To be clear, our sale of $GOOG was not a bet against the company. We are very bullish long term on Alphabet. But at current valuations and in light of our finite capital base, we used $GOOG as a source of funds for $MSFT.
Q1 2026 13F Digest — The Alphabet trade that defined the quarter
Berkshire tripled its Alphabet stake to $15.6B while Pershing Square exited — the defining divergence trade of Q1 2026. Full cross-fund analysis of whale moves, consensus shifts, and sector rotations from the latest 13F-HR filings.
Filing deadline: May 15, 2026 · Positions as of March 31, 2026
Warren Buffett tripled Berkshire Hathaway's Alphabet stake to $15.6 billion. Bill Ackman sold nearly every share of Alphabet he owned and used the proceeds to build a $2.09 billion Microsoft position. Bridgewater liquidated $8.47 billion of Booking Holdings (BKNG, the online travel platform) in a single quarter and rotated the capital into semiconductors. Viking Global opened 18 new positions — the highest count of any tracked fund. And across 77 superinvestors tracked by Dataroma (an aggregator of SEC 13F filings), Microsoft simultaneously appeared as the most-bought stock (17 funds added) and the second-most-sold (22 funds reduced) — a level of two-way conviction on a single name that is genuinely unusual.1
The Q1 2026 13F-HR filings — quarterly disclosures of long equity positions that institutional managers with $100M+ in assets must file with the SEC — tell the story of a market in sector-level transition: away from consumer-facing tech platforms, toward AI infrastructure and semiconductors. The data below covers five funds with full position-level data (Berkshire Hathaway, Pershing Square, Tiger Global, Viking Global, Appaloosa Management), one fund with partial detail (Bridgewater Associates), and partial or summary-only data for Citadel, Renaissance Technologies, Two Sigma, and D.E. Shaw — the last four are behind aggregator paywalls and are noted where relevant.
Quick-scan: top moves across all tracked funds
| Fund | Ticker | Move | Approx. size | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berkshire Hathaway | GOOGL | +204% increase | $15.6B at quarter-end | ↑ |
| Berkshire Hathaway | DAL | New position | $2.65B | New |
| Berkshire Hathaway | CVX | –35% reduction | $17.5B remaining | ↓ |
| Berkshire Hathaway | STZ | –95% near-exit | $95M remaining | ↓↓ |
| Pershing Square | MSFT | New position | $2.09B | New |
| Pershing Square | GOOGL/GOOG | –95%/–95% exit | ~$99M remaining | ↓↓ |
| Bridgewater Associates | BKNG | Full liquidation | ~$8.47B exited | Exit |
| Bridgewater Associates | TSM | New position | ~1.077M shares | New |
| Viking Global | AAPL | New position | $912M | New |
| Viking Global | CVNA | +162% increase | $874M | ↑ |
| Viking Global | AMZN | –62% reduction | $249M remaining | ↓ |
| Appaloosa Management | AMZN | +98% increase | $900M (top hold.) | ↑ |
| Appaloosa Management | UBER | +242% increase | $456M | ↑ |
| Appaloosa Management | MSFT | –82% reduction | $33M remaining | ↓↓ |
| Tiger Global | TSM | +49% increase | $1.88B | ↑ |
| Tiger Global | MSFT | –54% reduction | Significant cut | ↓ |
The Alphabet divergence
No single trade captures Q1 2026 better than what two major funds did with the same stock in the same quarter — in opposite directions, each with a clear rationale.
Berkshire Hathaway increased its Alphabet Class A (GOOGL) stake from approximately 17.8 million shares to 54.2 million shares, a 204% jump. The position was valued at $15.6 billion as of March 31, 2026, representing 5.93% of Berkshire's $263.1 billion disclosed portfolio.2 Berkshire also opened a new position in Alphabet Class C (GOOG) at $1.03 billion. In combination, Berkshire's total Alphabet exposure roughly tripled to approximately $16.6 billion, making it the fund's seventh-largest holding.3
Pershing Square Capital Management moved in the exact opposite direction. Bill Ackman's fund reduced its GOOGL stake by 95.23% (from roughly 679,000 shares to just 32,376 shares) and its GOOG stake by 94.94%, leaving combined Alphabet exposure of approximately $99 million — down from roughly $1.3 billion the prior quarter.4 The capital went directly into a new 5.65 million-share Microsoft position worth $2.09 billion, purchased at an average of $370.17 per share — which became Pershing's fourth-largest holding at 15.26% of the fund's $13.7 billion portfolio.4
On May 16, Ackman explained the logic on X (formerly Twitter):
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In a separate Seeking Alpha report, Ackman called Microsoft's current valuation "highly compelling."5 The PSUS fund — Ackman's separately managed vehicle — also opened a Microsoft position in the same quarter.
