We saw new positions taken in Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) of 1 million shares and in Hess Corp. (NYSE: HES) at 2.7 million shares. Family Dollar Stores Inc. (NYSE: FDO) was a new stake and that was put at 5 million shares.

Some 2.8 million shares were also seen in Vodafone Group PLC (NASDAQ: VOD) which is likely an arbitrage play of sorts in a Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) deal over Verizon Wireless. Paulson also has a merger-arb piece left over in H. J. Heinz Company (NYSE: HNZ) with a stake of 1 million shares.

Cobalt International Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CIE) was a new position, but this was put at about $80 million in shares and in debt securities combined. InterOil Corporation (NYSE: IOC) was a new stake of 1.87 million shares.

MGIC Investment Corp. (NYSE: MTG) was a new stake of 17 million shares which has since risen in value, but there was an additional $152 million in debt securities held there.

Paulson’s position in the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) was listed as 21,837,552 shares worth some $3.37 billion as of March 31. That compares to a December 31, 2012 value of $3.538 billion. Based upon the closing price of $134.63 on Wednesday, that value would be down to $2.94 billion as of now.

Some of these positions were higher in the after-hours from the report. With Paulson under much more criticism than praise of late, you have to wonder if the cynical view of shorting Paulson’s picks may start to take shape. Just keep in mind that Paulson’s losses in gold might not mean that he makes bad decisions elsewhere and indefinitely.

PAULSON’s FULL HOLDINGS

Many factors were cited. The degree of default risk for private creditors has subsided above the “CCC” rating. The Economic Adjustment Programme is on track while there is a semblance of political and social stability. Greece’s primary fiscal adjustment of over 9% of GDP in 2009 to 2012 was called the most ambitious instance of fiscal consolidation among advanced economies in recent times. Fitch also maintains that structural reforms are progressing. It even went as far as to say that extensive debt restructuring has put funding on a more secure footing.

Greece’s sovereign ratings are underpinned by its still high income per capita. Today’s rating report said, “The Greek economy is rebalancing: clear progress has been made towards eliminating twin fiscal and current account deficits and ‘internal devaluation’ has at last begun to take hold. The price has been high in terms of lost output and rising unemployment and the capacity for recovery is still in doubt. Nonetheless, sovereign debt relief and an easing of fiscal targets have lifted Central Bank measures of economic sentiment to a three-year high and the risk of eurozone exit has receded.”

We are seeing a small move as a result of the upgrade. The ADRs in New York trading for National Bank of Greece SA (NYSE: NBG) had been down and now they are flat at $1.54 after trading as high as $1.60. Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF (NYSE: GREK) is also now up about 1.8% at $20.02 in mid-day trading.

FULL FITCH UPGRADE

At the start of the year we forecast a top price on the DJIA of 14,590 based on our same methodology that came within about 1% of the DJIA peak or year-end in each of the prior three years. We need to update this target, but so far all we have said is “higher” than the original 14,590.

Another record is also being seen in the S&P 500 Index. That index has crossed above 1,600 for the first time ever this week. The current daily range on the DJIA is 14,831.58 to 15,006.30, with a 173-point DJIA gain. The S&P 500 Index is up 20 points, and its new daily range is 1,597.60 to 1,618.40.

Hopefully this rally is not being missed out by the public. As we said in our 2013 primer for Sell in May and Go Away, maybe the bulls only cared about a strong ISM projection for 2013 and a surprise in consumer confidence report. Now they have a better-than-expected jobs report to add fuel to the bull market too. What more can be said in a major bull market?

Read Also: J.P. Morgan Says to Buy These High-Yield Dividend Stocks

The new fund is called DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund (NYSE: DSL). What is interesting here is the sheer size of the fund’s initial public offering (IPO) at a whopping $2.3 billion. If you are wondering how that ranks, it is one of the largest IPOs for a closed-end bond fund in history. Some 92 million common shares priced at $25 per share.

