Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisor’s, a hedge fund with $8.9 billion in assets under management as of the end of July, sold stakes in some of the largest gold and silver ETFs during the second quarter after establishing those positions in the first quarter.
Omega sold $13.9 million in the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEArca: GLD), $4.39 million of the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca: SLV) and $4.35 million of the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSEArc: GDX) in the second quarter, report Eric Lam and Katie Brennan for Bloomberg.
Gold and silver plunged during the second quarter, sliding 23% and 32%, respectively. Those declines led to massive outflows from gold ETFs such as GLD. Once the second-largest ETF in the world, GLD is now fifth among U.S.-listed ETFs. As of the end of July, investors had pulled $19.8 billion from GLD. Investors withdrew $2.6 billion from gold ETFs in July following redemptions of $4.3 billion in June, said BlackRock. [GLD Struggles to Keep Spot Among Largest ETFs]
Although outflows from mining ETFs such as GDX have not been nearly as bad, the year-to-date performances of those funds have been noticeably worse than precious metals’ futures prices. Year-to-date, GDX has plunged almost 37%.
However, GDX and rival funds have notched sharp rebounds in recent weeks. Since the start of the current quarter, GDX is up 14.7%. The largest gold miners fund has surged 17.5% in just the past month. [Have Gold Miners ETFs Finally Hit a Bottom?]