SPDR Gold Trust is down 13 percent since March and down 43 percent from September 2011, when gold hit its record high.

Paulson's view on gold has been closely followed ever since he earned roughly $5 billion on a bet on the metal in 2010, following on the heels of a similarly successful $4 billion payday on his bet against the overheated housing market in 2007.

The 59-year old financier, known as a patient and long-term investor, backed off a more massive gold bet two years ago when he cut his stake in SPDR Gold Trust by roughly half, from 21.8 million shares, regulatory filings show.

Paulson & Co.'s portfolio looks very different today than it did three years ago when some portfolios invested as much as 25 percent in gold and mining stocks, and were hit hard by the metal's drop.

At the end of the 2015 first quarter, Paulson & Co had more bets on pharmaceutical and healthcare stocks than metals, owning names like Shire, Allergan, Valeant and Mylan.

"We have almost nothing in metals and very little in gold," Paulson said, adding that healthcare and pharmaceuticals stocks are the firm's biggest holdings now.

At the end of the first quarter the firm owned 26.2 million shares of miner AngloGold Ashanti, down from 27.9 million shares at the end of the first quarter in 2014. AngloGold's share price has fallen 29 percent this year.

Paulson's Advantage fund, once one of the firm's biggest and which contains some of the gold investment, was off 0.26 percent in the first two weeks of July, according to an investor. Paulson declined to say how the fund performed in the last two weeks.

Paulson's other funds have fared better, including Paulson Enhanced, which was up 19 percent for the first half of the year.

Paulson had launched a separate gold fund in 2010, but the firm stopped actively marketing it to investors two years ago after gold prices began to tumble.