The Bears
During the first quarter of the year George Soros and hedge fund managers Erich Mindich (founder of Eton Park Capital Management) and Paul Touradji (Touradji Capital Management) dumped nearly $1.5bn of gold between them in the SPDR Gold Trust alone.
Soros got rid of $800m leaving him with around $7bn of gold on the trust at the end of Q1compared to $655m at the end of last year; Mindich halved his stake to $326m; Touradji sold around $25m of his trust shares.
The Bulls
Running counter to them all is hedge fund doyen John Paulson who retained his entire $4.4bn holding in SPDR to remain the single largest shareholder in the largest physically-backed gold ETF.
Jim Rogers, veteran investor, recently talked about the value of gold and silver, the strength of commodities, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury yields plus the housing bubble in China. He was interviewed at the CFA Institute Annual Conference in Edinburgh (View the video clip)