On October 15, well into the fourth quarter, David Tepper appeared on CNBC for his semi-annual stock pumpfest, most memorable for his suggestion that a 20x P/E multiple on the S&P was perfectly acceptable. Which would suggest Tepper was very bullish on risk. Which would suggest buying more stocks, not selling. Yet selling is precisely what he did between September 30 and December 31 for the vast majority of his top holdings according to his just released 13F. So what did he sell or liquidate?
First, here are his biggest liquidations:
- US Airways ($178 million, 9.4MM shares)
- Dow Jones DIA ETF ($151 million, 1MM shares)
- Hertz ($33 million, 1.5MM shraes)
- Bank of America ($31 million, 2.2K shares)
- Sandisk ($25 million, 425K shares)
Just as notable is what he sold in part:
- Goodyear: sold 6.7MM shares
- United Continental: sold 2.5MM shares
- Qualcomm: sold 1.4MM shares
- Ford: sold 412K shares
- AIG: sold 254K shares
- Delta Airlines: sold 2.8MM shares
- MetLife: sold 1.6MM shares
- Hartford: sold 1.5MM shares
- Transocean: sold 890K shares
- Freeport McMoRan: sold 627K shares
- EMC: sold 517K shares
And so on – for the full list of companies that didn’t quite buy the 20x P/E thesis see table below.
So what did he buy to offset all these sales? Here are his biggest additions and new positions
- American Airlines: New – 7MM shares
- Halliburton: New – 993K shares
- Eastman Chemical: New – 601K shares
- Google: added 92K shares, ironically after selling 20k shares in Q3
- HCA Holdings: added 528K shares
- Owens Corning: added 554K shares
- KBR: added 412K shares
However, most notable was the massive addition to his two top holdings: the SPY ETF, which he added $1.5 billion to and had $2.1 billion worth of SPY as of Dec. 31, and the Nasdaq QQQ ETF, which was a $765 billion position as Dec. 31. In other words, of Tepper’s entire $8 billion disclosed long AUM, some 36% was in index tracking ETFs.
It may be a “stock-picker’s market”, but for Tepper it’s all about blunt shotguns.
And finally, for those wondering what Tepper did with that flyer for $6.5 million or 737k shares in JCPenney from Q3 and which got hammered, he sold it.
Tepper’s complete latest holdings are shown below, sorted by notional as of Sept 30. New positions in green.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1eXJkCW Tyler Durden