George Soros is back on the market



06/09/2016 3:02 PM


The US media are reporting that famous investor George Soros returned to the personal participation in auctions after a long hiatus. He started buying gold and shares in gold-mining companies, believing that this way he will be able to coin money in a weak economic activity.



Niccolò Caranti
Well-known investor and financier George Soros, who have not personally participated in the exchange auctions for several years, returned to the market. According to Wall Street Journal, the 85-year-old businessman was directly involved in recent operations of its fund Soros Fund Management. The transactions have a "bearish" character: the fund buys and sells shares of gold and other assets associated with it, and the rest of the precious metals. The nature of such purchases led observers to suppose that George Soros is pessimistic about immediate prospects of the US and world economy. He probably assumes that gold and gold stocks will rise in price as other investors will shift in the asset against the backdrop of economic instability, which has already happened more than once. Assets under the fund’s management are currently estimated at $ 30 billion, whereas the businessman’s private assets are about $ 25 billion.

Since the beginning of the year, price of gold rose by 19%. It is reported that Soros Foundation has bought 19 million shares of Barrick Gold in the first quarter, thanks to what the company has made $ 90 million. Media also reported about the purchase of 1 million shares of Silver Wheaton, which increased by 28% from the beginning of the second quarter.

For several years, George Soros personally was not involved in the transactions, allowing management to run his fund. Instead of trading, the well-known businessman had focused on charity, social and political activities. In particular, in 2015, he donated more than $ 6 million on Hillary Clinton’s campaign trail. However, the social activity does not prevent the well-known financier from closely monitoring developments in the markets and in the economy. In an interview with WSJ he said that he is concerned about slowdown of the Chinese economy and the likely impact of this on the global economy. He believes that one of the reasons for such a situation in China is "the ongoing internal conflict in the political leadership", because of which the country is slow in carrying out economic reforms. 

source: wsj.com


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