Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Greenlight Capital Jumps on Gold Bandwagon

I kind of like David Einhorn, a hedge fund manager. He's honest enough to publicize accounting fraud and bet his own money accordingly through his firm Greenlight Capital. He's once again putting his money where his mouth is, this time regarding gold:

Greenlight said in the letter that in addition to buying gold, it has added call options on gold and the Market Vectors Gold Miners exchange-traded fund to its other investments.
(snip)

The Federal Reserve’s policy of taking unorthodox steps to boost the supply of credit is essentially “printing money,” Greenlight said. The government’s “aggressive” fiscal policy also signals all efforts will be made to stem the effects of the current economic problems, the fund said.
I couldn't agree more with their rationale. Greenlight is even betting on GDX and its options. That's similar to the gold strategy I've been using since last year! Woo hoo! I called it first! Okay, enough celebrating.

This will likely start a trend among hedge fund managers who survive the shakeout. A lot of hedgies have run out of ideas after their magical multivariate algorithms have blown up their returns, so they'll start gravitating to the one asset class that has been ignored by the debt bubble: GOLD. The stampede will start this year. Thanks, David. Let's do lunch.

Nota bene: Anthony J. Alfidi is long IAU and GDX (both with covered calls).