The two trades represent a genuine disagreement not about Alphabet's long-term quality, but about relative valuation. Berkshire's tripling implies a view that Alphabet is undervalued in absolute terms; Ackman's exit implies that Microsoft offered a better entry point on a relative valuation basis, even though Alphabet remains an attractive business. Both funds can hold this position simultaneously without contradiction — and it captures exactly why Microsoft ended up as Q1's most traded stock in both directions.
The Abel effect: Berkshire's portfolio overhaul
Q1 2026 was Greg Abel's first full quarter as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO (Buffett named Abel as his successor in May 2021; Abel formally took the helm in 2025), following Buffett's step back from day-to-day investment decisions. The filing reflects one of the most significant portfolio restructurings in Berkshire's history.3
15 positions fully liquidated in Q1, reducing the disclosed stock portfolio from 42 holdings to 29.3 The full list of exits:
- Visa, Mastercard
- UnitedHealth Group
- Domino's Pizza
- Aon, Pool Corp
- Amazon, Heico
- Liberty Formula One
- Charter Communications, Lamar Advertising
- Allegion, Diageo
- Liberty Latin America Series C, Atlanta Braves Holdings
CNBC's analysis attributed the bulk of these exits to the December 2025 departure of Todd Combs — who had co-managed a portion of Berkshire's equity portfolio alongside Ted Weschler since 2010 — to JPMorgan, with Abel likely selling most or all positions that Combs had originated.3 That inference is plausible but not confirmed by Abel directly, who has not commented publicly on the restructuring.
New positions opened: Berkshire re-entered the airline sector for the first time since its complete exit in April 2020, initiating a 39.8 million-share position in Delta Air Lines (DAL) worth $2.65 billion at an average price of $66.48 per share.2 A small Macy's (M) position worth approximately $55 million was also opened.
Major reductions: Chevron (CVX) was cut by 35.17%, from approximately 130 million shares to 84.4 million shares, with a remaining market value of $17.5 billion (6.64% of portfolio).2 Constellation Brands (STZ) was reduced by 95.13%, leaving only $94.9 million of a position that was previously worth roughly $2 billion.2
Apple (AAPL) remained untouched at 227.9 million shares and $57.8 billion — 21.99% of the disclosed portfolio.2 Buffett, speaking to CNBC's Becky Quick on March 31, acknowledged that he sold Apple shares too early but emphasized the position still generated over $100 billion in pretax profit:
"Well, I sold it too soon, but I bought it even sooner. So, it worked out. Yeah, I think we've made over $100 billion in that pretax."6
Cash reserves reached approximately $380 billion (predominantly short-term Treasury bills), a record level for Berkshire. At the May 2 annual meeting, Greg Abel clarified the number was closer to $380 billion rather than "near $400 billion" as initially reported.7 Q1 operating profit was $11.35 billion, up 18% year-over-year.7
Bridgewater's $8.47B rotation into semiconductors
Bridgewater Associates (approximately $22.4 billion in disclosed 13F assets, 993 holdings) executed the largest single-stock liquidation of the quarter: a near-total exit from Booking Holdings (BKNG) amounting to roughly $8.47 billion — approximately 37.8% of its entire disclosed portfolio — in one quarter.8 This is the largest order-of-magnitude single exit among all tracked funds in this filing cycle.
- New position: Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), approximately 1.077 million shares — Bridgewater's largest new buy this quarter
- Added: NVIDIA (NVDA), Marvell Technology (MRVL), Amazon (AMZN, $535.8 million), Synopsys (SNPS)
Beyond the sector rotation, Bridgewater fully exited five enterprise software names: Salesforce (CRM), Workday (WDAY), ServiceNow (NOW), Global Payments (GPN), and GoDaddy (GDDY).8 Significant reductions also hit PayPal (PYPL), Pinterest (PINS), Grab Holdings (GRAB), and UiPath (PATH). On the other side of the ledger, Bridgewater initiated new positions in American Airlines (AAL), Apollo Global Management (APO), Nucor (NUE), PACCAR (PCAR), and opened a large stake in an iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex-China ETF.
