Free Republic

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, who told investors as recently as last month that they should own gold, cut his holdings in the metal by more than half as prices plunged into a bear market. Paulson & Co., the largest investor in the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest exchange-traded product for the metal, pared its stake to 10.2 million shares in the three months ended June 30 from 21.8 million at the end of the first quarter, according to a government filing Wednesday. The New York-based firm, which manages $18 billion, cut its ownership for the first time since...

A registered Democrat, Mr. Loeb has given and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats. So it came as quite a surprise on Friday, when Mr. Loeb sent a letter to his investors that sounded as if he were preparing to join Glenn Beck in Washington over the weekend. ...some of the president's biggest supporters have so publicly derided his policies, even at the risk of hurting their ability to influence the party in the future

A letter from a hedge fund manager to his investors about Washington’s policies is stirring up controversy on a sensitive topic among the moneyed elite, The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in his latest DealBook column. The poison pen of Daniel S. Loeb took a jab recently at one of his former allies, the Obama administration, deploring the redistribution of resources and power that Wall Street has come to fear with the passage of the financial regulation overhaul. Some say that they knew Obama would seek higher taxes and tighter regulation; that was O.K. What they say they...