YCHARTS.com's  Instablog

John anticipated the subprime mortgage melt-down in 2007 and reaped the rewards but now he is buying the banks.  Should you?

As many investors know, John’s firm has to disclose all of their holding in quarterly filings with the SEC.  13F Filings are a great way to find companies to consider exploring further.  Institutional investment managers who exercise investment discretion over $100 million must report their holdings on Form 13F with the SEC.

Paulson & Co. was founded in 1994 and is based in New York.  Paulson leverages merger arbitrage, long/short, and event-driven strategies. They invest based on fundamental analysis.

Here are two quotes from Paulson on his investment philosophy.

“Watch the downside, the upside will take care of itself. That’s been a very important guiding philosophy for me. Our goal is to preserve principal, not to lose money. Our investors will forgive us if our returns don’t beat the S&P in a given year, but we are not forgiven if we have significant drawdowns.”

“Risk arbitrage is not about making money, it’s about not losing money. If you can minimize the downside, you get to keep all your earnings and that helps performance.”

Below are the companies Paulson & Co. own based on their 13F Filing report for the quarter ended: June 30, 2009

Company Symbol % of Portfolio

AT & T Inc. T  0.44%

Anglogold Ashanti AU 9.16%

Bank of America BAC 12.95%

Boston Scientific Corp BSX 5.87%

CB Richard Ellis group Inc CBG 0.73%

CF Industries Holdings Inc CF 0.22%

Capital One Financial Corp COF 2.17%

Centennial Communication Corp CYCL 0.24%

Centex Corp CTX 0.06%

Cheniere Energy Inc LNG 0.13%

Data Domain Inc. DDUP 0.40%

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc DPS 0.19%

Embarq EQ 0.49%

Fifth Third Bankcorp FITB 0.21%

First Horizon National Corp FHN 0.21%

Gold Fields Ltd. GFI 1.62%

Goldman Sachs GS 1.72%

Humana Inc HUM 0.94%

JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM 1.39%

Kimco Realty Inc KIM 0.01%

Kinross Gold Corp KGC 3.28%

Liberty Media Corp LMDIA 3.12%

Market Vectors ETF Trust GDX 1.32%

Marshall & Ilsley Corp MI 0.34%

Mirant Corp MIR 1.67%

People’s United Financial PBCT 0.24%

Pepsi Bottling Group Inc PBG 1.65%

Pepsiamericas Inc. PAS 0.66%

Petro-Canada PCZ 2.97%

Philip Morris International Inc PM 2.29%

Ultrashort Financial SKF 0.49%

Regions Financial Corp RF 0.83%

SPDR Gold Trust GLD 16.77%

Schering Plough Inc SGP 8.08%

State Street Corp STT 0.19%

Sun Microsystems Inc. JAVA 3.98%

Suntrust Bank Inc. STI 0.14%

Wyeth Com WYE 12.82%

Total Portfolio 100.00%  $17.13B

Disclosure: No positions