Wall Street’s whales were divided megacap tech stocks last quarter. Club holdings Alphabet and Amazon found themselves on the fault line. New regulatory filings show that billionaire investors and hedge fund managers pared back on shares of the Google parent and e-commerce giant in the third quarter. Some exited them altogether. Meanwhile, others started positions or added to existing ones for both stocks. Although these disclosures known as 13Fs are retrospective, covering the three-month period ended Sept. 30, they provide valuable insight into the actions of Wall Street’s most influential investors. Battleground tech GOOGL YTD mountain Alphabet (GOOGL) year-to-date performance Third Point, the hedge fund run by Dan Loeb, sold its entire nearly $333 million position in Alphabet last quarter. Billionaire investor David Tepper offloaded shares as well. Tepper’s Appaloosa Management cut its Alphabet position by 2.2% during the quarter. On the other side of the trade was value investor Seth Klarman. His Baupost Group increased its Alphabet holding by 37%. Philippe Laffont’s Coatue raised its investment by 4.6% in the stock. Elsewhere, Alphabet’s size in Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square was left unchanged during the third quarter. AMZN YTD mountain Amazon.com (AMZN) year-to-date performance It was a similar mixed mag with Amazon. Third Point trimmed its Amazon holdings by nearly 28%. Still, it remains one of the fund’s largest holdings, worth more than $689 million. D1 Capital, a hedge fund run by Daniel Sundheim, offloaded 6.2% of its Amazon shares last quarter. Amazon also remains one of D1’s top holdings, with a $225 million stake. Elsewhere, Coatue bought up more of the stock. Amazon’s weighting in the hedge fund swelled by 4.6%, with a value of nearly $2.1 billion. Candidly, we can’t say for sure why the money managers made the trades they did in the third quarter. But the disclosure cycle shows a series of sales in two stocks that have largely beat the market year-to-date. Big Tech has ridden Wall Street’s wave of investor enthusiasm around generative artificial intelligence through 2023 and 2024. Expectations of lower borrowing costs, and most recently on Donald Trump’s presidential election win, have propelled many even higher. That rally, however, stalled Friday as the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 2.5%. 13F shortcomings While informative to get into the minds of the whales, the 13Fs contain no detailed list of trades — just an end-of-quarter snapshot. A fund’s holdings may very well have changed by the time the previous quarters’ filings are revealed. For certain hedge-fund managers known to be nimble traders, like David Tepper, this is particularly relevant. Additionally, short positions — bets that a stock will drop in value — are not disclosed in 13Fs, making it difficult to determine a fund’s complete attitude toward the market. Health stock moves It wasn’t just our Big Tech holdings highlighted in the securities filings though. Three of the Club’s health-related names received some attention as well. Sundheim’s D1 Capital started a large position in GE Healthcare , with a stake valued at roughly $268 million. That makes GE Healthcare the fund’s fifth-largest holding. Coatue made a significant increase in the fund’s Eli Lilly holding as well. Third Point trimmed its investment in Danaher by 4.9%, bringing the firm’s stake in the life sciences company to roughly $542 million. Bottom line We don’t think the Q3 disclosure cycle should serve as a basis for any investment. But Jim Cramer’s long encouraged members to follow the “buy and homework” principle with their portfolios. That means these securities filings are at least worth keeping an eye on, along with the other biggest pieces of news that could impact a stock’s price. “If you’re not doing the homework then how are you going to be sure that what you bought in the past is still what you own today?” Jim previously said. Although Wall Street’s trades on the Club names were rather mixed — both buys and sells — we don’t blame them for taking profits after gains on Amazon and Alphabet. After all, nobody ever got hurt taking a profit. But at the same time, that doesn’t change our long-term bullish feelings about both stocks. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Sebastien Bozon | AFP | Getty Images