The structural message is clear enough without Bridgewater's explicit confirmation: the fund views consumer-facing travel and commerce platforms as less attractive than the underlying semiconductor infrastructure that AI spending is driving. Bridgewater's Q1 2026 performance was approximately –6.44%.9
Note: Bridgewater's position-level data in this report comes from Seeking Alpha, HedgeFollow, and an unverified Twitter/X summary by @13FDesk. The scale of the BKNG liquidation is marked as "likely" rather than "confirmed" given the absence of direct EDGAR cross-verification.
Viking Global's 18 new positions
Viking Global Investors (77 holdings, $35.7 billion disclosed portfolio) was the most active fund among those tracked, initiating 18 new positions in Q1 2026.10
Largest new positions by market value at quarter-end:
| Stock | New position value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Apple (AAPL) | $911.9M | Enters as significant position |
| FedEx (FDX) | $688.2M | Logistics bet |
| Meta Platforms (META) | $607.9M | Adds alongside existing exposure |
| Allegheny Technologies (ATI) | $484.8M | Specialty metals/materials |
| Waters Corp (WAT) | $374.2M | Scientific instruments |
| Hasbro (HAS) | $350.0M | Consumer staples play |
| Reddit (RDDT) | $343.6M | New-era media |
| AIG | $317.6M | Financials |
Largest increases in existing positions:
- Carvana (CVNA): +161.89%, growing to 13.9 million shares valued at $874 million 10
- Lennox International (LII): +153.08% to $729.8 million
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO): +110.29% to $819.9 million
- Visa (V): +58.83% to $1.91 billion — Viking's largest single holding
Major reductions: Amazon (AMZN) was cut by 61.77% to $249 million; PNC Financial (PNC) by 58.46%; Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) by 50.87%; Stellantis (STLA) by 59.09%; Capital One Financial (COF) by 45.39%.10
Viking's Q1 activity reflects a fund making decisive sector calls — rotating out of consumer finance and discretionary retail, and into consumer staples (Apple, Hasbro), infrastructure-adjacent plays (FedEx, ATI), and high-growth recovery names (Carvana, Lennox). No single Viking trade approaches the scale of Berkshire's Alphabet move or Bridgewater's BKNG exit, but the breadth of 18 new opens in a single quarter is notable.
Appaloosa doubles Amazon, slashes legacy tech
David Tepper's Appaloosa Management (a Chatham, New Jersey-based hedge fund managing approximately $5.93 billion in disclosed assets, 31 holdings) made its most aggressive moves in two directions simultaneously.11
Major increases:
- Amazon (AMZN): +98.22%, from approximately 2.18 million to 4.32 million shares, valued at $899.7 million — now the fund's largest position at 15.16% of portfolio
- Uber (UBER): +242.31% to 6.33 million shares, $455.5 million (7.68%)
- Vistra Corp (VST): +114.00% to 2.02 million shares, $304.0 million (5.12%)
- New position: SanDisk (SNDK), 281,250 shares, $178.7 million (3.01%)
Major reductions and exits:
- Microsoft (MSFT): –82.00%, down to just 90,000 shares ($33.3 million) from a prior position worth roughly $185 million
- Deutsche Bank (DB): –91.82%
- KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB): –77.26%
- JD.com: –68.61%
- Qualcomm (QCOM): –56.45%
- UnitedHealth Group (UNH): –55.00%
- Whirlpool (WHR): –50.13%
No public commentary from Tepper on these specific moves has surfaced as of the filing date. The pattern — doubling Amazon, tripling Uber, adding AI-adjacent power generation via Vistra, while slashing China exposure and enterprise software — fits the same AI infrastructure thesis that several other funds are expressing, but that is an inference from the positions rather than a direct statement.11
Cross-fund consensus: semiconductors in, mega-cap software mixed
Across 77 superinvestors tracked by Dataroma, Q1 2026 recorded 1,196 buys/additions and 1,186 sells/reductions — a near-perfectly balanced market at the aggregate level.112 The balance at the index level, however, conceals sharp individual-stock divergences.
Microsoft (MSFT) was simultaneously the most-bought stock (17 funds added or initiated) and the second-most-sold (22 funds reduced or exited) in the quarter.1 Among our tracked funds: Pershing Square opened $2.09B (new), Tiger Global cut –54.36%, Viking cut –28.23%, and Appaloosa cut –82.00%. Berkshire made no change.
Amazon (AMZN) showed a balanced 15-fund buys vs. 15-fund sells split at the superinvestor level.1 Among tracked funds: Appaloosa nearly doubled (+98%), Pershing added +19%, Viking cut –62%.
