Q2 2026 Fund Flows Report

01 The background

Chip Stocks Had Their Best Quarter on Record

Funds were not buying quietly. They were buying into the strongest three months the chip sector has ever had, and there is a specific reason it happened.

+87.8%

the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, its best quarter since it began in 1994

Price move 31 March – 30 June 2026

+14.9%

S&P 500

The whole market

+87.8%

Chip index (SOX)

Its best quarter since 1994

+216%

Intel

AMD rose 186%

Why the index moved like that

AI demand ran into a supply wall

The bottleneck was memory: the chips AI servers need in bulk. A new fab takes years to build, so supply could not respond.

So prices rose, and profits followed

Micron’s quarterly revenue more than quadrupled in a year, from $9.3bn to $41.5bn. That is the engine behind the share prices, not sentiment.

Doing nothing still looked 15% bigger

Rising values are mostly the market going up, which is why this report counts how many funds bought a stock rather than what a holding is worth.

Funds were buying the best-performing corner of the market at the end of its best quarter on record. Every number that follows should be read with that in mind.

02 New listings

Ten Companies Joined the Market Between April and June

Every company here is new: none appeared in any fund’s disclosures before this quarter. Some floated; others were handed to shareholders by a parent company.

1,757

funds owned SpaceX nineteen days after it floated. It was also the single largest purchase made by any fund in the market last quarter.

Funds holding at 30 June All ten arrivals

01

Honeywell Aerospace
Separated from Honeywell · 29 June

2,075
02

SpaceX
Floated 11 June at $135 a share

1,757
03

FedEx Freight
Separated from FedEx · 1 June

1,138
04

Cerebras Systems
AI chip designer, floated 13 May

416
05

X-Energy
Small modular nuclear reactors

190
06

Fervo Energy
Geothermal power

183
07

Quantinuum
Quantum computing

175
08

First Tracks Biotherapeutics
Biotechnology

150
09

AEVEX
Aerospace and defence

147
10

DPC Holdings
Industrials

144

The two largest floats Separated from a parent Smaller arrivals

What arrived

The two largest floats

SpaceX and Cerebras, an AI chip designer, were the biggest companies to float.

Separations are different

Their parents’ shareholders received them automatically. A float has to be bought.

Look further down

Nuclear power, geothermal power and quantum computing all listed this quarter. All three come back later in this report.

Honeywell Aerospace has the most owners because a separation hands shares to everyone who already held the parent. SpaceX is the one funds had to go out and buy.

03 The real consensus

Chip Stocks Dominated the Most-Bought List

These are the ten companies the most funds chose to buy, once newly listed shares are set aside. Seven of the ten come from the chain that designs, builds and equips semiconductors.

7 of 10

of the most-bought companies came from the chip supply chain

Net new fund owners Positions opened, less closed

01

Intel

1,018
02

Micron

922
03

AMD

857
04

Marvell

693
05

SanDisk

654
06

Applied Materials

594
07

Lam Research

522
08

Seagate

512
09

Dell

511
10

Palo Alto Networks

472

Chip supply chain Storage, servers and cybersecurity

Why these seven

Designers

Intel and AMD design the chips that do the computing.

Memory makers

Micron and SanDisk make the memory an AI data centre needs most.

Connections

Marvell makes the parts that move data between chips.

The machines

Applied Materials and Lam Research build the equipment that makes all of it.

Large investors rarely agree this completely. Seven of the ten most-bought companies in the whole market drawn from one supply chain is about as close to a single collective decision as this data ever gets.

04 The whole market

Technology Took the Money. Every Other Sector Took Scraps.

Chips were not the only thing bought last quarter, but nothing else came close. This is the company that drew the most new fund owners in each of the eleven sectors.

2.5×

as many new fund owners for Intel as for the leader of any other sector

Each sector’s most-bought company Net new fund owners

01

Intel
Technology

1,018
02

Versigent
Consumer discretionary

405
03

UnitedHealth
Healthcare

387
04

GE Vernova ‡
Industrials

358
05

Nebius Group
Communication services

346
06

Morgan Stanley
Financials

267
07

Devon Energy †
Energy

227
08

Nucor
Materials

184
09

Fervo Energy
Utilities

183
10

Monster Beverage
Consumer staples

143
11

Welltower
Real estate

122

The scale of it

$36.2tn

of technology stock tracked

More than twice the size of the next largest sector.

