Famed hedge fund manager George Soros has cut significantly his exposure to gold ETFs and gold miners.
$8.5 billion Soros Fund Management reported its 2012 Q4 movements, which included more than a 50% reduction of his shares in GPDR Gold Trust and dumping its stake in Kinross Gold Corp.
Last August, Soros bought someĀ $337 million worth of GPDR ETF gold shares.
This is not the first time that he has unloaded the precious metal in large quantities: in 2011 he dumped roughly $800 million worth of gold-related investments.
While gold demand soared to a record value of $236.4 billion last year, demand in terms of total tonnage fell roughly 4%, the first such decline in years.
At the end of 2012, Soros rejected the idea of some gold market analysts that the price would climb above the $2,000/ounce mark, calling gold “the ultimate bubble.”
Soros, who gained notoriety as “the man who broke the Bank of England,” for his bets against the pound sterling in the early 1990s, has found recent success predicting the decline of the Japanese yen.
Gold traded today at $1,610.10 around 6-month lows. See a full range of gold price chartsĀ here.