Greenlight Capital Inc., the $5.1 billion hedge fund run by David Einhorn, invested in gold for the first time in the fourth quarter, making a bullion-backed exchange-traded fund its largest holding, Bloomberg reported.
The New York-based fund bought $319.7 million of the SPDR Gold Trust, an ETF backed by gold bars, as well as $108.4 million of the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, according to a filing made today to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Greenlight said last month in a note to clients that it had turned to gold for the first time to mitigate the effects of the global economic slowdown and governments' efforts to reverse it. The precious metal had its eighth straight annual gain last year, helping the SPDR Gold Trust's bullion holdings jump to 971 metric tons and surpass official gold reserves of China and Japan.
The SPDR Gold Trust has gained 7.7 percent since the beginning of the fourth quarter, while the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF has gained 5.7 percent.
Greenlight, which Einhorn, 40, started in 1996, has returned an annual average of 21 percent from its Greenlight Capital LP fund. That fund lost 23 percent in 2008, its first annual loss.