What Gurus are buying and selling - Q2 2026 13F updates
The Gurus' favorite stock is being trimmed — plus the toll booths they're buying instead
Welcome back!
It’s that time of the quarter when Superinvestors ($100M+) have to report their US equity positions held on 30th June 2026 (‘13F filings’).
I’m sure you have seen the headlines by now (“Ackman unveils six new investments including Netflix, Visa, Mastercard”; “Berkshire boosts Alphabet stake to third-largest holding”) and you have also been bombarded on X or Substack with screenshots from Dataroma showing individual portfolios.
What you haven’t seen however, is the analysis that distills the signal from the noise and identifies the hidden trends across the Gurus.
That is what I will try to share in today’s post.
👑 Alphabet: still the most-owned Guru Gem though also the most-trimmed
💾 Software buying continues, but it got selective
🛣️ The toll booths: Visa, Mastercard, Moody’s and S&P Global
👀 Multi-Guru accumulation: the names worth watching
🪄 What the Gurus think of my Magic Formula stocks
Let’s jump in!
New to Guru Gems? Start here
First, a detailed table listing most of the Gurus covered so far in the Guru Gems series as well as some other interesting Gurus.
The table shows the two largest positions in their portfolios (‘Gem 1’ and ‘Gem 2’) as well as the largest increase and largest decrease within their top 10 positions.
→ For the full table with more names and additional comments, access the Guru Master Google Doc, which also contains my full portfolio and latest activities
1️⃣ Are the Mag 7 still Guru favorites?
Alphabet remains the ultimate Guru Gem
Looking across the full table, Alphabet appears as Gem 1 or Gem 2 for more Gurus than any other stock. That has now been true for five quarters in a row.
Li Lu holds it at a massive 48% of his US portfolio.
It is also Francois Rochon’s largest position at 11%
It is the second largest position for Bryan Lawrence (16%), Tom Gayner (9%), John Armitage (11%), Thomas Russo (12%), David Rolfe (9%)
Berkshire significantly added, making it their 3rd largest position
At the same time, many Gurus (Oakmark, Russo, Rolfe, Armitage, Rochon) are trimming their Alphabet position, which is probably not surprising after Alphabet’s massive run over the past few years
Guru Gems portfolio: Alphabet is my largest (15%) and best performing (+120%) holding
Amazon is the clear second favorite
For the past quarters, Gurus were loading up on Amazon. AMZN was the laggard of the Magnificent 7, with barely a 1% return over full 2025 and a 7-8% decline over Q1 2026. This trend continued and more Gurus have been buying Amazon.
Seth Klarman made Amazon his #1 position in Q1 and continued buying in Q2 (+20%). Check out last week’s post where I unpack Seth Klarman’s investing philosophy and his thesis for owning Amazon:
David Rolfe added +35%, and ValueAct added a little bringing AMZN to 12% of the portfolio and making it their second largest position.
Not everyone was adding. Bill Ackman reduced by 25% (it remains a top-5 Pershing Square position), and Josh Tarasoff trimmed by 10%, though it remains his largest position at 18%.
Guru Gems portfolio: Amazon is a top 10 position (6%) and is up 28%
Rest of the pack: META, MSFT, AAPL, NVDA, TSLA
Meta & Microsoft - Still Guru favorites
Apple - Many Gurus trimming
Nvidia & Tesla
NVDA and TSLA remain remarkably absent.
Except for John Armitage (NVDA 7%) and Josh Tarasoff (TSLA 7%) none of the other Gurus covered throughout the Guru Gems series so far have any positions in these 2 companies.
2️⃣ Software buying continues, though more selective
In last quarter’s edition, I already highlighted how some Gurus were scooping up shares of companies hit by the SaaSpocalypse.
Q2 shows continued software buying, but more selective.
Bill Nygren at Oakmark continued to add to Salesforce (CRM), making it now a top 3 position. They also added to Adobe (ADBE, 1%) just like Samantha McLemore at Patient Capital Management.
Akre Capital continued adding to ServiceNow (NOW, 2%), a position they initiated in Q1. They also own Salesforce (CRM, 2%) and CCC Intelligent Solutions (CCC, 3%).
Finally, Bryan Lawrence (Oakcliff Capital), who rarely makes changes to his highly concentrated portfolio, increased his Guidewire Software (GWRE) position by 10%, following his 73% increase in Q1.
Lawrence views Guidewire as an ‘AI-Resilient’ software company, and this addition seems to double down on that conviction. I decided to add GWRE to the portfolio last month, after studying it in more detail:
Guru Gems portfolio: CCC and GWRE are both smaller positions (~2%), and while CCC is still down 15%, GWRE is already up 22%
3️⃣ Multi-Guru accumulation: the names worth watching
One of the most useful signals in a 13F analysis is when the same name appears in multiple portfolios at the same time. This quarter there are a few that have seen some significant Guru buying.
🛣️ The toll booths: Visa, Mastercard, S&P Global, and Moody’s
One clear trend in Q2 was the accumulation of positions in so-called ‘toll booths’, businesses that charge a small, non-negotiable fee or transaction tax for every use.