DoubleLine Income Solutions Fund initially intends to invest a large portion of its assets in securities of issuers domiciled or organized in emerging market countries. That allocation can change through time. The new fund is also allowed to invest in high-yield bonds (junk bonds) under investment grade, non-Agency mortgage-backed securities, and bank loans.

UBS, BofA/Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo Securities were the lead underwriters in connection with the offering. An overallotment was granted to the underwriting group.

New investors should note that the fund intends to use leverage here. That leverage is initially being set at about one-third over the assets brought in, but it also says that the fund has the versatility to increase, decrease or eliminate its leverage over time and based on market conditions. Here is the fund’s own description:

The Fund’s primary investment objective is to seek high current income; its secondary objective is to seek capital appreciation. The Fund will seek to achieve its investment objectives by investing in a portfolio of investments selected for their potential to provide high current income, growth of capital, or both. DoubleLine expects that the Fund will normally invest at least 80% of its net assets (plus any borrowings for investment purposes) in debt securities and other income-producing investments anywhere in the world, including emerging markets. The Fund may invest in mortgage-backed securities of any kind and may invest without limit in securities rated below investment grade (commonly referred to as “high yield” securities or “junk bonds”). There is no guarantee that the Fund will achieve its investment objectives. Investing in the Fund involves the risk of principal loss.

This marks the second such closed-end fund offering from DoubleLine. The first was the DoubleLine Opportunistic Credit (NYSE: DBL) fund, and its monthly payout rate appears to generate a yield of about 7.5%. At $26.50, its 52-week range is $25.07 to $28.06. The CEFA.com website shows that the first fund trades with a 6.27% premium over its net asset value, with a 14% gain over the past year. Its assets were listed as almost $363 million.

The First Trust Senior Loan Fund will generate high current income and preserve capital by “investing primarily in a diversified portfolio of first-lien senior floating rate bank loans.”

The fund will hold at least 80% of its net assets in senior loans made to businesses operating in North America, under normal market conditions. Up to 20% of the ETF’s total assets may also be allocated to nonsenior loan debt securities, equity securities and warrants.

Senior loans generally are made to companies that are rated under investment-grade and generally are secured by collateral of the issuing company and positioned at the top of the capital structure. Senior loans also have interest rates that reset every 30 to 90 days at a floating rate, and that is where the protection against rising rates comes into play.

According to company, this marks the fourth actively managed ETF from First Trust and will bring the firm’s total number of ETFs to 76. The company’s press release said:

“While an index-based senior loan ETF principally considers the market value of the debt issuance outstanding in its selection methodology, an actively managed ETF gives us the latitude to utilize our rigorous credit process in evaluating an individual company’s ability to repay its debt, which we believe is paramount to driving attractive risk-adjusted and absolute returns over the long term,” said William Housey, CFA, Senior Vice President and Senior Portfolio Manager at First Trust, who serves as one of the Fund’s Portfolio Managers. “Many fixed-income investors are looking for alternative sources of income that have historically performed well when interest rates have increased, such as senior loans, and we believe an actively managed ETF is an ideal way for investors to access a diversified portfolio of senior loans while gaining enhanced transparency and liquidity.”

We would note that investors currently have access to the PowerShares Senior Loan Port (NYSEMKT: BKLN), and this trades close to 2.7 million shares per day on average. There also are several senior floating rate and senior loan closed-end mutual funds as well:

• Apollo Senior Float Rate (NYSE: AFT)
• Blackstone/GSO Senior Floating Rare (NYSE: BSL)
• First Trust Senior Floating Rate II (NYSE: FCT)

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UPDATE at 1:00 PM EST: Mark Porterfield of PIMCO has reached out to say that Bill Gross has the official position of buying gold as the world is reflating (April 15 tweet) as he made a bad call in the Barron’s Roundtable. His tweet today is said to be aimed at levered market assets but not aimed at gold. We will leave the interpretation of the tweets to you as you will see below.

