MW Hedge-fund favorites are beating the market - and for the first time in three years, Tesla's one of them.

By Steve Goldstein

Tesla has rejoined the ranks of favorite holdings by hedge funds.

The favorite stocks of hedge funds have outperformed the broader market this year, and for the first time since 2022, Tesla is one of them, an analysis from Goldman Sachs found.

The analysis, based on the 13-F filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, shows that what Goldman calls its "hedge fund VIP" list of stocks - which is available in an ETF wrapper GVIP - returned 15%, versus 11% SPX for the broader S&P 500 and 7% for the equal-weight version of the S&P 500 XX:SP500EW.

The VIP list are the positions that appear most frequently among the top 10 holdings of hedge-fund portfolios.

It's a very tech heavy at the top, led by Amazon (AMZN), followed by Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Meta Platforms (META), Nvidia (NVDA), Alphabet $(GOOGL)$, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing $(TSM)$, Broadcom $(AVGO)$ and Apple $(AAPL)$. Capital One Financial $(COF)$ and Mastercard $(MA)$ round out the top 10. That said, every sector except real estate is represented in the list.

Tesla $(TSLA)$, whose stock has sputtered amid deteriorating sales, ranks no. 30.

   Company                                       Ticker  No. of funds with stock as top 10 holding at the end of June 
   Amazon.com Inc.                               AMZN    167 
   Microsoft Corp.                               MSFT    127 
   Meta Platforms Inc.                           META    111 
   NVIDIA Corp.                                  NVDA    98 
   Alphabet Inc                                  GOOGL   66 
   Taiwan Sermiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.  TSM     60 
   Broadcom Inc                                  AVGO    40 
   Apple Inc.                                    AAPL    38 
   Capital One Financial                         COF     33 
   Mastercard Inc                                MA      32 
   Vistra Corp.                                  VST     30 
   Talen Energy Corp                             TLN     29 
   Visa Inc                                      V       29 
   Uber Technologies                             UBER    26 
   Somnigroup International Inc.                 SGI     23 
   AppLovin Corp.                                APP     22 
   Flutter Entertainment Plc                     FLUT    22 
   Berkshire Hathaway                            BRK.B   21 
   Netflix Inc                                   NFLX    21 
   Kellanova                                     K       20 
   Sea Limited                                   SE      20 
   Skechers U.S.A. Inc.                          SKX     20 
   CRH public limited company                    CRH     19 
   Insmed Inc.                                   INSM    19 
   SharkNinja Inc.                               SN      19 
   Advanced Micro Devices                        AMD     18 
   MercadoLibre Inc                              MELI    18 
   Coupang Inc                                   CPNG    17 
   Frontier Communications Parent                FYBR    17 
   Spotify Technology SA                         SPOT    17 
   Tesla Inc.                                    TSLA    17 
   Western Digital                               WDC     17 
   Carvana Co                                    CVNA    16 
   Merus N.V.                                    MRUS    16 
   TransDigm Group                               TDG     16 
   UnitedHealth Group                            UNH     15 
   AerCap Holdings                               AER     14 
   DoorDash Inc.                                 DASH    14 
   Eli Lilly & Co.                               LLY     14 
   EQT Corp.                                     EQT     14 
   GE Vernova Inc.                               GEV     14 
   JPMorgan Chase                                JPM     14 
   KKR & Co Inc.                                 KKR     14 
   Oracle Corp.                                  ORCL    14 
   Reddit Inc.                                   RDDT    14 
   Charles Schwab                                SCHW    14 
   Vertiv Holdings Co.                           VRT     14 
   Affirm Holdings                               AFRM    13 
   Mr. Cooper Group Inc.                         COOP    13 
   Alibaba Group Hldg (ADR)                      BABA    12 
   Source: Goldman Sachs 

The Goldman team say the VIP list has beaten the S&P 500 in 59% of quarters since 2001.

Pictet, in its own analysis of the 13-F filings, did point out that hedge funds are still notably underweight technology, by nearly 15 percentage points relative to the S&P 500 benchmark.

"Hedge funds' increased exposure [to tech] was driven more by the sector's expanding share of the index than by a deliberate overweight," was its conclusion.

The Swiss firm also identified the moves of the major players.

Point72 for instance returned to Amazon and Nvidia, two positions it had sold in the first quarter, and Bridgewater also moved back into Nvidia. Millennium re-entered bitcoin after selling it in the first quarter, while also employing an arbitrage strategy between the SPY exchange-traded fund SPY that tracks the S&P 500 and core version of it IVV. Citadel almost completely exited its positions in Charles Schwab $(SCHW)$ and the QQQ QQQ ETF tracking the Nasdaq 100, which it had heavily bought in the first quarter.

UnitedHealth $(UNH)$, uniquely, was both on the most frequent new-buy list as well as the sold off list.

-Steve Goldstein

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August 21, 2025 05:07 ET (09:07 GMT)

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