Bloomberg
Billionaire Family Offices Reveal Biggest Equity Picks
(Bloomberg) — Stanley Druckenmiller said last week that pretty much anyone could make money in the markets right now and that he was up 17% this year.The latest regulatory filing from his Duquesne Family Office shows some of the ways he’s done this and what he’s betting on going forward.The investor, worth $10.4 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, took a new $154.6 million position in Citigroup Inc., and a smaller stake in JPMorgan Chase & Co., a bet that could benefit from rising rates.Duquesne also amassed a $69.7 million stake in online travel company Booking Holdings Inc. and boosted its holdings of Starbucks Corp. and Expedia Group Inc. — a nod to the rapidly vaccinated U.S. and a potential return to more travel and work from the office.Overall, the firm disclosed on Monday $3.9 billion of U.S. equity holdings in the 13F filing, a slight increase from the prior quarter.Druckenmiller made some sizable trades involving consumer businesses inordinately impacted by the pandemic. He liquidated stakes in Walt Disney Co. and cruise liner Carnival Corp. Duquesne also trimmed its holdings in used-car retailer Carvana Co. and miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc., which is up 70% this year.Extremely PrivateFamily offices, the closely held investment vehicles of the ultra-wealthy, are often impenetrably discreet. The 13F filings are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission of money managers overseeing more than $100 million in U.S. equities and must be filed within 45 days of the end of each quarter.Only a handful of family offices out of the thousands operating globally file the forms. Most are too small or farm their equity investments out to external money managers. Some, such as Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, buy securities through swap arrangements with banks, which keeps their holdings hidden. Hwang’s family office, which blew up at the end of March, never filed a 13F.For those required to file the forms, they offer a glimpse into the investment strategies of some of the world’s wealthiest people.Soros Fund Management, for instance, revealed on Friday it snapped up shares of ViacomCBS Inc., Baidu Inc., Vipshop Holdings Ltd. and Tencent Music Entertainment Group. The investment firm, which oversees $27 billion, didn’t hold the shares prior to Archegos’s implosion, said a person familiar with the fund’s trading.Iconiq, WildcatBlue Pool Capital, which manages part of the fortunes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founders Joe Tsai and Jack Ma, increased its investments in U.S. tech giants and trimmed exposure to health-care stocks in the first quarter, according to its latest filing.The Hong Kong-based firm took new positions in Uber Technologies Inc. and Twitter Inc. and added to its bets on Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. In total the seven-year old firm disclosed it held 31 U.S. stocks worth a combined $446 million at the end of the quarter.Bluecrest Capital Management, the investment firm of billionaire trader Michael Platt, disclosed it held $3.8 billion of U.S. equities, a jump of more than $400 million from the prior period. The firm’s largest new positions were NRG Energy Inc., China Biologic Products Holdings and blank check firm Churchill Capital Corp VII.Iconiq Capital, the San Francisco-based multifamily office that has managed money for high-profile Silicon Valley billionaires like Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, reported that the value of its disclosed holdings surged 121% from the previous quarter, to $8.9 billion.Iconiq boosted its biggest position, in cloud-computing company Snowflake Inc., and revealed holdings of Roblox Corp. and Twilio Inc. Its Snowflake stake now makes up the vast majority of the total value of Iconiq’s disclosed portfolio.Another family office betting on Snowflake was David Bonderman’s Wildcat Capital Management, which disclosed $819 million of U.S. equities at the end of the quarter.The firm, which shares its name with the location of a home Bonderman owned near Aspen, Colorado, revealed a new position in South Korea’s Coupang Inc., which went public in March. Its largest holdings remain Skillz Inc. and Costar Group Inc.(Adds detail on Bluecrest Capital Management in 13th paragraph)More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