My emailed response to PIMCO was as follows: “I am going to run this as an update but this is Gross’ fault for choosing his wording this way. I am copy/pasting this because it is more than a bit misleading. If he doesn’t want to confuse people like in the death of the cult of equity comments then he really needs to choose his wording better. His wording throws people off balance and is very misleading.”

Here are the Twitter images below:

One thing additional to point out is that Dow Jones newswires had the same interpretation as its FX Chat also interpreted this as a “Bill Gross Sell Gold” call.

We are not running this as a correction but as an update. I don’t want to tell people how to write when they are well respected and tenured as Mr. Gross is, but his wording is more than a bit misleading in this instance.

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We would warn that this may grow, or it may be in a trade, as this is again from the PIMCO Twitter feed. Gross was also shown to have said “buy Treasuries” in his feed. One thing we caution against is that it was shown last week that PIMCO and Bill Gross had again become positive on longer-dated Treasury notes and bonds.

Another warning we would make is that in recent months Mr. Gross had warned over and over that investors should own things that will rise in value against all of the printed money entering the global economy.

This sounds a bit like the death of the cult of equity, but for gold. Gross has previously talked down leveraged finance, and now we are entering a deleveraged phase as well.

As a reminder, Marc Faber pointed that gold could go to $1,300 or even lower and that was just last Friday. We again would ask about Bitcoin: What is the value of a Bitcoin if gold’s value is being bombarded?

What is interesting is that it is not just the value of the trust that has fallen handily. The SPDR website shows that this exchange-traded product has lost major amounts of gold in the last week. We see that the SPDR website shows that the day-end holdings of gold came to 1,154.34 tonnes with a value of $51.757 billion.

This exchange traded fund (ETF) was down to just under $57.2 billion in total assets with some 1,158.56 tonnes in the data we saw over the weekend. As of last Thursday, the SPDR Gold Shares website showed that it had assets of $59.43 billion and 1,181.4 tonnes. The drop of $2.2 billion less in raw dollars and close to 22.8 tonnes less ahead of the weekend looked massive. Monday’s change on the SPDR site showed “only” a drop of just over 4.2 tonnes that were sold out in just one day, but the one-day value drop came to a loss of more than $5.4 billion in raw dollars as the ETF fell an unheard rate of almost 9% in one day.

To show how much the tonnes measured matters here, take a look at the table below from the World Gold Council that was released on Monday. It ranks the nations of the world by the official gold holdings (by tonnes) of each of their central banks.

We also have recently covered the six nations that are buying up all of the world’s gold, countered with a report about the $1,300 and $1,200 gold calls.

As you will see, if the SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEMKT: GLD) were magically transformed into a country or quasi-governmental agency, it would rank as number six in the world with its 1,154.34 tonnes of gold. That puts it ahead of the Bank of China’s 1,054.1 tonnes and ahead of Switzerland, which is just behind China with some 1,040.1 tonnes.

The US Dollar is now at 99.85 Yen and the last time we had Dollar/Yen parity was back in April 2009 when the United States stock market was bouncing heavily from the early 2009 selling climax lows. And now we are seeing the parity challenge at a time when the DJIA and the S&P 500 Index are hitting all-time highs.

The moves in Japan have been unprecedented and for all practical purposes seem uncanny. The WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity (NYSEMKT: DXJ) is up a whopping 26% so far in 2013, while the iShares MSCI Japan Index (NYSEMKT: EWJ) is up 15% so far in 2013.

The ProShares UltraShort Yen (NYSEMKT: YCS) exchange-traded product is actually leveraged two-times (200%) of the inverse of the daily dollar price of the Yen. This is up over 30% year to date in 2013 and hit a new high since 2009.

On a personal note, would it be too much to ask the Bank of Japan to just split its currency 100-for-1 now? That would get the yen on par (or real parity) with the rest of the world’s major currencies. We won’t hold our breath on that wish.

If you look below you can see the five-year chart from Bloomberg on the Dollar/Yen.

