What Stocks Are Hedge Funds Buying in 2026? Top Picks from 13F Filings

Quick Answer

TL;DR — as of April 2026, based on Q4 2025 13F filings (the most recent public snapshot):

• AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, GOOGL remain the four most commonly held megacaps across major hedge fund portfolios — they appear as top-10 positions in the vast majority of multi-strategy funds we tracked.
• Strongest Q4 2025 conviction signals: ServiceNow (NOW) — 11 of 16 funds buying, zero selling. Shopify (SHOP) — five funds opened brand-new positions in a single quarter. GE Aerospace (GE) — both quant and fundamental managers added.
• 13F data carries a 45-day reporting lag. What managers filed by February 14, 2026 reflects positions as of December 31, 2025. By the time you read a 13F, the fund may have already sold or added. Treat it as sentiment, not a live signal.

This is reporting on what hedge funds publicly disclose holding — not a recommendation to buy any of these stocks. Individual suitability depends on your risk tolerance, horizon, and tax situation.

Intro

We analyzed 13F filings from 35 of the most influential hedge funds and institutional investors, managing a combined $21.4 trillion across 77,111 equity positions. The goal is to identify stocks attracting the strongest institutional buying pressure heading into 2026 — the kind of cross-fund consensus that sometimes precedes wider market attention.

What emerged: artificial intelligence infrastructure, enterprise software, aerospace, and a handful of value turnarounds dominate institutional buying activity. But before we get to the tickers, a note on methodology — because without it, 13F data is easy to misread.

What a 13F Actually Is (and What It Is Not)

A 13F filing is a quarterly report that every institutional investment manager with over $100 million in qualifying US assets must submit to the SEC within 45 days of each quarter's end. The filing discloses all long equity positions held on the last day of the quarter — share counts, market values, and changes from the prior quarter.

What 13F Reports

• Long positions in US-listed equities
• Long positions in US-listed ADRs of foreign companies
• Certain US-listed options (calls, puts — but only some get reported)
• US-listed convertible debt

What 13F Does NOT Report

• Short positions — funds never disclose what they are shorting
• Most international holdings — a stock listed only in London, Tokyo, or Frankfurt is invisible
• Most derivatives — swaps, forwards, and many options structures are excluded
• Cash and bond holdings — the filing is equity-only
• Private investments — venture positions, real estate, credit
• Timing inside the quarter — a fund could have bought and sold in the same quarter with zero trace

The Filing Calendar

The 45-day lag matters. A fund that filed on February 14, 2026 is showing you its December 31, 2025 book. Between the quarter-end and your reading the filing, there has been a full quarter of price action, earnings, macro news, and potential trades you cannot see.

Top Institutional Holdings — The Evergreen Megacaps

These ten names appear as top holdings across the majority of the 35 hedge funds we tracked. Specific share counts vary quarter-to-quarter and fund-to-fund, so we avoid fabricated figures here. Instead: why each stock consistently shows up on institutional books.

1. Apple (AAPL)

Berkshire Hathaway has publicly disclosed AAPL as its largest single equity position for years. Multi-strategy funds hold it for its balance-sheet strength, services gross margin, and capital returns. Widely considered a lower-volatility megacap core.

2. Microsoft (MSFT)

Azure growth, Copilot monetization, and the OpenAI partnership make MSFT one of the most-owned AI exposure plays that is not NVDA. Quality-of-earnings scores attract fundamental managers; stable multi-year revenue growth attracts quants.

3. NVIDIA (NVDA)

The AI infrastructure trade in one ticker. Hedge funds report holding NVDA across the style spectrum — growth, momentum, quant, and (increasingly) value managers who argue data-center capex is secular, not cyclical.

4. Alphabet (GOOGL / GOOG)

Search cash flow, YouTube advertising, and Google Cloud all anchor the thesis. Activist and fundamental funds cite the sum-of-the-parts case; quants cite the consistent return-on-capital.

5. Amazon (AMZN)

AWS operating income, retail margin expansion, and advertising make this a multi-driver story. One of the most reliable hedge fund top-10 positions across multi-strategy and growth funds.

6. Meta Platforms (META)

Advertising efficiency and Reality Labs cost discipline reshaped the story over 2023-2025. Holdings reporters show Meta as a broad institutional favorite alongside the other AI-adjacent megacaps.

7. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B)

Ironically, other hedge funds often hold BRK.B as a diversifier — low beta, conservative balance sheet, insurance float. A proxy for stable compounding without the volatility of a single-sector concentrate.

8. JPMorgan Chase (JPM)

The banking megacap that shows up when funds rotate toward financials. Net interest income, investment banking cycle exposure, and a conservative CEO reputation keep it in multi-strategy books.

9. Broadcom (AVGO)

Semiconductor breadth plus software (VMware) and custom-silicon AI exposure. Hedge funds with AI-picks-and-shovels theses pair AVGO alongside NVDA.

10. Eli Lilly (LLY)

The GLP-1 megacap. Healthcare and cross-sector hedge funds report LLY among top holdings as obesity-drug revenue visibility extended through the 2026-2030 horizon.

Thematic Bets for 2026

Looking at which themes show concentrated cross-fund activity, rather than individual names, produces a cleaner signal than chasing single-ticker consensus.

AI Infrastructure

• NVDA — GPUs
• AMD — competitive GPU and CPU exposure
• AVGO — custom AI silicon and networking
• TSM — foundry layer, the company actually fabricating the chips
• MU — high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators

GLP-1 / Obesity Drugs

• LLY — Zepbound, Mounjaro
• NVO — Ozempic, Wegovy

Healthcare-focused hedge funds and generalists both report concentrated exposure here. The thesis leans on a years-long revenue ramp.

