Big hedge funds dumped Facebook in Q3
Hedge funds are revealing their third-quarter stock picks throughout the day.
One early trend is that during the third quarter, hedge funds continued to dump Facebook. The social network has come under scrutiny following data breaches and election manipulation controversies.
Activist investor Barry Rosenstein’s JANA dumped all of its Facebook (FB) stock, ditching all 651,493 shares during the quarter.
Stanley Druckenmiller’s family-office hedge fund, Duquesne Capital, cut close to 97% of its Facebook stake, selling 896,400 shares.
Tiger cub Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management also trimmed its Facebook stake by about 33%, ditching 2.1 million shares during the quarter. The social network remained one of Coatue’s top five equity long holdings, the filing shows. Another Tiger cub, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, sold 4.36 million shares of Facebook, or about 71% of its stake. Viking last held 1.78 million shares of the social network. The hedge fund has been in Facebook since the first quarter of 2016.
Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global cut Facebook by about 12%, selling 657160 shares. Tiger Global also trimmed its Twitter stake.
Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management boosted its Facebook stake, adding 33,400 more shares, bringing the entire position to 172,810.
Elsewhere, Viking Global sold about 90% of its position in Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) to last hold 57,912 shares. Coatue also trimmed its Twitter (TWTR) position by about 66%, selling 16.8 million shares to last hold about 8.49 million shares at the end of the quarter.
Coleman’s Tiger Global disclosed a new stake in Apple (AAPL), buying just over 1.02 million shares. Laffont’s Coatue also added to its Apple position.
Under pressure shares
Some hedge funds made bets during the third quarter on stocks that have come under immense pressure in recent weeks.
Halvorsen’s Viking Global added to its General Electric (GE) stake during the third quarter, buying 64 million shares bringing the total stake to 132.4 million shares. At the end of the quarter, Viking’s GE stake had been valued at $1.49 billion and was its second-largest equity long holding, the filing shows. At present levels, assuming the position hasn’t changed, it would be valued at $1.14 billion.
Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group added to its PG&E (PCG) stake, snapping up an additional 14.47 million shares, bringing the total stake to 18.9 million shares. The utility was Klarman’s 4th largest equity long holding. Halvorsen’s Viking also discloses a new stake in PG&E, buying 5.72 million shares. Shares of PG&E have collapsed amid the California wildfires.
Tesla gains favor
Zach Schreiber’s PointState Capital disclosed a long position in Tesla (TSLA) of 4,000 shares during the quarter. Schreiber made a name for himself nailing the oil collapse in 2014. Elsewhere, PointState sold its entire stake in Facebook.
Below is a roundup of some of the latest stock moves. This post will be updated.
Baupost Group, Seth Klarman
New: Altaba (AABA)
Added: PG&E (PCG)
Trimmed: AMC (AMC)
Coatue Management, Philippe Laffont
New: Qualcomm (QCOM), Roku (ROKU)
Added: Apple (AAPL)
Trimmed: Facebook, Twitter
Duquesne Capital, Stan Druckenmiller
New: PayPal
Added: Microsoft
Trimmed: Facebook, Alibaba, Netflix
JANA Partners, Barry Rosenstein
New: Exact Sciences Corp (EXAS), Keurig Dr. Pepper (KDP)
Added: ConAgra Brands (CAG)
Trimmed: Tiffany (TIF)
Exited: Facebook (FB)
Tiger Global, Chase Coleman
New: Apple
Trimmed: Twitter, Facebook
Tiger Management, Julian Robertson
New: Call options on Citigroup (C), call options on Bank of America (BAC), and call options on JPMorgan (JPM)
Added: Alibaba, Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet, Facebook
Trimmed: PayPal (PYPL)
Viking Global, Andreas Halvorsen
New: PG&E Corp (PCG)
Added: Alibaba (BABA), General Electric (GE)
Trimmed: Facebook, Alphabet
Exited: Anheuser-Busch (BUD)
Funds of a certain size are required to disclose their long stock holdings in filings known as 13-Fs. Of course, the filings only provide a partial picture since they do not show short positions or wagers on commodities and currencies. What’s more is these filings come out 45 days after the end of each quarter, so it’s possible they could have traded in and out of the position. Still, it does provide a glimpse into where some of the top money managers have been placing money in the stock market.
Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.