It’s 13F revelation time, and the headlines are full of news about big investor George Soros going hot for Apple and dumping on gold in the second quarter. However, there’s something else in those numbers that should make investors sit up a little.
Possibly buried amid the Apple excitement is the fact that Soros Fund Management’s biggest position is a put on the S&P 500 ETF SPY -1.19% . Soros bought a put on 1,248,643 SPY units in the quarter. A put option gives the owner the right to sell a specific amount of an asset at a set price within a set time, and generally means the investor expects that asset will go down in price.
So yes, as Bullion Baron and Whalewisdom point out, Soros is making a huge bet on the S&P 500 SPX -1.22% going lower.
Doing the calculations, the Baron points out that the SPY put position — relative to the total size of the fund — rose from 1.28% to 4.79% in the first quarter, more than tripling. It also went up 13.54% in the second quarter, nearly tripling again.
History has a story to tell about big calls from Soros and people should be paying attention