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- Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and Charlie Munger have revealed striking portfolio changes.
- “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry, David Einhorn, and Jim Simons have as well.
- Here’s a roundup of six key trades that were disclosed in recent days.
Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and other elite investors have revealed surprising changes to their stock portfolios in recent days.
“The Big Short” investor Michael Burry, Charlie Munger, David Einhorn, and Jim Simons have also disclosed notable tweaks to their holdings.
Here’s a roundup of their newly revealed trades:
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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway built a nearly 2% stake in Activision Blizzard in the fourth quarter.
The famed investor and Berkshire CEO dismissed the idea that his team bought the shares in anticipation of Microsoft offering to buy the video-games giant for $75 billion in January. Berkshire purchased 85% of the position in October, about three months before the proposed merger was announced, Buffett revealed in a public letter this week.
Berkshire also disclosed a $1 billion stake in Brazilian fintech Nubank in its latest portfolio update. Buffett’s company previously invested $500 million in the digital lender’s Series G funding round last summer.
Cryptocurrency fans cheered the bet — which was likely made by one of Buffett’s portfolio managers — as a tacit endorsement of crypto, given Nubank’s embrace of the technology.
Mike Segar/Reuters
David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital disclosed a bearish bet against Tesla in the fourth quarter, signaling the billionaire investor had determined Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle company was massively overvalued.
Greenlight bought 1,000 put contracts against 100,000 Tesla shares last quarter. The clean-energy stock has plunged 27% this year, meaning Einhorn could be sitting on a solid profit if he hasn’t exited the position.
Einhorn’s fund bet against Tesla in 2020, but the stock proved to be its worst-performing holding that year, as shares skyrocketed more than 700%. Still, the investor wrote in his fourth-quarter client letter that owning Tesla stock was a “fad,” and the shares traded at a “silly” price.
Reuters/ Allen Fredrickson
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square disclosed a major bet on Netflix stock in late January.
The billionaire investor’s hedge fund only bought the shares this year, so they didn’t show up in its fourth-quarter portfolio update. Ackman’s Netflix wager attracted attention because he casually announced it on Twitter, snapped up 3.1 million shares in only four days, and pounced after the streaming giant’s earnings tanked its stock price.
Moreover, Ackman typically balks at the prices of technology stocks, preferring to own more staid businesses such as Chipotle, Lowe’s, and Domino’s Pizza. The value investor explained that he was a longtime admirer of Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings, and was impressed by the company’s subscription model, pricing power, vast content library, and other strengths.
AP Photo/Nati Harnik
Charlie Munger’s Daily Journal cashed in one of its most lucrative investments, borrowed some extra money, and plowed the total amount into an undisclosed stock in the fourth quarter.
Warren Buffett’s business partner and the newspaper publisher’s chairman sold $50 million worth of stock in December, marking a 15-fold return on a $3.3 million cost base, he revealed in Daily Journal’s earnings this month.
Munger, who also serves as Berkshire Hathaway’s vice-chairman, combined the proceeds with $37 million from Daily Journal’s margin-loan account, enabling him to plow $87 million into other securities.
Daily Journal suffered $30 million in unrealized losses tied to those purchases in December. Munger’s use of margin surprised many of his followers, given his repeated warnings about the dangers of investing borrowed money.
“We don’t mind a tiny little bit of margin debt,” Munger replied when asked about the wager during Daily Journal’s annual meeting this week.
Jim Spellman/Getty Images
Burry’s Scion Asset Management slashed its US stock portfolio from 24 positions to only six in the third quarter of 2021, as the investor backed up his prediction of a devastating market crash.
The investor’s fund swapped out four of its six remaining positions in the fourth quarter. It added stakes in Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Dynamics, Fidelity National Financial, and AEA Bridges Impact — a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) expected to take public Harley Davidson’s electric-motorcycle division, LiveWire.
The founder of r/Burryology, a subreddit dedicated to studying the Scion chief’s investing approach, told Insider that Burry’s latest portfolio update indicated he was still extremely bearish on US stocks.
Sylvain Gaboury/Getty Images
Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies bet on two prominent meme stocks in the fourth quarter.
The Cold War codebreaker and MIT math professor’s quantitative hedge fund boosted its stake in AMC Entertainment by 87% to 4.7 million shares. It also reinvested in 2,600 GameStop shares worth around $400,000, after exiting the stock in the third quarter.
Notably, RenTech tripled its stake in AMC in the second quarter of 2021, then bolstered it by bolstered it by nearly 40% in the third quarter, meaning it has now increased it nine-fold in the space of nine months.
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