Nuclear and Power for AI

• CEG — Constellation Energy, the nuclear reactor operator supplying hyperscaler data centers
• VST — Vistra, mixed-generation with nuclear exposure

Multiple funds added these during 2024-2025 as the data-center power-demand narrative accelerated.

Defense

• LMT — Lockheed Martin
• RTX — RTX Corporation (Raytheon)
• GD — General Dynamics

Hedge funds with macro overlays positioned defense as a multi-year budget tailwind — NATO 2% floor, Indo-Pacific spend, European rearmament.

Trends to Watch in 2026

Sector Rotation Into Financials?

Rate-environment normalization and a recovery in capital-markets activity have attracted incremental institutional buying in large banks (JPM, GS, MS) and asset managers (BX, KKR). Watch the next 13F cycle for broader confirmation.

Commodity Exposure

Institutional adds in copper (FCX) and uranium plays reflect the energy-transition buildout story. Not a universal hedge fund theme, but present across macro-influenced books.

China Reopening Plays

Data is mixed. Some managers report selective adds in Chinese ADRs (BABA, PDD) arguing deep value; others continue to avoid entirely citing regulatory and geopolitical tail risk. No cross-fund consensus.

Magnificent 7 Unwind?

A few funds trimmed US megacap weights in late 2025 and redistributed toward international equities (Europe, Japan). Too early to call this a broad rotation — but worth watching the next two filing cycles.

Famous Manager Short Profiles

What follows is public-domain background on each manager's style. We do not claim what any of them holds right now — that would require citing specific 13Fs, and individual positions shift between filings.

• Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) — long-term concentrated value, famously overweight Apple and financials across the past decade.
• Bill Ackman (Pershing Square) — concentrated activist, typically 8-12 large positions, long-holding period, often public with theses.
• Michael Burry (Scion Asset Management) — contrarian macro, known for short positions (not visible in 13F) and frequent portfolio turnover; small AUM, high publicity.
• David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital) — value-oriented long/short, has publicly discussed large positions in cyclical industrials over the past few years.
• Joel Greenblatt (Gotham Asset Management) — quantitative value, "magic formula" methodology, hundreds of smaller positions rather than a concentrated book.

For any specific current holding, go to SEC EDGAR and pull the latest 13F yourself.

How Freenance Helps You Follow Smart Money

Tracking 13F filings manually means downloading raw XML from SEC EDGAR for 35+ funds each quarter, parsing position tables, and building your own change-detection. The Freenance Smart Money tracker aggregates 13F-sourced holdings and quarter-over-quarter changes across the major managers in one view — so you can filter by stock, fund, or conviction level without building the pipeline yourself. Portfolio tracking for your own book lives in the main dashboard; Smart Money is a separate research module.

FAQ

What is a 13F filing?

A 13F is a quarterly SEC filing submitted by institutional investment managers with over $100 million in qualifying US assets under management. It discloses long equity positions, share counts, and market values as of the last day of each quarter.

When are 13F filings due?

Within 45 days of each quarter end: May 15 (Q1), August 14 (Q2), November 14 (Q3), and February 14 (Q4). The most recent filings as of April 2026 cover Q4 2025 positions.

Can I see short positions in 13F filings?

No. 13F reports only long equity holdings. Short positions, swaps, and most derivatives are excluded. A fund may be 50% short a stock it also appears to own, and you will never see it in 13F.

Can I see foreign stocks in 13F filings?

Only US-listed foreign securities (mostly ADRs). A London-listed or Tokyo-listed position held by a US hedge fund is not reported in 13F. Funds that invest heavily overseas will appear smaller in 13F than they actually are.

How do I find 13F data for free?

The SEC's EDGAR database at sec.gov provides every 13F filing at no cost. Search by fund name, select "Form 13F-HR," and download the information table. Third-party aggregators layer analytics on top of the same raw data.

Why does the 45-day lag matter?

A fund files on February 14, 2026 showing holdings from December 31, 2025. Between those two dates, six weeks of market action have already happened. Funds with high turnover (quants especially) may have largely different books by the time you read the filing.

Should I copy hedge fund holdings directly?

Copying hedge fund holdings carries multiple structural issues: you will buy at later prices, you cannot see shorts or hedges that complete the risk picture, and a manager's fund-level thesis may depend on position sizing and rebalancing cadence that retail accounts cannot replicate. 13F data is best used as sentiment and research input, not as a buy list.

What is the difference between Buffett-style and Soros-style investing?

Buffett-style is concentrated, long-term, value-oriented with rare turnover — Berkshire's top positions barely change year over year. Soros-style (macro) is shorter-horizon, theme-driven, and involves rapid repositioning around economic regimes. Both approaches appear in the 13F universe.

Which hedge funds are worth following for retail investors?

There is no universally correct answer. Funds commonly cited in retail-investor research include Berkshire Hathaway (long-term value), Pershing Square (concentrated activist), Greenlight (value), Baupost (distressed and special-situations), and the top quant books (Renaissance, Two Sigma) for momentum and sector signals. Relevance depends on your own style.

What are the risks of following hedge funds?

Four main risks. First, 45-day reporting lag. Second, invisible short side — you may copy a long position that the fund has hedged. Third, performance chasing — past fund performance is a poor predictor. Fourth, position sizing — a 2% position in a $10B fund behaves very differently inside a retail account where it might be 40% of the book.

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Data based on Q4 2025 13F filings as reported to the SEC, covering 35 institutional investors managing a combined $21.4T AUM across 77,111 positions. This article is reporting on public disclosures. It is not investment advice and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.