Whale watch

Growth stocks were among the favorites for hedge fund whales in the second quarter. Monday was the deadline for hedge funds with more than $100M in assets under management, as well as other institutional investors and endowments, to report certain stock holdings through 13F filings. The 13F season gives investors a glimpse into where the big players are betting, albeit with dated information.

A number of hedge funds and money managers looked to pick up beaten-down growth stocks, such as tech, in Q2. From April to June, the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) (QQQ) fell more than 22%, while the S&P 500 (SP500) (SPY) was down about 16.5%.

Who’s buying what?

Among the big-name disclosures, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) boosted its stake in Activision (ATVI) to ~68.4M shares from 64.3M. It also exited its stake in Verizon (VZ). Soros Fund Management made a new investment in Tesla (TSLA) (~29.9K shares) and disposed of its stakes in MGM Resorts (MGM) and Solid Power (SLDP).

David Tepper’s Appaloosa took new positions in Salesforce (CRM), buying 200K shares, Alibaba (BABA), acquiring 100K shares, and Netflix (NFLX), with 50K shares, during Q2.

In addition, Elliott Investment Management started a stake in Pinterest (PINS) and shed Twitter (TWTR), Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater started positions in Rivian (RIVN) and Amazon (AMZN), the Gates Foundation turned to autos with Vroom (VRM) and Carvana (CVNA), and Carl Icahn eyed Bausch + Lomb (BLCO).

Dan Loeb takes aim at Disney: It wouldn’t be 13F season without some hedge fund saber rattling. Dan Loeb’s Third Point Capital revealed a new stake of 1M shares in Disney (DIS) in its filing, but added in a letter directly to the company that in recent weeks it had “repurchased a significant stake.” Third Point lobbied for a refresh of the Disney board, made its case for an ESPN spinoff and also asked the FTC for permission to engage directly with the company.

Disney defended the composition of its board and noted that members have an average tenure of just four years.