Despite cutting his GLD holdings at the end of 2011, Billionaire John Paulson is, according to a letter to investors obtained by Bloomberg LP, bullish on bullion, and adding to his 17 million+ share position in the yellow metal ETF.

Similar stellar hedge fund managers, who have been trading the trend and more recently cashed in on paper profits,  have purportedly since used the recent lackluster period of early January through mid February, in which gold traded down 20% from all time highs to re-load.

One in-the-know hedge fund trader (who asked not to be identified) observed, “you can look at 13-F’s and make all the interpretations that you want, but those filings only report yesterday’s news, whether its Soros adding, or SAC cutting back, or Tudor liquidating all of its GLD during the last quarter; the fact is, everyone still has an axe in owning gold to a much greater extent than they would have 3-4 years ago.