According to people familiar with the matter, since June last year 165438+ 10, Soros Fund has been in new york, Britain, London and
Tokyo, Japan attacked on three sides and quietly increased its holdings of derivatives through various "cover-up" means to achieve the goal of shorting the yen. In fact, Soros, who is in charge of $24 billion, has made a book profit of more than $654.38 billion in the past three months.
At the same time, the source who asked for anonymity also revealed that Soros shorted the yen, which made the company's return on investment reach about 10% last year and 5% this year. As of February 20th 18, the exchange rate of USD against JPY was close to 93.35, with an increase of nearly 20% in the past four months. If calculated according to its assets of $24 billion, the total income may even be close to $654.38+0.2 billion.
Besides Soros, there are other fund giants. Such as Greenlight Capital led by David Einhorn, Third Point led by Daniel Loeb, and Hayman Capital Management led by Kyle Bass. As well as global macro-strategy funds Caxton Associates, Moore Capital and Tudor Investment Corporation. But Soros, who dared to take risks, became the biggest winner.
In the recent attack on the pound and Southeast Asian currencies, many hedge funds followed suit. The characteristic of Soros is that he likes to share the fruits of victory with like-minded people. However, this time, there is no evidence that the aforementioned fund companies have joined forces with Soros.
Over the years, the "Soros whirlwind" in the international financial community has almost swept the world, eclipsing the financial and even political circles of all countries. From the ancient Bank of England, Mexico in South America, to the newly industrialized countries in Southeast Asia, and even the economic behemoth Japan, it was not spared in the Soros whirlwind.
"Shorting" is Soros's killer weapon in the financial world. He can win hundreds of millions of dollars by shorting the pound, Thai baht or Japanese yen. Looking at the ins and outs of these three short positions, it seems that Soros's short-selling secret skills can be better understood.
Shorting the yen has earned nearly $654.38+02 billion.
Different from shorting the pound and Thai baht before, shorting the yen seems to be more cunning and sophisticated.
In recent years, the global economic downturn has made Soros aim at the turbulent fat of Japan. An industry investor believes that the fundamental reason why the yen is short by hedge funds lies in the internal factors of its economic system.
In the past decade, the Japanese government has vigorously promoted the national debt, and the dependence of Japan's fiscal revenue on borrowing has made Japanese national debt snowball, almost reaching a situation of making ends meet.
According to statistics, compared with the debt /GDP ratio of countries at the center of the European debt crisis, which is close to 150%, this figure in Japan is as high as 200%, but it can still be maintained by the Ponzi scheme of borrowing new money to pay off old debts.
As a result, "shorting the yen" has become the hottest speculative transaction in Yueer Street in the past three years. It is understood that from 20 12, 1 1 up to now, the exchange rate of the yen against the US dollar has fallen by nearly 20%, and in February of 20 13, it hit a 33-month low, the worst performance in the same period since 1985.
Soros certainly won't miss this opportunity of nuggets. However, it was Scott Besant, his favorite student who followed him for more than 20 years, who led the short selling.
In the summer of 20 12, Besant officially took over the Soros Fund. When Japan, which suffered a magnitude 9 earthquake, began to import a large amount of crude oil, he predicted that the yen would depreciate and actively looked for opportunities to short. Until 20 12, 10, Bessent went to Japan for inspection. After learning that Shinzo Abe, who is "eager" for further quantitative easing of the yen, is most likely to be elected as prime minister, and he found that a large amount of Japanese funds have been withdrawn from Australian dollar high-interest assets, he felt that the time has come.
In order to raise huge funds for opening positions, Soros sold a lot of stocks. Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Soros sold shares in General Motors and General Electric. And its fund sold 165438+ 10,000 shares of LinkedIn, 260,000 shares of Amazon and 2.5 million shares of Groupon in the last quarter.
If you short the yen in a big way, it will definitely attract the attention of Japanese financial regulators. Besant's main strategy is to amplify leveraged financing through yen arbitrage trading, and buy a large number of derivative product portfolios betting on the depreciation of the yen and the rise of Japanese stocks. According to a person close to Soros Fund, Besant mainly shorted Japanese yen positions, focusing on implementing Japanese yen put options with a price range of 90-95, and using leveraged financing to buy Japanese stocks as a "cover".
This is also Soros's usual practice of shorting the foreign exchange market and doing more stocks and indexes. Therefore, in addition to increasing short positions in the yen, Soros also bought Japanese stocks, accounting for 65,438+00% of the company's internal portfolio. Because Soros believes that there is only one way to solve Japan's economic dilemma, that is, currency depreciation, which will trigger another phenomenon, that is, a short-lived stock index boom, which is destined to be a sure-fire business.
Indeed, the Nikkei 225 index rose by 33% from its low of 20119 in October, which made Soros make another profit.
However, Soros, who is more skillful, also hid a trick to reduce his holdings of gold ETF 2065438+In the fourth quarter of 2002, Soros Fund Management Company reduced its holdings of SPDR gold (1607.60, 3.40, 0.2 1%) trust ETF by 55%. Because Soros knows that once central banks decide to jointly curb the excessive depreciation of the yen, banks will increase the margin of short positions in the yen, and the funds cashed out from the gold ETF will ensure that Soros Fund will continue to short the huge positions in the yen.