarter -- was "somewhat of a disappointment."

He said his analysts did not expect the magnitude of the mortgage problems to be so great.

To reposition the portfolio, Paulson said he diversified into financial companies with less exposure to mortgage loans, noting that he liked Capital One (COF.N) and Wells Fargo (WFC.N), two names he owned at the end of the first quarter.

He also said he increased his bet that the euro currency would fall as a hedge against further fallout from Europe's debt crisis.

Note:
Well Fargo. Heard from a friend that the immediate boss was layoff (just this week).

[winston]

Dont be so sad if you lost money this year.

You are probably performing better than Paulson's largest fund, which is down 31% YTD

[winston]

Paulson's Advantage Fund down 28% till Sept 2.

And things were not that rosy from Sep 2 till present ...

[winston]

Paulson loses more in September , fund now off 47 pct
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) - Hedge fund manager John Paulson lost more money in September thanks to ill-timed bets on an elusive economic recovery that left one of his biggest funds off 47 percent, two people who saw the numbers said on Saturday.

Paulson & Co, one of the world's five biggest hedge funds, released the numbers to investors late on Friday just hours before many on Wall Street headed off for a holiday weekend.

The Advantage Plus fund, which uses some borrowed money to help boost returns, tumbled 19.35 percent last month, leaving it off 46.73 percent for the year, the firm told clients.

September 's double digit drop at Paulson ensures him a spot as one of the industry's very biggest losers this year. While many other fund managers, including Lee Ainslie and Leon Cooperman, are also nursing losses, none are as dramatic as the Paulson drop, investors said.

The average hedge fund lost 2.81 percent last month and is now off 4.74 percent for the year, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.

Time is now ticking for Paulson as his investors have less than one month left to decide whether to pull their money out of the Advantage Funds -- the firm's biggest -- by the Oct. 31 notice deadline.

Paulson's gold fund, which includes the metal and mining companies, lost 16.35 percent last month and trimmed its year-to-date gain to 1.34 percent.

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/Paulso ... 4.html?x=0

[winston]

Paulson braces investors for the worst

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Paulson could face a two-pronged problem in the coming weeks as outside investors and possibly even some of his own employees walk in the wake of the hedge fund firm's worst-ever returns.

Many of Paulson's funds have lost big this year, as the well-known money manager bet wrong that the U.S. economy would revive sooner rather than later.

However, in the days leading up to the investor call, some on Paulson's team had been telling brokers and others on Wall Street that at least 20 percent of the $30 billion in assets the fund manages could be redeemed.

The deadline to get out of the biggest funds -- the Advantage funds -- is coming up on October 31.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/ ... inessearly

[winston]

Paulson & Co. Cuts Position in SPDR Gold Trust Holdings By Debarati Roy

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Paulson & Co., the U.S. hedge fund run by John Paulson, cut a stake in the SPDR Gold Trust, an exchange-traded fund backed by the precious metal, during the third quarter, according to a government filing.

Paulson held 20.3 million shares in the SPDR Gold Trust as of Sept. 30, compared with 31.5 million a quarter earlier, a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

Source: Bloomberg