183

Fervo Energy’s net new fund owners

Utilities is led by a geothermal power company that only listed this quarter. Even the energy story is an AI story.

One sector absorbed the quarter’s attention. Everything outside technology was a rounding error by comparison.

05 Beside the chips

The Three Names in the Top Ten That Were Not Chip Companies

Seagate, Dell and Palo Alto Networks were the three names in the most-bought ten that do not make chips. Each arrived with a second company behind it, and each stands for a different idea.

2 of 3

are still bets on the same data-centre build-out as the chips

Three ideas, two companies each Net new fund owners

Storage and memory

Seagate

512 funds
Western Digital

445 funds

Why funds bought it. An AI data centre has to put its data somewhere, and storage is the part of the chain in shortest supply after memory itself.

AI infrastructure

Dell

511 funds
Corning

452 funds

Why funds bought it. Chips are useless on their own. Dell builds the servers that house them and Corning makes the fibre that connects them.

Cybersecurity

Palo Alto Networks

472 funds
CrowdStrike

398 funds

Why funds bought it. The only idea here with nothing to do with hardware. More data centres and more data mean more that has to be defended.

Only cybersecurity is a different idea - and UnitedHealth, at 387 funds, was the one large company outside technology anywhere in the top twenty-five.

06 Across every size

The Same Trade Runs All the Way Down the Size Scale

The headline rankings belong to the largest companies in the world. Split the market into five size bands and each has its own leaders - and the counts collapse as the companies get smaller.

9×

as many new owners for Intel as for the leading small cap, and fifteen times the leading micro cap

The top three in each size band One scale across every band

Mega cap

Over $200bn

Every one a chip company.

Intel 1,019
Micron 923
AMD 858

Large cap

$10bn to $200bn

Fibre, memory and AI cloud, one tier down.

Mid cap

$2bn to $10bn

Where a few hundred new owners is a crowd.

Small cap

$250m to $2bn

Thin: most small-cap movers were new listings.

Micro cap

Under $250m

Barely a crowd at all.

Never compare a count across two size bands without saying so. A mid cap that adds four hundred owners has been discovered. A mega cap that adds four hundred has barely been noticed.

07 Below the giants

A Closer Look at the Mid Caps and the Small Caps

The previous page showed the top three in each size band. These are the full mid-cap and small-cap lists - the part of the market most private investors are actually looking at.

405

net new fund owners for Versigent, a $3.2bn company

Net new fund owners Company size beside each name

Mid cap $2bn to $10bn

01

Versigent
$3.2bn

405
02

MaxLinear
$8.2bn

199
03

Infleqtion
$3.1bn

168
04

Vishay Intertechnology
$5.0bn

168
05

OceanaGold
$6.3bn

153
06

Penguin Solutions
$2.8bn

129

Small cap Under $2bn

01

Wolfspeed
$1.5bn

116
02

Ambiq Micro
$1.6bn

88
03

SharonAI Holdings
$1.9bn

87

Chip companies Quantum, gold, AI services and memory

Reading the lists

Three are chip companies

MaxLinear, Vishay and Wolfspeed. Even down here, the quarter’s biggest theme is visible.

Why the small-cap list is short

Most of the other big small-cap movers only listed during the quarter, so they are on the new-listings page instead.

A mid-sized company that adds four hundred institutional owners in three months has been found by professional money. The same number at a mega cap would barely register.

08 The big themes

Everyone Owns These Themes. Only One Gained Real Conviction.

The platform sorts every listed company into themes. These are the eight most widely held - and, more usefully, how many funds hold one of their companies as a top-ten position.

+377

more funds held a semiconductor company among their ten largest positions

The eight most widely held themes Ranked by funds holding

Theme	Stocks	Funds holding	In a top 10	Top-10 change	Value growth	Put / call
Artificial Intelligence 7,499 funds · 264 stocks	264	7,499	4,632	+185	+37%	1.05
E-Commerce 7,348 funds · 240 stocks	240	7,348	4,317	+20	+13%	0.81
Digital Payments & Fintech 7,197 funds · 148 stocks	148	7,197	4,027	+13	+13%	0.82
Cloud Computing 7,173 funds · 64 stocks	64	7,173	3,798	−1	+19%	0.73
SaaS & Enterprise Software 7,155 funds · 266 stocks	266	7,155	3,094	−227	+8%	0.75
Semiconductors 7,113 funds · 178 stocks	178	7,113	3,972	+377	+58%	1.34
Streaming & Digital Media 7,090 funds · 120 stocks	120	7,090	3,400	+96	+19%	0.82
Social Media & Creator Economy 6,907 funds · 45 stocks	45	6,907	3,459	−44	+14%	0.63

