Gold's Early-Year Correction Helped Drag Down Einhorn, Paulson Funds

Two of the most prominent new goldbugs, John Paulson and David Einhorn, had their funds impacted in the first quarter by gold's correction at the time. Gold was far from the only reason why the funds didn't perform all that well in 1Q '11, but it was a factor.

In the recent past, funds like Greenlight have been buoyed by rising gold prices.

But for the first quarter, gold prices corrected in January before renewing their upward move later in the period. Mr Einhorn, who is most famous for his bearish views on Lehman Brothers long before its demise, was very early onto the gold trade as a way to express negative sentiment on currencies, most notably the US dollar

John Paulson, who was also one of the early gold bulls, was also hurt by the pause in gold’s upward trajectory in the first quarter as his gold funds ended the period slightly down, capping a volatile three month ride. The gold funds were down more than 12 per cent in January as the price of gold fell more than $100 that month, then rose more than 13 per cent in February as gold reversed direction and ended March slightly higher than at the beginning of the year....

As for Greenlight, shorts that went wrong also impacted their performance.


Needless to say, the pressure gold put on those hedge funds is now gone. Even with gold's recent pullback, it's way above where it was at the end of January.