Meta Platforms (META) showed slight net buying: 15 funds added vs. 12 reduced.1 Viking opened a $608M new position; Tiger Global added +12%; Appaloosa reduced –27%.
Semiconductors were the sharpest directional consensus of the quarter. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) attracted buying from at least five tracked funds: Tiger Global added +49.38% to reach $1.88 billion,13 Appaloosa added +17%, and Bridgewater opened a new position.8 Broadcom (AVGO, a semiconductor and infrastructure software company) was bought by at least 7 funds across the full Dataroma universe, with Tiger Global adding +24.66% to reach $1.11 billion.1 Tiger Global also added Applied Materials (AMAT, a semiconductor equipment maker) +85.09% — the fund's single largest percentage increase.13
Sector allocation across all Dataroma-tracked superinvestors as of Q1 2026 filing dates:14
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Note: Dataroma uses a non-GICS classification system that separates "Technology" and "Information Technology" into distinct categories. Combined, these two buckets total approximately 21.85% — effectively tying with Financials as the largest aggregate sector exposure.14
Coverage caveat: Citadel ($141.1B AUM, –5.39% Q1), Renaissance Technologies ($64.0B AUM, –4.58% Q1), Two Sigma ($120.0B AUM, –7.93% Q1), and D.E. Shaw ($147.6B AUM, –7.58% Q1) are not included in the position-level analysis above — their holdings tables are behind aggregator paywalls. Their aggregate Q1 performance figures come from HedgeFollow's public summary pages. Partial D.E. Shaw data from Fintel.io suggests top holdings include NVDA ($4.35B), MSFT, AVGO, and GOOGL, with SPY as its largest Q1 buy (+$1.5B) — but these are unverified and excluded from the consensus counts above.
Whale bets and concentration
Among tracked funds, the largest single-fund position by absolute value remains Berkshire Hathaway's Apple stake: 227.9 million shares worth $57.8 billion at quarter-end, representing 21.99% of the disclosed portfolio.2 Berkshire also carries American Express (AXP) at 17.43% ($45.9B) and Coca-Cola (KO) at 11.56% ($30.4B) — three positions that together represent 50.98% of the $263.1 billion portfolio.
Pershing Square is the most concentrated fund tracked: just 11 stocks, with six positions each exceeding 10% of the portfolio.4 Brookfield (BN) at 17.62% ($2.42B), Amazon at 17.39% ($2.39B), Uber at 15.71% ($2.15B), Microsoft at 15.26% ($2.09B), Restaurant Brands International (QSR) at 12.20% ($1.67B), and Meta at 11.10% ($1.52B) collectively represent 89.28% of the $13.7 billion portfolio.
Viking Global sits at the opposite end: 77 holdings, with the largest position (Visa) at just 5.35% of disclosed assets — the most diversified fund in this cohort.10
New positions exceeding $1 billion in Q1 2026:
| Fund | Ticker | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berkshire Hathaway | GOOGL | Massive increase (+$10.4B incremental) | $15.6B at quarter-end |
| Berkshire Hathaway | DAL | New position | $2.65B |
| Pershing Square | MSFT | New position | $2.09B |
| Berkshire Hathaway | GOOG | New position | $1.03B |
| Bridgewater Associates | BKNG | Exit (–$8.47B removed) | $0 remaining |
The Bridgewater BKNG exit is not a "whale bet" in the traditional sense — it is a whale liquidation, and the largest single-name capital removal recorded in this quarter's filings.