The rotation, in two numbers. SaaS & Enterprise Software −227 → Semiconductors +377 Those are the two rows in bold. A red figure means the theme lost top-ten holdings over the quarter; bold simply marks the rows this page is about.

Semiconductors gained 377 funds holding it as a top-ten position. Enterprise software lost 227. That is the quarter’s rotation in two numbers.

09 Where it is growing

The Themes Funds Moved Into Fastest

The biggest themes are already full. These are the ones filling up - ranked by how fast the number of funds holding them grew over the three months.

+22%

more funds owned an AI memory company - 841 new owners in three months

Growth in funds holding Themes held by more than 1,000 funds

Theme	Growth	New owners	Funds holding
AI Memory & HBM	+22%	+841	4,649
Agentic AI Security	+18%	+448	2,959
Photonics & Optical Interconnect	+16%	+344	2,449
Carbon & Pollution Control	+13%	+378	3,197
Chip Equipment & Lithography	+12%	+516	4,904
Bitcoin Miners	+12%	+170	1,534
Cybersecurity · Identity Security	+12%	+119	1,108
Cloud · Edge Computing	+11%	+204	2,077
Analog & Power Semiconductors	+10%	+355	3,986
Power for AI Data Centres	+10%	+324	3,504

The sharpest contrast. Ownership of agentic AI itself fell 4%, while the companies that secure AI agents gained 18%. Funds sold the agents and bought the locks.

Inside the chip and AI build-out Outside it

Memory is where the quarter’s story began and where it is still building. AI memory gained 841 new fund owners - more than any theme not created by a new listing.

10 Where it is leaving

The Themes Funds Walked Away From

Themes lose owners as well as gain them, and this list is more surprising than the one before it. Three of these were among the most talked-about ideas of the past two years.

−21%

fewer funds held warehouse and logistics robotics - 613 owners gone

Fall in funds holding Six widely discussed themes

Theme	Fall	Owners lost	Funds holding	Value
Warehouse & Logistics Robotics 3 stocks	−21%	−613	2,292	−47%
Chinese AI 14 stocks	−8%	−121	1,364	−22%
Agentic AI 13 stocks	−4%	−158	4,007	−15%
Gold & Precious Metals 133 stocks	−3%	−98	3,311	−14%
Robotics & Automation 83 stocks	−2%	−74	4,348	+8%
Oil & Gas 361 stocks	−2%	−160	6,353	−11%

Two numbers worth a second look

$54.1bn

out of warehouse robotics

Funds took $40.8bn out of robotics as a whole, and more than that from its warehouse corner.

$22.3bn

Gold is worth a second look

Ownership of gold and silver companies fell 3%, yet the gold trust held the third-largest upside options position in the market. Funds backed gold through options rather than through the miners.

Robotics and agentic AI were two of the loudest stories of the past two years. Institutional ownership of both fell in a quarter when almost everything else rose.

11 The other side

The Stocks Funds Were Leaving Were Last Decade’s Winners

Money that goes into one stock has to come out of another. The list of what funds were backing out of is almost entirely the technology that led the market before artificial intelligence did.

−513

net fund owners lost by Cisco, once Honeywell’s reverse split is set aside

Net sellers Funds that cut, less funds that added

01

Honeywell †

1,835
02

Cisco

513
03

Salesforce

470
04

Qualcomm

413
05

Apple

363
06

Danaher

352
07

Walt Disney

340
08

Abbott

332
09

Alphabet

321
10

Lowe’s

299

The last cycle’s leaders Other net sellers Reverse split, not selling

What this tells you

Qualcomm

The one chip company on the list, and the one whose chips go into phones rather than data centres.

Cisco, Salesforce

The networking and software names that led the previous cycle. Neither has an obvious place in the new one.

Alphabet

Cut by 2,342 funds in the same quarter Berkshire made it the largest purchase of the year.

