Billionaire investor George Soros in the second quarter stuck with his big bet on gold but may have sold his holdings in Petroleo Brasileiro SA .
In a quarterly securities filing Monday, Soros Fund Management reported owning substantially fewer U.S. listed stocks than three months earlier. The fund listed $5.1 billion of equities as of June 30, down 42 percent from $8.8 billion at the end of March.
The fund firm said it owned 5.24 million shares of the SPDR Gold Trust worth $638 million as of June 30. Though down slightly from the fund's 5.59 million shares owned at the end of the first quarter, that was the fund's biggest holding by dollar value.
With the sale of so many other holdings, the Gold ETF constituted almost 13 percent of the firm's total equities, up from 7 percent at the end of the first quarter.
There was no sign in the filing of Soros's largest holding from the first quarter, Brazilian oil giant Petrobras. The fund owned almost 15 million shares as of March 31.
Other first quarter top holdings including energy producers Hess Corp and Suncor Energy and telecommunications giant Verizon Communications were slashed. At the end of the second quarter he had $1.5 million worth of Hess, down from $302.5 million, $13.6 million of Suncor, down from $285.3 million and $395,000 worth of Verizon, down from $175.1 million.
Soros does not typically explain his quarter-to-quarter moves. A spokesman for the firm declined to comment.
Money managers can leave stocks out of their quarterly reports or seek confidential treatment if they are actively trading in the shares.
The disappearance of Petrobras from the Soros filing comes as the state-owned oil producer has wrestled with a huge capital raising plan that also includes buying rights to billions of barrels of offshore oil from the government. In June, the company delayed the planned share sale and oil swap from July until September.
Money managers like Soros are required to file form 13-F within 45 days after the end of each quarter. The forms include only U.S.-listed equity securities and related derivatives. Bonds, other securities and short positions are typically not disclosed.
