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Form 13Fs provide a way for investors to see which stocks Wall Street's smartest money managers are buying and selling.
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Billionaire Philippe Laffont sold nearly 8.9 million shares of Supermicro stock in the June-ended quarter -- and profit-taking may tell only part of the story.
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Meanwhile, Coatue's billionaire boss upped his stake in the face of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution by 34% in just three months.
In case you missed it, last week marked one of the most important data dumps of the entire quarter. August 14 was the deadline for institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management to file Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
While earnings season -- the six-week period each quarter where a majority of S&P 500 companies report their operating results -- can clue investors into the health of corporate America, 13Fs are invaluable in helping investors spot which stocks, industries, sectors, and trends have the undivided attention of Wall Street's greatest money managers.
Although Warren Buffett's trading activity is closely followed by investors, he's far from the only billionaire money manager with the prowess to uncover gems hiding in plain sight. For example, billionaire Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management has an extensive track record of investing in winners.
What makes Laffont such an intriguing fund manager to follow is his penchant for investing in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. During the second quarter, Coatue Management's 13F shows that its billionaire boss completely exited his fund's stake in Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) while concurrently piling into the face of the AI revolution.
According to Coatue's 13F, Philippe Laffont jettisoned more than a dozen stocks from his fund's portfolio in the June-ended quarter. Arguably none of these sales is more prominent than artificial intelligence-infrastructure giant Super Micro Computer. After being a shareholder for two quarters, Laffont sent all 8,886,735 shares packing, which had a market value of more than $303 million at the end of March.
The obvious question is: Why did Laffont sell Supermicro stock?
The most logical of all catalysts is that Coatue's billionaire chief was locking in gains. During the fourth quarter, which is when Laffont oversaw the addition of Supermicro to his fund, shares traded below $20 at one point. But during the latter-half of the second quarter, shares of the company consistently vacillated between $40 and $50. It's not out of the question that Laffont netted a triple-digit percentage gain on this position.