John Paulson, the most successful, high-profile hedge fund manager of the last several years maintained a massive position in gold in his end-of-Q3 portfolio and was making a huge move into Citigroup (NYSE: C - News), the bank at the center of the drama in the financial sector over the last year.

After a world-beating 2007, John Paulson embarrassed his peers again in 2008, as his various funds posted gains ranging from 7.9% to 37.6%, earning him a payday of an astounding $2.5 billion according to Alpha Magazine. Paulson's returns were fueled by prescient short bets in financial names as well as his usual strategy of taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities. In 2009, Paulson went long the big banks and has reaped huge gains as their shares rebounded from fear-stoked lows.

Paulson uses complex securities to make many of his investments, but his funds also hold stocks, often those involved in so-called "special situations," usually M&A activity where Paulson looks for arbitrage opportunities to squeeze out some profit.

Looking at Paulson's top, U.S.-listed, equity holdings from the end of Q3, one can see that, though building a new Citi stake, Paulson exited a large stake in Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS - News) and cut back on his stake in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC - News).

Meanwhile, Paulson's largest equity stake by a wide margin was in SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD - News). Paulson also maintained positions in miners AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU - News), Gold Fields (NYSE: GFI - News), and Kinross Gold (NYSE: KGC - News).

As is typical for Paulson, his fund also maintained a number of arbitrage-oriented plays as of the end of Q3, including positions in Wyeth, which was taken over by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE - News), Schering Plough, bought out by Merck (NYSE: MRK - News); and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA - News), which is set to be acquired by Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL - News). Paulson also upped a stake in Pepsi Bottling (NYSE: PBG - News), a target of PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP - News).

If you want to see how your performance stacks up to Paulson's and see the rest of his firm's top holdings, visit tickerspy.com to see the Paulson's top stocks and a chart of their combined performance.

Pro portfolio performance is based on institutions' top-15 holdings as disclosed in quarter-end filings with the SEC. Pro performance does not take into account additional holdings beyond the top 15 nor does it include positions that are not required to be disclosed by the SEC. As such, Pro portfolio performance should be considered an approximation and not a precise record of how an institution has performed over time.

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