market folly

Paulson & Co, the hedge fund ran by John Paulson, has filed an amended 13G with the SEC and has disclosed an 11.7% ownership stake in Mirant (MIR). The 13G was filed due to their activity on November 7th, 2008 and they now own 18,394,000 shares. You can view the rest of Paulson & Co's portfolio holdings here.

Paulson & Co is famous for making a fortune by betting against sub-prime when this whole mess began to unfold. And, it appears as if Paulson is still up to his fortune-making ways. One of his funds has generated a 589% return, which could easily be up there amongst the largest returns by a single hedge fund in a year. Recently, it was announced that one of Paulson's co-portfolio managers would be leaving to start his own fund.

Taken from Google Finance,

Mirant is "an energy company that produces and sells electricity in the United States. The Company owns or leases 10,280 megawatt of electric generating capacity located in markets in the Mid-Atlantic (5,244 megawatt) and Northeast regions (2,689 megawatt) and in California (2,347 megawatt). Mirant also operates an integrated asset management and energy marketing organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. Its customers are independent system operators (ISOs), investor-owned utilities, municipal systems, aggregators, electric cooperative utilities, producers, generators, marketers and industrial customers."