The worst performances since the negative 1.72% in 2002 !
In recent interviews with Bloomberg and CNBC, the 80 year-old Hungarian has gone out of his way to distance himself from last year’s results, stressing he is now retired. For the past three years, BlackRock co-founder Keith Anderson has served as chief investment officer.
It is not clear what bets contributed to Quantum’s small gain last year.
However, it is possible his portfolio’s exposure reflected Soros’ seeming skepticism of the market’s rally and an accompanying economic recovery. In June, he predicted a European recession for 2011 stemming from the Eurozone crisis.
He started 2010 with about $8.8 billion in U.S. equities and slashed that amount to $5.1 billion by the end of the second quarter.
The losses were however, offset by "long gold" positions. The largest equity position all year was in an exchange traded fund that tracks the performance of the price of gold bullion. At the end of the third quarter, two other gold companies were among his four largest holdings: Kimross Gold and Allied Nevada Gold and non-gold related shares among top holdings included Massey Energy and Yahoo.
Beginning of october 2010, he has boosted holdings above 5 percent in five stocks: Verigy, Interoil, Platinum Group, The Female Health Corp. and Plains Exploration and Production.
Last week, Soros told Bloomberg in a television interview the U.S. economy is experiencing a temporary recovery and that the deficit poses a very serious threat to future growth. “Once the economy picks up a little momentum, interest rates will go up and choke of the recovery,” he said in the interview.