What managers are saying
Warren Buffett delivered two substantive interviews during the quarter. On March 31 (CNBC Squawk Box), he described buying $9.7 billion of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) on January 3 as a position Berkshire intends to hold "indefinitely."6 On market valuations, he was direct:
"Three times since I've taken over Berkshire, it's gone down more than 50%. I mean, if you look at the markets, of the worst, probably was the 2007, 08' period... this is nothing."6
At the May 2 Berkshire annual meeting, Buffett used a more pointed metaphor for current market conditions:
"I've compared the markets to a church with a casino attached. And people can move between the church and casino. And I would say there are more people in the church and more people in the casino, but the casino has gotten very attractive to people."7
He added: "It isn't our ideal surrounding area or environment, in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire."7 The $380 billion cash pile and Berkshire's net selling of $8.1 billion in equities in Q1 (selling $24B, buying $16B) are consistent with this stated view.7
Ken Griffin (Citadel), speaking at the Milken Global Conference (an annual gathering of senior investors and policymakers in Beverly Hills) on May 5, flagged the Strait of Hormuz as the biggest near-term macro risk. With the strait currently closed, Griffin warned that six to twelve months of continued closure would drive energy prices sharply higher and push the global economy into recession.15 He said US energy independence provides a partial buffer but would not insulate the US from a global downturn:
"So we end up in a global recession. Clearly, that's going to hit U.S. growth prospects, may push the United States into a recession."15
On AI, Griffin said the technology is advancing "far faster than the industry expected" — citing substantial capability gains within the past nine months — while noting that the economic impact on corporate earnings has yet to fully materialize.15
Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund by AUM), in a CNBC interview and a PGIM (Prudential Global Investment Management) podcast appearance, recommended investors hold 5%–15% gold allocation as a hedge against currency debasement and geopolitical pressure.16 He described the current environment as the late stage of a "big cycle," characterized by high debt levels, rising internal divisions, and a shift from the multilateral world order established in 1945 toward what he called "unilateral jungle rules."17 He warned of stagflation risk — slowing growth with persistent inflation — and called gold the "second reserve currency" as central banks globally reduce debt holdings in favor of hard assets.16 Dalio also described AI mega-cap valuations as too high and called US dollar-denominated debt mispriced — though he noted a debt crisis per se is unlikely, only poor forward returns.
D.E. Shaw (a New York-based quantitative and multi-strategy investment firm with $147.6 billion in investment capital as of the filing date) moved on the activist front in Q1. On March 10, the firm published an open letter to the board of CoStar Group (a publicly traded commercial real estate information and analytics company) accusing management of restructuring its reporting segments to conceal underperformance at Homes.com (CoStar's residential real estate listings platform) — specifically, merging it into a larger "Residential" segment that also includes the more profitable Apartments.com, then stopping disclosure of Homes.com's key operating metrics.18 The restructuring came six weeks after management made new performance commitments to investors on Homes.com. CoStar's stock fell 9% the day after the restructuring announcement, erasing approximately $2 billion in market value.18 D.E. Shaw's letter called the reporting change "evading accountability" — a charge that CoStar's board had not publicly responded to as of the filing date. D.E. Shaw's Q1 2026 position-level data in CoStar is not available from public sources.
Cross-quarter signals
Three patterns hold across funds with enough data to compare:
1. Enterprise software exits are broad. Bridgewater fully exited five SaaS names.8 Berkshire exited Visa and Mastercard.3 Appaloosa cut Microsoft by 82%.11 Tiger Global cut Microsoft by 54%.13 The direction is consistent: funds that built large software positions during the 2020–2023 cycle are rotating out, while capital moves into semiconductors, power infrastructure, and logistics.
2. The airline re-entry. Berkshire re-entered Delta Air Lines at $2.65 billion, five years after its complete 2020 exit.2 Viking opened FedEx at $688M — not an airline but a large-network logistics operator.10 Appaloosa tripled Uber to $456M.11 These three moves share a common thread: post-COVID network businesses at prices the buyers evidently find reasonable.
3. China exposure is falling. Appaloosa cut JD.com by 69% and the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) by 77%.11 Tiger Global cut several China-linked names while buying Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor exposure (TSM, CPNG).13 No tracked fund added meaningfully to direct China exposure in Q1 2026, consistent with the geopolitical friction narrative Griffin raised at Milken.15
The rotation from consumer platform software toward AI infrastructure and semiconductors is the most consistent directional signal across this quarter's filings. Whether it continues through Q2 will be visible in the August reporting window.
Data sources: SEC 13F-HR filings as aggregated by Dataroma, HedgeFollow, and Seeking Alpha for the quarter ending March 31, 2026. Filing deadline: May 15, 2026. Position-level data for Citadel, Renaissance Technologies, Two Sigma, and D.E. Shaw was not available from free public sources; their holdings are excluded from cross-fund analysis. Prior-quarter share counts for percentage changes are derived from current filings and reported percentage change figures; actual Q4 2025 share counts have not been independently cross-verified against SEC EDGAR. Bridgewater BKNG liquidation size is sourced from Seeking Alpha and @13FDesk (X/Twitter) and marked likely rather than confirmed pending EDGAR verification.
References
- 1DATAROMA Grand Portfolio — Q1 2026 Buys/Adds
dataroma.com
- 2
- 3
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- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9Bridgewater Associates 13F Portfolio (HedgeFollow)
hedgefollow.com
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14DATAROMA Sector Ownership Statistics
dataroma.com
- 15
- 16Navigating Risk: Ray Dalio's strategy for a changing economic world
m.economictimes.com
- 17
- 18
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