Interesting graphic courtesy of CaseyResearch that illustrates just how many gold-related entities hedge fund Paulson & Co owns. The yellow bars represent his gold positions while the blue bars are their positions in other equities. In total, Paulson had invested $4.3 billion into gold as of March 31st, 2009.
(click to enlarge)The graphic is a nice touch on visually illustrating just how much gold exposure they now have. As we've mentioned before, Paulson & Co bought a ton of gold via the exchange traded fund GLD to hedge themselves because they have a fund share class denominated in gold. But, we've postulated before that they are doing more than simply hedging. After all, why else would they also be buying stakes in numerous gold miners?
Keep in mind that they have numerous positions in other markets besides equities. So, the percentages on the chart are a bit skewed (they are illustrating it as a percentage of the top 15 equity positions). In reality, it is a slightly smaller piece of the overall Paulson portfolio pie. After all, Paulson did just recently start a real estate recovery fund as well. Also, keep in mind that the vast majority of their equity plays are merger-arbitrage or event driven plays. Lastly, we noted last week that Paulson & Co had been covering their Barclays (BCS) short position as well. You can view Paulson's entire portfolio here.
