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发帖数: 699 | 1 NEW YORK (Reuters) - A humbled John Paulson told investors on Thursday he
was "too aggressive" with some of the stock bets in his flagship funds and
he is trimming back some of his riskiest holdings.
The hedge fund manager told clients in a conference call that he was dialing
back the risk by moving away from bank holdings with heavy mortgage
exposure.
The investor call came after a tumultuous first half of the year for Paulson
, whose flagship Paulson Advantage fund lost about 12 percent. A related
fund called Advantage Plus was off 18 percent.
He told investors that in the wake of the Advantage funds' hefty losses on
Sino Forest, a Chinese lumber and forestry company, he intends to beef up
his Asian research team. Paulson did not point fingers at anyone for the
Sino Forest debacle. But the manager said his 120-person firm needs to know
the region better before it takes new bets.
"We'll have to strengthen our research capabilities there," Paulson said on
the conference call for investors which Reuters heard portions of.
The billionaire trader said on the call that investing with him would never
be free from turbulence, but he said that global economic factors have made
this year's ride bumpier than he is willing to stomach.
Europe's debt crisis, fears about new financial market regulation and a slow
U.S. economic recovery created problems for the New York-based firm, said
Paulson, one of the world's most closely watched investors.
But some of the losses, like Sino Forest, were of his own making. During the
call, he took about 100 minutes to explain to investors his missteps and
how he was reshaping the portfolio in response the funds' poor performance
this year.
The timing of the call was critical because it came as large institutional
investors like state pension funds and wealthy private investors have only a
few weeks left to put in a request to withdraw money from the funds.
Already, some investors have told Reuters they intend to put in redemptions
by the middle of August.
TALK OF THE TOWN
Until this year, Paulson was the toast of the $2 trillion hedge fund world
after his big gamble on the collapse of the U.S. housing market made him a
billionaire many times over. Paulson now says that his timing may be off on
his bet that U.S. economy is poised for a strong rebound.
Paulson conceded that his research analysts were hearing rumblings about
problems at Sino Forest for months and that his trading desk received
requests to borrow the stock to short it. Indeed Paulson was trimming the
position when the Muddy Waters research report alleging account problems hit.
"I should have been more receptive to this information," Paulson said.
LESS LONG
The Advantage Funds oversee roughly $18 billion in assets, a big portion of
Paulson & Co's roughly $38 billion in assets.
Paulson said he cut the net long exposure from roughly 81 percent to about
60 percent, and plans to cut it more. "Eighty-one percent was way too high.
We cannot operate the fund at that level," he said. "I'd like to bring the
risk down further to about 50 percent."
As a long-time owner of large financial companies such as Bank of America (
NYSE:BAC - News) and Citigroup (NYSE:C - News), Paulson said the former --
his sixth largest position at the end of the first quarter -- was "somewhat
of a disappointment."
He said his analysts did not expect the magnitude of the mortgage problems
to be so great.
To reposition the portfolio, Paulson said he diversified into financial
companies with less exposure to mortgage loans, noting that he liked Capital
One (NYSE:COF - News) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC - News), two names he owned
at the end of the first quarter.
He also said he increased his bet that the euro currency would fall as a
hedge against further fallout from Europe's debt crisis. | c*******9
发帖数: 6411 | 2 Paulson has bad luck this year, and normally bad luck will not just go away |
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