Funds were not buying chips in general. They were buying the chips that go into data centres, and selling almost everything that does not.

12 The options book

Funds Bet Up on the Platforms and Bought Protection on the Chips

Alongside their shares, large funds hold options - contracts that pay out if a price rises, or if it falls. The two sides of that book pointed at completely different parts of the market.

4.4×

more money sat in protection against a fall than in bets on a rise

The options book, in US dollars Value of the shares covered

Protection against a fall Bets on a rise

$679.0bn

Whole markets
$156.3bn

Chip companies
Mega-cap companies

$148.8bn
Gold and long bonds

$41.2bn

Every company funds protected against was a chip maker. Not one appears on the upside list.

The shape of it

81%

against whole markets

Most of the protection covered the market itself, not any single company.

Two lists

The upside names are the mega-cap platforms. The downside names are the chip makers funds were buying at the same time.

Read the two sides together and the quarter looks less like conviction and more like a hedge: own the platforms, insure against everything else.

13 Who these investors are

Not Every Big Investor Is Doing the Same Job

“Institutional investor” covers three very different businesses. The quickest way to tell them apart is to count how many companies each one holds.

15,445

companies in Citadel’s book. Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square holds 16.

Companies held At 30 June 2026

Stock pickers

Hedge funds and family offices

A few dozen companies, chosen deliberately. Every trade is a decision worth reading.

Passive funds

Index and tracker managers

Own the whole market on purpose, because a tracker has to. They are not taking a view.

Vanguard
4,163
State Street
4,366
Geode
4,628
BlackRock
5,933

High-turnover firms

Quant funds and market makers

Hold almost everything for days rather than years. The positions are trading inventory.

Renaissance
3,761
Jane Street
13,869
Susquehanna
15,023
Citadel
15,445

The concentrated funds nobody writes about

None manages more than $13bn and none is a household name, yet all three have the same largest holding, SanDisk, and each opened it within the last four quarters.

11%

Whale Rock

in SanDisk · 42 holdings

21%

AIGH Capital

in SanDisk · 61 holdings

36%

Sassicaia

in SanDisk · 57 holdings

Check which group a fund sits in before reading anything into its trade. A stock picker adding a position has made a choice. A market maker doing the same has taken in inventory.

14 Conviction, measured

A Big Number From a Big Fund Is Not a Big Bet

Citadel bought $13 billion of stock last quarter and Bill Ackman bought $5.3 billion. Measured against the size of each book, Ackman made by far the bigger bet.

27.2%

of Pershing Square’s book put to work in three months. Citadel managed 1.5%.

New money put to work, as a share of the book Estimated, Q2 2026

01

Situational Awareness
Leopold Aschenbrenner · $8.27bn

40.9%
02

Pershing Square
Bill Ackman · $5.29bn

27.2%
03

Coatue
Philippe Laffont · $9.41bn

19.3%
04

Duquesne Family Office
Stanley Druckenmiller · $738m

14.2%
05

Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett · $15.0bn

5.0%
06

Fisher Investments
Ken Fisher · $8.53bn

2.5%
07

Citadel
Ken Griffin · $13.0bn

1.5%
08

Renaissance Technologies
Founded by Jim Simons · $958m

1.3%

And two were net sellers. Bridgewater took $3.05bn out of the market over the quarter and Appaloosa $377m. Neither appears above, because there is no new money to measure.

Read it this way

$15bn

Warren Buffett

The most bought by anyone here but Citadel, and only 5% of his book.

1.5%

Ken Griffin

Citadel’s $13bn is the biggest headline and the smallest commitment on the page.

Price-stripped

This counts money actually moved. A holding that simply rose in value does not appear in it.

The dollar figure tells you how big the fund is. This tells you how much they meant it.

15 Where the big names moved

Ackman Moved More in One Quarter Than Anyone Else

For each well-known investor, how much of the portfolio sat in their single biggest sector at the end of March, and where it stood three months later.

+11 pts

Ackman’s move into financials, from under a fifth of the book to nearly a third

Share of the book in its largest sector March ○ → June ●

20% 40% 60% 80%

Bill Ackman
Financials

+11 pts
Ken Fisher
Technology

+3 pts
Ken Griffin
Miscellaneous

+4 pts
Warren Buffett
Financials

−1 pt
Stanley Druckenmiller
Healthcare

−7 pts

The longer the line, the bigger the shift. Ackman’s eleven-point move into financials is the largest single-quarter change of any well-known investor here.

