Storage and memory
-
512 funds
-
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.
Wall St. Rank
Institutional flows research · Q2 2026
Quarterly fund flows report · April – June 2026
Q2 2026 Fund Flows Report
What the world’s largest investors bought and sold.
Funds spent the quarter crowding into a single supply chain - semiconductors - and paid for it by selling the technology of the last cycle. Underneath that trade, newer themes were already filling up.
- Funds tracked
- 8,798
- Funds tracked
- of holdings tracked
- $75.04tn
- of holdings tracked
The highlights
01 / 05
-
Most-bought were chip stocks
Chip stocks dominated what funds bought
Seven of the ten most-bought companies came from the semiconductor supply chain. More than five hundred funds opened a position in each of them.
Read the page -
Funds owned SpaceX within three weeks
SpaceX was the biggest new listing of the quarter
It floated on 11 June and was owned by 1,757 funds within three weeks - the largest single purchase made by any fund in the market.
Read the page -
Net fund owners lost by Cisco
The money came out of last cycle’s technology
Cisco, Salesforce, Qualcomm and Apple were among the most-sold companies as funds paid for the chip trade. Cisco alone lost 513 net fund owners.
Read the page -
More funds owned AI memory
AI memory was the fastest-growing theme
841 more funds owned one of its companies at the end of June than at the start of April - ahead of every other theme in the market.
Read the page -
Berkshire put into Alphabet
Buffett made the single biggest bet of the quarter
Berkshire put $17.3bn into Alphabet - 91% of everything it bought all quarter - while Bill Ackman sold out of the same company.
Read the page
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
+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.
-
01
Honeywell Aerospace
Separated from Honeywell · 29 June
2,075 -
02
SpaceXFloated 11 June at $135 a share
1,757 -
03
FedEx FreightSeparated from FedEx · 1 June
1,138 -
04
Cerebras SystemsAI chip designer, floated 13 May
416 -
05
X-EnergySmall modular nuclear reactors
190 -
06
Fervo EnergyGeothermal power
183 -
07
QuantinuumQuantum computing
175 -
08
First Tracks BiotherapeuticsBiotechnology
150 -
09
AEVEXAerospace 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
-
01
1,018
-
02
922
-
03
857
-
04
693
-
05
654
-
06
594
-
07
522
-
08
512
-
09
511
-
10
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
-
01
Intel
Technology
1,018 -
02
VersigentConsumer discretionary
405 -
03
UnitedHealthHealthcare
387 -
04
GE Vernova ‡Industrials
358 -
05
Nebius GroupCommunication services
346 -
06
Morgan StanleyFinancials
267 -
07
Devon Energy †Energy
227 -
08
NucorMaterials
184 -
09
Fervo Energy
Utilities
183 -
10
Monster BeverageConsumer staples
143 -
11
WelltowerReal 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
AI infrastructure
-
511 funds
-
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
-
472 funds
-
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
Mega cap
Over $200bn
Every one a chip company.
Large cap
$10bn to $200bn
Fibre, memory and AI cloud, one tier down.
-
Corning
451
-
Western Digital
445
-
Nebius Group
346
Mid cap
$2bn to $10bn
Where a few hundred new owners is a crowd.
-
Versigent
405
-
MaxLinear
199
-
Infleqtion
168
Small cap
$250m to $2bn
Thin: most small-cap movers were new listings.
-
Wolfspeed
116
-
Ambiq Micro
88
-
SharonAI
87
Micro cap
Under $250m
Barely a crowd at all.
