ETFs For 13F Filing Season

It's that time of year again. It's 13F filing season. A veritable gift for investors that like to mimic what the professionals are up to. For those that subscribe to the theory of following the smart money, this is your time. And for those not in the know, here's a quick explanation of what 13F's are straight from the source, the source being the SEC: An institutional investment manager that uses the U.S. mail (or other means or instrumentality of interstate commerce) in the course of its business, and exercises investment discretion over $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities (explained below) must report its holdings on Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). With that, let's a have a look at some ETFs that have been in the spotlight this 13F season. SPDR Gold Shares

: The largest gold-backed ETF and the second-largest ETF overall has been in the headlines thanks to hedge fund legend John Paulson slashing his firm's exposure to GLD by over 35%. The key takeaway here is that gold's bullish trend has not been reversed by Paulson dumping some of his GLD stake. Paulson's gold funds have been among his better performers this year and a legitimate theory is that he was taking profits in GLD to cover losses in other trades. Steve Cohen added to his investment in GLD in the third quarter, SAC Capital's 13F shows. Financial Select Sector SPDR

: Speaking of Paulson, he pared stakes in Citigroup

and Wells Fargo

last quarter, but Warren Buffett added to his Wells Fargo position. David Tepper and Mark Kingdon and Landsowne Partners all reduced exposure to Bank of America

, Bloomberg News reported. Paulson upped his bet on BofA. SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF

: One of the more volatile equity-based energy ETFs around will be worth a look for those investors that want to play the release of BP Capital's 13F. That's T. Boone Pickens' firm and almost all of BP Capital's major holdings can be found in XOP. Plus XOP's chart shows if the ETF can string together some closes above $56, it might be able to run back to the mid-60s over the next couple of months. Broad Market ETFs: If you want to be like Boston-based hedge fund manager Jeffrey Vinik, the following ETFs might be worth a look: The SPDR S&P 500

, iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund

and the PowerShares QQQ

. Vinik bought into SPY in the third quarter and added to stakes in IWM and QQQ. iShares FTSE China 25 Index Fund

: Cohen bought 215,000 shares in the largest China-specific ETF in Q3. He may have been getting some good prices, too. FXI has jumped over 20% since the end of Q3.