What the Big Shots Are Buying and Selling

By AVI SALZMAN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

A peek into the mindset of some of the most important,

and most controversial, investors.

 

Top investors often keep their cards close to their vests: Why reveal your positions unless you have to, or can use it to your advantage? But 45 days after the end of each quarter, many are forced to release data on their long positions. Even if the filings are a bit dated, they give us a peek into the mindset of some of the most important, and most controversial, investors around.

Below, we've compiled stories on the holdings of some of the biggest of the big.

John Paulson 
Hedgie John Paulson made some key cuts in his holdings in the third quarter, including slashing stakes in the SPDR GoldETF (GLD) and several financial stocks, including Citigroup (C).

Paulson & Co. said in government filings it had reduced positions in GLD by about a third. But sources told Dow Jones Newswires that the hedge-fund manager shifted into gold futures contracts and other types of investments that didn't show up in the filings.

In the third quarter, Paulson reported that his holdings in Citigroup were reduced by 8.4 million shares, to 25.1 million as of the quarter's end. The firm also made smaller cuts inSunTrust Banks (STI) and reported no stake in previous holdings NYSE Euronext (NYX) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM). Paulson did raise his stake in Bank of America (BAC) by 6.0% to 64.3 million shares. He also increased his position in Capital One Financial (COF). Paulson also made a large cut to his firm's holdings in Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). The filings indicated a 35% drop in shares from the second quarter to the third.

For more on Paulson and the other investors mentioned below, go to the Nov. 15 Stocks to Watch Today blogpost.

Warren Buffett 
Continuing to build his stakes in credit-card issuers, Warren Buffett added Visa (V) to Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKB) portfolio in the third quarter, according to a filing that was released after the market closed. Buffett reported owning 2.29 million shares of Visa in the quarter. He maintained his stake in MasterCard (MA), which he also added to the portfolio this year, at 405,000 shares.

Buffett also established a stake in CVS Caremark (CVS), reporting ownership of 5.66 million shares at the end of the third quarter. The value maven showed renewed interest in tech as well, buying into IBM (IBM). Filings show Buffett/Berkshire also bought 9.3 million shares of Intel (INTC), a new position.

David Einhorn 
David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital had a busy third quarter, beefing up its positions in Apple (AAPL), GM (GM) andMicrosoft (MSFT) while selling out of Pfizer (PFE) and BP (BP).

According to recently released documents, Apple is now Greenlight's largest holding. The company also established new positions in CBS (CBS), Legg Mason (LM) and Marvell Technology Group (MRVL), among others.

Although he previously criticized Sprint Nextel (S) for disappointing results, Einhorn also scooped up additional shares in the telecom company.

Overall, the third-quarter represented a shift away from health care and energy names, in favor of tech and financial stocks, according to data from Bloomberg. The company now owns 38 stocks with a total value of $4.6 billion.

David Tepper 
The billionaire head of Appaloosa Management pulled back on his equity stakes in the quarter, reducing the firm's overall position to $1.54 billion from $4.2 billion in the prior quarter, as StreetInsider.com noted.

Appaloosa got out of some big financial stocks, selling all of its 10 million shares of Bank of America, according to its third-quarter filing. Appaloosa also sold the majority of its Citigroup stock, lowering its stake to 2.5 million shares from 7.2 million at the end of the second quarter.

Tepper opened new positions in BP buying about 157,000 shares, and in E*Trade Financial (ETFC), picking up nearly 1.2 million shares.

Carl Icahn 
Investor Carl Icahn kept reducing his holdings of Clorox (CLX) in the third-quarter. According to SEC filings, the billionaire hedgie sold another 1.65 million shares to leave his stake at 6.89%.

But few other major changes were immediately apparent from his firm's 13F filing late Monday. Icahn didn't show any new positions and kept his holdings largely unchanged.

Icahn's report indicated that he appears to be slowly exiting his Clorox position after a failed proxy battle in which he tried to unseat the entire board and force a sale of the company. Icahn still owns nearly 9.1 million shares of the company, remaining its largest shareholder.

Daniel Loeb 
Daniel Loeb, the CEO at hedge fund Third Point, is now managing more than $2.4 billion in assets, and his portfolio is concentrated in technology, which accounted for a third of assets at the end of September, and energy, which was another 24% of the portfolio.

His three largest positions in stocks, as measured by the percentage of companies' shares he owns, didn't change.

But Loeb was also a net buyer of Yahoo! (YHOO) in the third quarter, adding a 48 million-share position worth $632 million. Loeb has been trying to shake up the board of directors at Yahoo!, and reportedly was talking with members of the board before it ousted CEO Carol Bartz in early September. (For more on Third Point's technology portfolio, see the Nov. 15 Tech Trader Daily blogpost.)

Third Point also bumped up its largest positions as measured by market value. The biggest after Yahoo! was the addition to its Williams Cos. (WMB) holdings by more than 4.1 million shares to 5.25 million shares, or 6.1% of the portfolio. Loeb also added to its holdings of shares in Sara Lee (SLE), Barrick Gold (ABX), online travel services retailer Expedia (EXPE) and flash data storage chip maker SanDisk (SNDK). He also boughtHollyFrontier (HFC).

While he added to some energy positions, Loeb cut his El Paso(EP) stake nearly in half to 7 million shares. He sold 2.3 million shares of CVR Energy (CVI), retaining 4 million shares.

Bruce Berkowitz 
Fairholme Capital Management, led by Berkowitz, sold its stake in Morgan Stanley (MS) by the end of the third quarter, according to regulatory filings.

Fairholme also reduced its stakes by about 1.5 million shares in Citigroup. Berkowitz continued to bet big on Bank of America (BAC); in the third quarter, his firm added 5.36 million shares to raise its total to around 105 million shares as of Sept. 30. 

MURRAY COLEMAN, DIMITRA DEFOTIS and TERESA RIVAS contributed to this article.

A different version of this article ran earlier on Barrons.com.