Soros bearish turn was reported over two months ago, when the WSJ reported that the recently hacked billionaire had returned to active investing at his Soros Fund Management with “Big, bearish” bets on economic turmoil. Yesterday, in his latest 13F we got confirmation of just that when the hedge fund revealed that it had doubled the amount of its SPDR Puts to 4 million, or a notional equivalent of $839 million as of June 30, up from $431 million as of Q1.
While the actual notional amount is a far cry from previous nominal holdings, which peaked in June 2014, as a percentage of total assets, the bearish bet – which comes with the usual caveat that this position was actual as of 45 days ago and so much may have changed since then – was near a record high as a percentage of total Soros assets, which in Q2 were $4.7 billion, down substantially from the Q2 2014 peak of $13.2 billion.
This bearish bias may explain the recent turmoil at Soros’ hedge fund, where as reported last week, CIO Scott Bessent stepped down after only 8 months at the job.
And in other notable position moves, Soros Fund Management sharply cut its shares in gold in the second quarter. The fund reduced its holdings in SPDR Gold Trust to 240,000 shares worth $30.4 million, from 1.05 million shares worth $123.5 million in the first quarter. Soros also drastically cut its stake in Barrick Gold Corp to 1.07 million shares worth $22.9 million, from 19.4 million shares in the first three months of 2016, the filing showed.
It appears that Soros is taking at least one part of Tepper’s advice, namely the hunker down in cash. As to Soros’ alleged bearishness, he can’t possibly be anywhere near as gloomy as Icahn, who as we reported last week, kept his net short exposure at a record -149%.
via http://ift.tt/2bb1Quc Tyler Durden