Fed signals easing: Soros, Paulsen, Goldman Sachs already knew

Aug. 22, 2012, 2:14 p.m. EDT

Get ready for QE3

Commentary: FOMC signals another round of bond buys soon

By MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Get ready for QE3.

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

Top officials of the Federal Reserve are leaning strongly toward a third round of bond buying by the Fed, known colloquially as QE3, according to the minutes of the Aug. 1 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.

Here’s the money quote from the FOMC minutes: “Many members judged that additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of the economic recovery.

 Some people already knew this was going to happen:

GEORGE SOROS:

 Billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filed with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.

Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.

At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.

GEORGE SOROS IN HIS OWN WORDS: “I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

And John Paulsen:

By Frank Tang

NEW YORK | Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:09pm EDT

(Reuters) - Prominent hedge fund manager John Paulson raised his stake in gold in the second quarter of 2012, boosting investor confidence that bullion prices have more room to rise this year, a U.S. regulatory filing showed on Tuesday.
  

Home » Goldman Sachs Reiterates Bullish Gold Forecast

GOLDMAN SACHS REITERATES BULLISH GOLD FORECAST

July 16, 2012

 Goldman Sachs reiterated its recommendation for buying gold. Analysts at the bank noted that gold is again moving inversely to U.S. interest rates as measured by yields on inflation-protected government 10-year government bonds. Goldman's economists expect to see "subdued growth and further easing by the Fed," the bank said, adding that gold prices may climb toward its six month forecast of $1,840 a troy ounce.