What moved

−7 pts

Stanley Druckenmiller

Out of healthcare, the largest reduction here.

−1 pt

Warren Buffett

Barely moved. Financials is still his largest sector, as it has been for years.

Most of these investors barely moved. The two that did moved hard - and in opposite directions.

16 The biggest trades

One Firm Was Behind Five of the Twenty Biggest Trades

Rankings describe crowds. The trade screen names the firm and the size. Sorted that way, one household name appears again and again.

4 of 10

of the largest sales of the quarter were Fidelity’s

The ten largest sales of the quarter Firm and what it sold

01

Rakuten
Total market ETF

$16.2bn
02

Fidelity
Marvell

$14.9bn
03

Fidelity
Meta Platforms

$12.7bn
04

T. Rowe Price
Microsoft

$12.1bn
05

T. Rowe Price
Apple

$11.6bn
06

Capital World
Micron

$9.44bn
07

Fidelity
SanDisk

$7.89bn
08

Sanders Capital
Seagate

$7.18bn
09

State Street
Honeywell †

$7.17bn
10

Fidelity
Netflix

$6.05bn

Fidelity Other firms

One name, again and again

$51.4bn

Fidelity’s purchase of SpaceX

The third-largest buy in the market, and its fifth trade in the top twenty.

3 of 4

of its other big cuts

were optical and networking parts - the same chain everyone else was leaving.

“Institutions sold chips” is a headline. “Fidelity sold $14.9bn of Marvell” is a conversation.

17 High conviction

The Biggest Conviction Trades Were Into the Index, Not Into Stocks

A large trade from a large fund means little. A trade that doubles or triples a position the fund already held is a decision. Sorted that way, the quarter looks very different.

4 of 8

of the largest conviction purchases were S&P 500 trackers, not companies

Stakes doubled, tripled and cut Ranked by position size

They tripled down on

Fund and trade	Stake	Size
Jane Street S&P 500 tracker · SPY	+118%	$17.4bn
CalPERS S&P 500 tracker · IVV	+1,098%	$10.1bn
Citadel S&P 500 tracker · IVV	+335%	$9.91bn
D. E. Shaw S&P 500 tracker · SPY	+1,782%	$9.63bn
Berkshire Hathaway Alphabet	+658%	$8.44bn
SG Americas Microsoft	+339%	$7.43bn
T. Rowe Price Micron	+165%	$6.62bn
Invesco SanDisk	+381%	$6.35bn

They cut hard

Fund and trade	Stake	Size
Fidelity Marvell	−57%	$14.9bn
Sanders Capital Seagate	−73%	$7.18bn
BlackRock Honeywell †	−53%	$5.81bn
LM Advisors Berkshire Hathaway	Sold out	$5.17bn
Fidelity Coherent	−51%	$4.12bn
Arrowstreet Broadcom	−54%	$4.07bn
Bank of Nova Scotia Booking Holdings	−97%	$3.60bn
Fidelity Lumentum	−51%	$3.27bn

Four of the eight largest conviction purchases in the market were S&P 500 trackers. When these funds went all in, most of them went all in on the index rather than on a company.

S&P 500 trackers

The honest answer to “what is the smart money buying” is partly the index. That is less exciting than a stock tip and a great deal more useful to a client.

18 A cautionary tale

The Rise and Fall of a $20 Billion Fund

Disclosures are most revealing read two in a row. Situational Awareness LP, run by Leopold Aschenbrenner, removed almost all its protection between March and June.

91.8%

of the fund sat in its ten largest positions by June, up from 72.7% in March

Two disclosures, side by side 31 March → 30 June 2026

At the end of March

72.7% in its top ten

Protection held

$7.7bn

Held against the chip and AI complex, and larger than any sector in the book.

At the end of June

91.8% in its top ten

Protection held

About $5m

Technology was 77.7% of the book. Micron and SanDisk were its two biggest purchases.

What happened next. It is reported to have fallen 67% in July and sold roughly $16bn of shares to Citadel at a discount after margin calls - two weeks before this disclosure became public on 14 August.

What it did in the quarter

+185%

Estimated return

The strongest of any fund managing over $10bn.

