Technology stocks have driven the S&P 500 this year, helped by excitement over artificial intelligence. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s filing season for a string of major hedge funds, and big tech names like
Apple,
Microsoft,
and
Nvidia
were among the most-traded equities in the third quarter.
With the seven big tech firms—Apple (ticker: AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL),
Facebook
parent Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and Tesla (TSLA)—playing an outsize role in this year’s stock market rally, it’s no surprise to see them featured heavily in the quarterly filings of large investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission requires anyone managing at least $100 million in publicly traded assets to disclose their holdings within 45 days of the end of each quarter.
One of the most dramatic moves in the third quarter was Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management selling its entire stake in Microsoft, which had previously totaled 11.8 million shares—worth around $4.4 billion at current prices.
Hohn also trimmed holdings in
Alphabet
to 16.9 million shares from 18.5 million previously. Hohn last year called for Alphabet to aggressively cut costs before the Google parent said it would lay off 12,000 workers.
David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management largely boosted its tech holdings in the period—except for Apple, which the hedge fund dumped entirely.
Appaloosa sold its 480,000-share stake in Apple and reduced its stake in
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
(TSM) to 1 million shares from 1.78 million.
Appaloosa increased its Amazon stake to 3.75 million shares from 3.16 million shares in August. The fund’s stake in Alphabet grew to 2.75 million shares from 2.31 million, and its Meta holdings rose to 1.95 million shares from 1.5 million previously. The fund held 1.65 million shares of Microsoft at the end of the quarter, up from 1.24 million previously.
It wasn’t all bad news for Apple, though. Soros Fund Management, the investment firm founded by billionaire George Soros, took a new position of around 41,000 shares in the iPhone maker. Soros also bought up 325,000 shares of chip designer
Arm Holdings
(ARM).
Soros sold positions of around 10,000 shares apiece in Microsoft and
Nvidia
(NVDA).
With Nvidia earnings to come next week, trades around the chip maker are particularly under scrutiny. Tiger Global Management—the hedge fund led by Chase Coleman, which took heavy losses last year on tech investments—seems optimistic. It raised its stake in Nvidia to 1.1 million shares in the third quarter, from 628,575 previously.
Arguably the most consequential holding of all for market sentiment, Warren Buffett and
Berkshire Hathaway’s
(BRK.B) mammoth position in Apple, was unchanged.
Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]
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