As was first reported last night, hedge fund manager John Paulson held a conference call today hosted by BofA/Merrill folks, who were eager to grill him about his strategy, performance, outlook, and so on.
Josh Brown was on the call and has some great notes up regarding the call's contents. Among them: Paulson is still really bullish the casino companies, especially if the economy gathers steam.
But Josh's take -- which is really key, since the point of the call was to ensure outside investors -- is pretty rough.
The real question is whether or not the call did more good than harm. I truly came away from it with a deep respect for John's thought process but not a lot of clarity in terms of how this collection of trades is meant to work going forward. I wanted to be more impressed than I was.
The intro to the call by the Merrill guy was about how Paulson had evolved from an arb guy into an investor who is much more macro-oriented as a result of his experiences during the 2007-2009 Greatest Trade Ever era. But of all the macro calls I've been on - and let me tell you something, I've been in meetings with Felix Motherf*cking Zulauf and at dinner with Jim Chanos - this one gave me the least confidence that there is any kind of hidden depth or the potential that the manager is seeing something no one else sees.