40.9%

of the fund put to work

In three months. The next most active investor we track committed 27%.

20 of 46

Positions closed

This is what taking off a seatbelt looks like in a disclosure.

Two disclosures, read side by side, showed the risk building in plain sight. Nobody could have acted in time - but the concentration was there in black and white for anyone who looked.

19 Inside the quarter

The Money Went Into the Parts, Not the Famous Names

The single best explanation of the whole quarter. The chip companies that tripled make components. The best-known names in chips went up about as much as the market did.

+216%

Intel, the quarter’s most-bought stock and also its biggest gainer

Price move over the quarter 31 March = 0%

0%

+50%

+100%

+150%

+200%

31 Mar 1 May 1 Jun 30 Jun

Chip index (SOX) +88%

S&P 500 +15%

NVIDIA +15%

Broadcom +22%

AMD +186%

Intel +216%

Intel and AMD roughly tripled. NVIDIA and the S&P 500 finished the quarter within a fifth of a percentage point of each other.

Intel AMD Broadcom NVIDIA S&P 500

Why it matters

+15%

NVIDIA

The best-known chip company in the world did no better than the index.

2×

The chip-equipment makers

Applied Materials, KLA and Lam Research each more than doubled.

The parts

Memory, storage and the machines that make chips were where the quarter happened.

Funds were not early to this. They were buying the best-performing corner of the market at the end of its best quarter on record.

20 The biggest single bet

Buffett Put $17 Billion Into Google. Ackman Sold Out.

The largest single conviction trade of the quarter, and one of the most followed investors in the world doing the exact opposite with the same company in the same three months.

91%

of everything Berkshire bought all quarter went into Alphabet

Berkshire Hathaway’s four largest purchases US dollars

01

Alphabet

$17.27bn
02

Delta Air Lines

$1.32bn
03

Lennar

$269m
04

Macy’s

$90m

Alphabet was 91% of everything Berkshire bought last quarter, and thirteen times the size of its next largest purchase.

What other well-known investors did with Alphabet

Renaissance
Bought $639m
Duquesne
Bought $121m
Pershing Square
Sold out completely
Tiger Global
Cut its stake 45%

And the market?

+658%

Berkshire’s added stake

The fifth-largest high-conviction purchase in the market.

9th

Most-sold company

2,342 funds cut Alphabet while 2,021 added. Almost everyone went the other way.

Two of the most watched investors alive looked at the same company in the same three months and did the opposite thing. That disagreement is the story, and it needs no price to tell it.

21 The patient money

The Funds That Hold Longest Were Not Buying the Quarter’s Favourites

These five funds have held their positions for nine to twelve years on average. None opened or added to any of the seven chip companies the market was crowding into. Two were selling them.

12.2 years

the average time Bonness Enterprises has held each of its positions

Average time each position has been held The five longest-holding books

12.2years
Bonness Enterprises
39 holdings
11.2years
Blackhill Capital
49 holdings
10.4years
Greenbrier Partners
11 holdings
9.8years
Pacific Heights
78 holdings
9.6years
Cacti Asset Management
78 holdings

What they did with the quarter’s favourites

Share	New owners	Holder	Held for	In Q2
Intel	1,018	Bonness	52 quarters	Cut 15%
Applied Materials	594	Bonness	52 quarters	Cut 12%
Seagate	512	Cacti	36 quarters	Cut 17%
Corning	451	Bonness	48 quarters	Cut 21%

And one layer up. Greenbrier cut Alphabet by 11% and 12% across the two share classes, having held them for 52 and 42 quarters - in the same three months Berkshire Hathaway put $17.3bn into the same company.

What they do own

Apple · 4 of 5

Held since 2013 in three books, 2015 in the fourth.

Microsoft · 3 of 5

Held for ten to thirteen years in each.

J&J · 3 of 5

None of the three traded a share this quarter.

The investors with the longest memories in this data sat out the quarter’s consensus, and two of them sold into it. That is not a forecast - but it is the other side of the argument.

22 Size and performance

The Biggest Funds Were Not the Best Performers

Each dot is one fund. The further right it sits, the more money it manages; the higher it sits, the stronger its estimated quarter. If size helped, the dots would climb to the right. They do not.

