During the fourth quarter, hedge fund manager John Paulson's Paulson & Co. kept on adding to its stakes in big U. S. banks. According to a regulatory filing, Paulson bought more than 200,000 Citigroup shares and raised his stake in a number of other banks. A lot of gold had been bought by Paulson, via the physical commodity, exchange-traded funds and stocks of gold companies that suffered in January.

At the end of the third quarter, Paulson ended the year with 506.7 million shares of Citi valued at $1.67 billion, up from 300 million shares worth $954 million. Three months earlier, the fund's stake in Bank of America Corp was trimmed to 151 million worth $2.2 billion, from 159 million worth $2.3 billion. Taking stakes in commercial lender CIT Group and Wells Fargo & Co, Paulson increased the stakes in JPMorgan Chase & Co, State Street Corp and the Milwaukee bank Marshall & Isley.

At the end of the quarter, Paulson & Co.'s total holdings were worth $19.8 billion, rising from $16.7 billion as of Sept. 30. The SPDR Gold Trust, with a value of $3.38 billion, was the fund's biggest single holding shown in the filing.