Did Soros Bet $1 Billion on U.S. downgrade in July?

Kenneth Schortgen Jr
Finance Examiner
August 8, 2011

In late July, a mystery investor or hedge fund made a nearly $1 Billion bet that the US would lose their AAA credit rating, and on August 5th when S&P issued its downrade to AA+, that investor now stands to make a return of 1000%, and leads to serious questions of who the mystery trader is, and did they have insider information well before hand.

In 1992, George Soros nearly destroyed the British Pound, and made a profit of $1 Billion by betting agains the currency. The British government had been propping up the Sterling for some time, and this led to a weakness that Soros was able to exploit when rejection of the Maastricht Treaty led to a massive devaulation of the Pound, and a huge profit for his bet.

That belief, or perhaps knowledge of events is very similar to the bet placed against the American credit rating just two weeks ago.

Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday – a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating.

In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world.

The massive trade wasn’t placed in bonds themselves; it was placed in the futures market.

The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures executed at 125-01.

The value of the trade was about $850 million dollars. In simple terms, if that was a direct bond buy, no one would be talking about it.

However, with the use of futures, you have to have margin capacity behind the trade. That means with a single push of a button someone was willing to commit more than $1 billion of real capital to this trade with expectations of a 10-to-1 return ratio. – ETF DAILY News

While the identity of the ‘mystery investor’ remains unknown, many indicators do point to George Soros as the principal benefactor. First, Soros has been tied to the Obama administration since the 2008 elections. In February of this year in fact, a Soros investment fund profited well on President Obama’s new green energy policies. Secondly, right about the exact same time as the $1 Billion bet took place on the US credit rating downgrade, Soros made public the move to divest his management fund of outside investors, and quietly go private. This move allows him to make trades and investments without being required to notify the SEC under the new Dodd-Frank act passed in Congress last year.

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This article was posted: Monday, August 8, 2011 at 12:42 pm

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