2,364

funds managing more than $1bn, plotted one dot each

Fund size against estimated return One dot per fund

0%

+50%

+100%

+150%

+200%

$1bn

$10bn

$100bn

$1tn

$10tn

S&P 500 +15%

AIGH Capital Situational Awareness SoftBank Whale Rock Coatue Citadel Berkshire Hathaway

Assets under management · each step is ten times the last

15 funds beat +100% - every one manages under $100bn
14 managers over $1tn, all between +19% and +41%

The named funds, in figures
Fund	Manages	Estimated return
AIGH Capital	$1.6bn	+211.0%
Situational Awareness	$20.2bn	+185.4%
SoftBank	$18.2bn	+143.6%
Whale Rock	$12.5bn	+109.4%
Coatue	$48.6bn	+58.4%
Citadel	$875bn	+19.4%
Berkshire Hathaway	$299bn	+10.9%

Three things to see

+211%

AIGH Capital

Managing $1.6bn, it had the best quarter of any fund on this chart.

+185%

Situational Awareness

The best quarter of any fund over $10bn. It is reported to have fallen 67% at the end of July, a month after the quarter closed.

+10.9%

Berkshire Hathaway

The most patient book in the data trailed the index.

Following only the famous names means missing almost everything. Note also what the screen keeps out: Pershing Square holds 16 companies and does not pass a twenty-holding test, because a return on that few names is a different kind of number.

23 The long view

Owning What Funds Own Most Has Beaten the Market

Every page up to this one stops at 30 June. These last pages are the platform’s own record, which has to run to the present day to mean anything.

+1,314%

for the Fund Manager Index since 2014, against +319% for the S&P 500

Return since the end of 2013 As at 26 September 2026

0%

+500%

+1,000%

2014 2018 2022 2026

+1,314% Fund Manager Index

+319% S&P 500

+78%
This year: S&P 500 +13%; +79%
One year: S&P 500 +17%

The index today · rebalanced 17 August 2026

Intel 15.0%
Micron 15.0%
Lam Research 11.5%
AMD 10.1%
Marvell 9.9%
Applied Materials 9.3%
Corning 8.4%
ASML 7.9%
Palo Alto Networks 6.7%
KLA 6.2%

Eight of the ten are chip companies. The index rebalanced into exactly the names this report describes on the first trading day after these disclosures became public. See the index →

Following the crowd has worked well over time. Its latest rebalance is the clearest statement of what the crowd currently owns - and it is one sector: technology.

24 Signal confidence

A Signal Is a Pattern in Fund Behaviour, Scored Against Its Own History

The platform watches for thirteen patterns in the way funds behave. When one of them appears in a company, that is a signal. Here is how each pattern is scored.

140,339

past cases scored across all thirteen patterns

The eight strongest of thirteen patterns Scored at a 10% rise

1
The pattern appears

A burst of buying, funds doubling down, a jump in calls
2
Every past case is found

140,339 earlier occurrences, across all thirteen
3
What followed is counted

How often the share then rose 10%, and how fast

What the platform sees	Past cases	Later rose 10%	Typical time
Top-performing funds at least doubled a stake	3,291	86.8%	39 days
Top-ten holdings grew faster than 90% of the sector	2,231	86.3%	34 days
3× the sector average opened a position	5,320	86.0%	45 days
3× the sector average added to a position	8,507	85.5%	55 days
3× the sector average hold it in their top ten	7,652	85.2%	53 days
Call options at 3× the sector average	12,113	84.4%	48 days
New buying in the busiest tenth of its sector	16,706	84.2%	48 days
More funds doubled their stake than at any company its size	27,238	83.9%	34 days

Funds doubling down Conviction Weight of new money Options buying See every signal →

Four families of pattern, thirteen in total, every one built from the same disclosures as the rest of this report. The next two pages show the record behind them, and what one looked like the last time it worked.

25 The record behind the signals

Nine in Ten of 66,844 Signals Moved 5% in the Direction They Pointed

The platform has issued 66,844 signals since 2013 and scores every one against what the price did next. This is the whole record, not a selection from it.