As First Solar surged so much in one day, we cannot help but assume that many investors and traders are going to be looking for which ETFs and other pools of investments that they may have missed. Some will look for short sales and some will look for buying opportunities. That being said, First Solar shares lifted just about anything and everything tied to solar and alternative energy in the realm of ETFs and related shares.

First Solar shares closed up 45% at $39.35 and the stock hit a new 52-week high of $41.00 on Tuesday. The trading volume of 39.7 million shares had to be aided by short sellers covering their bad bets and grabbing their throats. That 39 million shares is a near-term record in trading volume. With that much trading volume in one day, you can imagine that the solar bulls and the solar bears are going to be out fighting for blood for the rest of this week.

We have identified the top alternative energy and solar ETFs for investors. So that you would not get tricked into reading a name alone, we also included a brief description to show which are solar-only and which ones include foreign issues.

Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF (NYSEMKT: GEX) run by Van Eck aims to track the overall performance of a global universe of listed companies engaged in the alternative energy industry. It has only $50 million in assets and First Solar has only 3.34% of the assets and is ranked as the number 12 position. It is still the largest solar stock in the ETF and the ETF has many solar players behind it. This has very thin volume and is up 3.3% on the day, and we would point out that many stocks are NOT US-listed shares.

Guggenheim Solar (NYSEMKT: TAN) is a pure-play ETF for solar run by Guggenheim and it has many non-US listed stocks. First Solar is the largest weighting here with 14.5% of the fund’s $57 million in assets under management. With a weighting this high, which likely going to be understated if prices remain static, the ETF was up 15% at $18.15 right before the closing bell.

The iShares S&P Global Clean Energy Index (NASDAQ: ICLN) under BlackRock has only about $27 million in assets and is thinly traded. First Solar ranks as number-9 in the portfolio with a 4.88% weight in the fund. This iShares ETF has many foreign issues as well and was up 5.7% at $7.74 late in the day on thin volume.

Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (NYSEMKT: KWT) is also run by Van Eck but just tracks solar stocks and has thin trading volume with only about $11 million in assets. First Solar leads this ETF with a 9.6% weighting. That alone helped it trade up 12.5% to $40.54 on the day.

There is also the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy (NYSEMKT: PBW) which was up 4.5% at $4.44 late in the day, but this is under Invesco PowerShares. The ETF is composed of companies that focus on greener and generally renewable sources of energy and technologies facilitating cleaner energy. First Solar is ranked all the way down at #17 in weightings at only 2.63% but the ETF aims to keep exposure of these global players at 3% or so max. At least it traded 800,000 shares or so shortly before the close.

First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index (NASDAQ: QCLN) has thin trading volume with only about $25 million in assets under the fund but shares were up 4% at $11.26 right before the closing bell. First Solar ranks only as #7 in weighting with 4.13% of the total fund, but it is the largest solar stock in the fund.

Keep in mind that while these are lower price targets on gold, this is actually above the current price of gold. The real big lowered expectations came in the devil’s metal. Silver is projected now to be 16% lower from its prior targets, down to $31 an ounce for 2013, while 2014 projections were cut by 10% to $34 per ounce.

Deutsche Bank sees continued strength in the U.S. dollar and economic forecasts of rising gross domestic product. The long and short of the matter is that gold is expected to struggle to reach much interest, compared to other assets, with the developing currency trends the way they are today. A rising dollar also hurts the value of gold and silver if other things are static.

Note that Deutsche Bank did not just pick on gold and silver. The firm sees weakness in copper, zinc, aluminum and nickel as well.

So far we are seeing the key ETFs ignore this note. A look at Kitco.com spot prices shows gold up at $1,589 and silver up 2.7% at $28.10. Maybe the gold bugs and silver bugs think it is time for that countercycle bounce that Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was calling for. SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEMKT: GLD) is up 1% at $153.72, and iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT: SLV) is up almost 3% at $27.07.