Intuition was telling me something was going on these past few days in the gold market. Our investment team was watching gold and gold stocks take a tumble for no obvious reason. It wasn’t only us who felt this way: many analysts were caught off-guard. One comment from Barclays Research indicated that the week was unusually “brutal … with quite a few confused participants with some seemingly positive aspects of the market not having an impact.”
My hunch was realized only days later when Zero Hedge posted that Morgan Stanley Wealth Management recommended that its clients dump two of John Paulson’s funds. As MS clients redeemed their shares, the hedge fund giant became a forced seller of gold and gold stocks.
What complicates the gold market is the fact that Paulson is such a big fan of the yellow metal that he offers a “gold share class” to investors, meaning shares are denominated in physical gold. The drawback is when an investor redeems shares, his firm has to convert from gold back to dollars, which forces him to sell his hedged position in the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD). The unfortunate consequence of his actions is a short-term decline in the gold price as the market adjusts.
The chart below highlights how gold, the SP 500 Index and the 10-Year Treasury yield were plodding along together, until Dec. 12, when the metal dramatically dropped off. This is possibly the day “Paulson may have gotten the redemption fax,” says Zero Hedge.
Paulson is only one high-profile example of a stream of hedge fund managers who have suffered liquidations this year. Much to our chagrin, gold and the gold mining industry have been on the wrong side of these trades.
The metal also took a hit recently when a large investor, or a group of investors, made a negative bet on gold futures, with a speculative put position from January to February nearly doubling in size. Credit Suisse suggests it may be the action of a hedge fund.
Paulson’s loss can be your gain. At US Global Investors, we study probability and statistical models to help us improve our odds in the market. It’s like counting cards in Vegas – there’s no guarantee you’ll hit the jackpot, but you usually improve your odds if you understand the math of probabilities and place your bets accordingly.