-
HMH Holding
69
-
Soluna Holdings
57
-
Sidus Space
52
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
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
| Theme | In a top 10 | Top-10 change |
|---|---|---|
|
Artificial Intelligence 7,499 funds · 264 stocks | 4,632 | +185 |
|
E-Commerce 7,348 funds · 240 stocks | 4,317 | +20 |
|
Digital Payments & Fintech 7,197 funds · 148 stocks | 4,027 | +13 |
|
Cloud Computing 7,173 funds · 64 stocks | 3,798 | −1 |
|
SaaS & Enterprise Software 7,155 funds · 266 stocks | 3,094 | −227 |
|
Semiconductors 7,113 funds · 178 stocks | 3,972 | +377 |
|
Streaming & Digital Media 7,090 funds · 120 stocks | 3,400 | +96 |
|
Social Media & Creator Economy 6,907 funds · 45 stocks | 3,459 | −44 |
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
| Theme | Growth | New owners |
|---|---|---|
| AI Memory & HBM | +22% | +841 |
| Agentic AI Security | +18% | +448 |
| Photonics & Optical Interconnect | +16% | +344 |
| Carbon & Pollution Control | +13% | +378 |
| Chip Equipment & Lithography | +12% | +516 |
| Bitcoin Miners | +12% | +170 |
| Cybersecurity · Identity Security | +12% | +119 |
| Cloud · Edge Computing | +11% | +204 |
| Analog & Power Semiconductors | +10% | +355 |
| Power for AI Data Centres | +10% | +324 |
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
| Theme | Fall | Owners lost |
|---|---|---|
|
Warehouse & Logistics Robotics 3 stocks | −21% | −613 |
|
Chinese AI 14 stocks | −8% | −121 |
|
Agentic AI 13 stocks | −4% | −158 |
|
Gold & Precious Metals 133 stocks | −3% | −98 |
|
Robotics & Automation 83 stocks | −2% | −74 |
|
Oil & Gas 361 stocks | −2% | −160 |
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
-
01
1,835
-
02
513
-
03
470
-
04
413
-
05
363
-
06
352
-
07
340
-
08
332
-
09
321
-
10
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
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.
Stock pickers
Hedge funds and family offices
A few dozen companies, chosen deliberately. Every trade is a decision worth reading.
-
Pershing Square
16
-
Appaloosa
39
-
Whale Rock
42
-
Coatue
71
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%.
-
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
40%
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
-
01
RakutenTotal 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 CapitalSeagate
$7.18bn -
09
State StreetHoneywell †
$7.17bn -
10
FidelityNetflix
$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
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
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
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
-
01
$17.27bn
-
02
$1.32bn
-
03
$269m
-
04
$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
-
12.2years
Bonness Enterprises39 holdings
-
11.2years
Blackhill Capital49 holdings
-
10.4years
Greenbrier Partners11 holdings
-
9.8years
Pacific Heights78 holdings
-
9.6years
Cacti Asset Management78 holdings
What they did with the quarter’s favourites
| Share | Holder | In Q2 |
|---|---|---|
|
Intel
| Bonness | Cut 15% |
|
Applied Materials
| Bonness | Cut 12% |
|
Seagate
| Cacti | Cut 17% |
|
Corning
| Bonness | 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
0%
+50%
+100%
+150%
+200%
$1bn
$10bn
$100bn
$1tn
$10tn
S&P 500 +15%
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%
| 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
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
-
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 | Later rose 10% |
|---|---|
| Top-performing funds at least doubled a stake | 86.8% |
| Top-ten holdings grew faster than 90% of the sector | 86.3% |
| 3× the sector average opened a position | 86.0% |
| 3× the sector average added to a position | 85.5% |
| 3× the sector average hold it in their top ten | 85.2% |
| Call options at 3× the sector average | 84.4% |
| New buying in the busiest tenth of its sector | 84.2% |
| More funds doubled their stake than at any company its size | 83.9% |
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
| 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.
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
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 | Return by 14 Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Micron | 24 Feb 2025 | +918% |
| Micron | 3 Mar 2025 | +973% |
| Micron | 3 Apr 2025 | +1,207% |
| Micron | 4 Apr 2025 | +1,401% |
| AMD | 27 Feb 2025 | +417% |
| AMD | 4 Apr 2025 | +500% |
| AMD | 8 Apr 2025 | +558% |
| AMD | 18 Feb 2026 | +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
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
- Sectors and themes 01 Which sectors and themes gained institutional owners, and which lost them? Q2 2026: AI memory gained 841 fund owners. Robotics lost 74, and warehouse robotics 613.
- Fund flows 02 How much new money did large funds put to work, measured against the size of each book? Q2 2026: From 1.3% of the book at Renaissance to 40.9% at Situational Awareness.
- Sector weights 03 Where did the best-known investors move their single largest sector, quarter on quarter? Q2 2026: Ackman moved eleven points into financials. Buffett moved one.
- The crowded trade 04 Which company did most funds buy into, and how far did the buying spread? Q2 2026: Intel, with 1,018 net new fund owners. Seven of the ten most-bought were chip companies.
- The hedge 05 How much protection was held, and against whole markets or individual companies? Q2 2026: $835bn, of which 81% was against whole markets rather than any single company.
- Fresh listings 06 Which companies joined the market, and how much institutional money did they draw? Q2 2026: Ten arrived. SpaceX was owned by 1,757 funds within three weeks of floating.
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.