9 in 10

signals moved 5% in the direction they pointed - 90.2% of 66,844

How far below what funds paid, when the signal opened 66,844 signals since 2013

Below what funds paid	Reached +5%	Reached +20%	Reached +20%
5% to 15% below 36,975 signals	89.4%	67%	67%
20% to 30% below 18,790 signals	90.8%	about 73%	about 73%
35% to 50% below 11,079 signals	91.5%	78%	78%

Below what funds paid

Reached +5%

Reached +20%

5% to 15% below

36,975 signals

89.4%

67%

20% to 30% below

18,790 signals

90.8%

about 73%

35% to 50% below

11,079 signals

91.5%

78%

The deeper the discount when the signal opened, the more often it worked - across 66,844 cases, not a handful.

See the full backtest →

The biggest companies

19 in 20

Mega caps did the same

95.4% of the 3,022 mega-cap signals moved 5% in the direction they pointed.

81% vs 70%

Reached +20%

Mega caps against the whole record. The gap widens as the test gets harder.

5%

Share of all signals

Mega caps are the rarest kind, and the most reliable.

The signals worked more often the further a share had fallen below what institutions paid for it.

26 Two worked examples

Both of This Quarter’s Favourites Were Flagged a Year Before It Started

The two shares at the centre of this report were flagged long before the quarter began. Everything here runs to 14 August 2026, the day these disclosures became public.

+1,401%

Micron’s return from its 4 April 2025 signal to 14 August 2026

Every time the pattern fired, and what followed Daily price, log scale

Micron

$971.66 on 14 Aug

6 patterns fired at once · $4.97bn of calls, 5.1× the sector average

$100

$300

$1,000

Jan 2025 Jul 2025 Jan 2026

Q2

AMD

$514.39 on 14 Aug

8 patterns fired · $27.2bn of calls, 23× the sector average

$100

$200

$500

Jan 2025 Jul 2025 Jan 2026

Q2

Share	Signal opened	Price	Below what funds paid	Return by 14 Aug 2026
Micron	24 Feb 2025	$95.41	6% below	+918%
Micron	3 Mar 2025	$90.54	11% below	+973%
Micron	3 Apr 2025	$74.34	27% below	+1,207%
Micron	4 Apr 2025	$64.72	36% below	+1,401%
AMD	27 Feb 2025	$99.51	31% below	+417%
AMD	4 Apr 2025	$85.76	40% below	+500%
AMD	8 Apr 2025	$78.21	46% below	+558%
AMD	18 Feb 2026	$200.12	11% below	+157%

Then the crowd. By the quarter in this report, 923 funds were opening a position in Micron and 858 in AMD. The signals were a year ahead of them.

The value is in the timing, not the names. Both shares were flagged while they still traded below what institutions had paid - a year before the buying showed up in anyone’s filings.

27 The options book on the index

Funds’ Index Protection Is at a Five-Quarter High

Net protection is what is left once funds’ upside bets on an index are set against their downside ones. On the large-cap index and the small-cap index alike, funds ended June holding more of it than at any time in the previous year.

$400bn

of net protection on the S&P 500 tracker at 30 June - the most in five quarters

Net put position held by funds Put less call notional, in US dollars

Large caps S&P 500 tracker · SPY

2025 Q2 $289bn
2025 Q3 $359bn
2025 Q4 $248bn
2026 Q1 $249bn
2026 Q2 $400bn

Small caps Russell 2000 tracker · IWM

2025 Q2 $55.4bn
2025 Q3 $74.4bn
2025 Q4 $46.5bn
2026 Q1 $62.2bn
2026 Q2 $80bn

The small-cap position is the bigger bet. Against the size of the funds themselves: $80bn of net protection on a fund worth about $77bn, against $400bn on one worth $833bn.

The one outlier

7×

Chip ETF puts

From $12.6bn to $93bn over five quarters, nearly all of it last quarter.

3 to 1

Chip downside to upside

Against under two to one a year ago.

1.76–2.02×

Every other big ETF

Where they all sat across the whole year on that same measure. Nothing else happened.

Index protection is not a forecast - most of it insures shares the funds already own. What it shows is how much cover they thought worth paying for, and in this quarter they paid for more of it than at any point in a year.

28 Every quarter

The Six Questions This Report Answers Every Quarter

These six questions are the same in every edition. Each card holds this quarter’s answer; in three months each will be answered again from the next set of disclosures.

16 Nov

when the next disclosures are expected, for July to September 2026

Six questions, asked every quarter Answered again on 16 November

The value of this report is that it asks the same six questions every quarter. One edition is a snapshot. Four of them are a record of how institutional money actually moves.