Happy 13F season to those who celebrate!
For the rest of you with social lives, allow us to explain. A 13F is a form that institutional investments running funds with at least $100 million in assets under management must file with the SEC 45 days after the end of a quarter.
The form details any and all equities purchases or sales the fund made during the previous quarter—and since these are all public documents, they provide regular investors like us with invaluable insight into what some of the biggest and most successful funds are buying or selling in any given quarter.
That 45-day deadline arrived yesterday, which means today we’ve got a boatload of investments to dig into. Let’s take a look at what moves the pros made last quarter.
Berkshire Hathaway
The G.O.A.T. hasn’t been put out to pasture just yet. Warren Buffett continued to trim his position in financial stocks, cutting his stake in Bank of America for a third straight quarter and selling his remaining 14.6 million shares of Citigroup to exit that position entirely. Meanwhile, he doubled down on Constellation Brands—literally, his position doubled to a total of 12 million shares of the alcohol maker, or 6.6% of the company’s outstanding shares. Perhaps most notably, Buffett left his 300 million shares of Apple alone despite the company’s recent selloff.
Appaloosa Management
David Tepper pounded the table for Chinese investments last fall, betting big on the Chinese economy’s recovery thanks to fiscal support from the government. But apparently tariffs changed Tepper’s tune: His Appaloosa Management fund cut its stake in Alibaba by 22%, PDD Holdings by 18%, JD.com by 23%, and Baidu by a whopping 49% last quarter. Instead, Tepper initiated positions in L3Harris Technologies, Deutsche Bank, and Broadcom, and bought more shares of Uber.
Pershing Square
Speaking of Uber, Bill Ackman really likes what he sees. The fund manager also kicked off a new investment in Uber, buying over 30 million shares of the rideshare company. He increased his positions in Brookfield Corp and Hertz Global Holdings, while cutting back on Hilton Worldwide, Chipotle, and Alphabet. Finally, Ackman completely sold out of his position in Nike.
Icahn Enterprises
Ackman’s old nemesis Carl Icahn decided to focus his travel investments on planes rather than cars. Icahn Enterprises doubled its stake in Jetblue Airways to nearly 37 million shares, which makes sense: Icahn ran an activist campaign against Jetblue management that resulted in Icahn gaining two new board seats at the company in February. He also bet big on biotech company Illumina, while cutting his position in natural gas company Southwest Gas.
Scion Asset Management
Michael Burry, famed for shorting the US real estate market ahead of the Great Financial Crisis, and for investing in GameStop ahead of the meme stock boom, clearly didn’t like what he saw last quarter. Burry doubled his position in Estee Lauder, bought a few bearish puts on Nvidia and several Chinese stocks, and liquidated the rest of his portfolio. That’s right, he sold everything. Either Burry knows something the rest of us don’t, or he simply decided that the only way to win the game is to not play at all.—MR