Visa (V) & Mastercard (MA)
Bill Ackman initiated both (5-6% each), two of his six new positions
Visa is Gem 1 for John Armitage (14%, +4%) and ValueAct (14%), and Gem 2 for Chris Hohn (20%), making it the second most-owned name in the whole table
Mastercard is Akre Capital‘s largest position at 20%, though they trimmed it by 13%
Terry Smith did both at once: Mastercard was his second-largest new buy, funded in part by cutting Visa, a position he has held for many years
Dev Kantesaria cut MA by 28% (his largest decrease) but it remains his 4th largest position (18%).
S&P Global (SPGI) & Moody’s (MCO)
SPGI was a new position for Ackman (5%), Triple Frond Partners (4%), Chris Bloomstran (2%) and Armitage (1%), plus a significant increase for Pat Dorsey (8%)
Chris Hohn holds both MCO (12%) and SPGI (11%), both unchanged
Dev Kantesaria also holds both: SPGI (20%, trimmed -13%) and MCO (19%, unchanged)
MCO was a brand new position for Bryan Lawrence
Bryan Lawrence’s move is worth watching a bit more closely. When a concentrated investor who does nothing for quarters at a time opens a brand new position, it’s worth paying attention.
Guru Gems portfolio:
I added SPGI to the Guru Gems portfolio in March and it’s always great to see multiple Gurus getting in a position just after I initiated it. SPGI is 5.5% of the portfolio and is currently down -4%.
I’m adding MCO to the watchlist and I will be taking a closer look at it.
Netflix (NFLX)
Netflix was an equally popular name in Q2.
New position for Bill Ackman (5%), Terry Smith (4%), Wallace Weitz (1%), and Tom Gayner (0.2%)
Both Oakmark (1%) and Tom Russo (5%) added to their position and Josh Tarasoff still holds it 5% after he bought it in Q1.
Bill Ackman getting back into Netflix was big news.
Earlier this year I wrote about the lessons learned from Ackman’s first Netflix episode:
Marc Werres, a lesser-known Guru, also bought NFLX in 2022, at roughly the same time Ackman did. Werres made 4x his money after selling most at the highs in 2025.
In Q1 2026 Werres started buying again.
Read the full story in my post on Marc Werres:
Guru Gems portfolio: Netflix has been on the Guru Gems watchlist for a while, and with all the Guru accumulation in Q2, I am strongly considering adding it to the portfolio
Here are two excellent deep-dives I’m currently going through to gain a better understanding of the business: Jimmy Investor’s Netflix ($NFLX) Deep Dive and Lucas | Summit Stocks‘s Netflix ($NFLX): Down 50%. Is it Finally Cheap?
Uber Technologies (UBER)
UBER is also worth highlighting:
It is Bill Ackman’s largest position and he added more during Q2
Pat Dorsey significantly increased his position - now 8% of his portfolio
Finally, UBER was one of the 12 new names Terry Smith added to the Fundsmith portfolio as part of his ‘Extreme Makeover’ (check his semi-annual letter if you haven’t yet). It’s the largest of the new positions and is now a top-5 of his US equities.
Guru Gems portfolio: UBER is a top 5 position (8%) and is up 5%
🪄 What about the Magic Formula stocks?
I thought it might be interesting to also have a look at the stocks in my Magic Formula portfolio (a portfolio of 25 names built on the principles laid out in Joel Greenblatt’s ‘The Little Book That Beats the Market’)
Small Caps
There are currently 8 Small caps in the Magic Formula portfolio, and only 1 of them appears in the portfolio of a Guru: Perdoceo Education (PRDO) is a very small position (0.3%) for Miller Value Partners.
This is not surprising as many of these companies are too small to own for larger funds.
In his book, Joel Greenblatt had already observed that the Magic Formula worked best for smaller-and-medium-cap stocks:
“It seems clear that there is a greater opportunity to find bargains in the small-cap arena both because there are more stocks to choose from and because smaller stocks are more likely to be lightly analyzed and, as a result, more likely to be mispriced.”
Mid Caps
There are also 8 Mid Caps in the portfolio and same story here, only 1 name comes up: Crocs (CROX) - the ugly shoe company.
Norbert Lou holds it at a massive 27% of his portfolio
Samantha McLemore, Li Lu, and David Einhorn all have smaller positions
CROX is one of my best performing stocks in the Magic Formula portfolio, currently up 57% in less than a year.
Large Caps
Finally, 9 large caps, and probably not surprising that 8 names out of the 9 appear in Guru portfolios: MOH / DECK / LULU / CTSH / CI / ADBE / BKNG
2 of them are worth highlighting:
Cognizant (CTSH)
Cognizant is one of the world’s largest IT services firms, and was cheap for the same reason many other service firms have been hit: the market fears AI will commoditize what IT-services firms sell.
I added Cognizant in the latest round in early July, and it is already up 40% (!) since I bought it, partly driven by a solid earnings report a few weeks ago.
Rich Pzena has owned CTSH since 2024 and significantly increased his position over the past 2 quarters
Chris Bloomstran initiated a new position during Q2
Booking Holdings (BKNG)
I added Booking Holdings, the world’s largest online travel agency, in early June.
The stock was down more than 25% over the past year, giving it a valuation that put it at the top of the Magic Formula screener: 3Yr ROCE: 72%; EV/EBIT: 13.6x
In my update I already highlighted that this was a ‘Magic Formula meets Guru Gems’ stock with François Rochon, AKO Capital and David Rolfe all owning it.
Interestingly AKO Capital sold their full position in Q2, but Bill Nygren started a very small position (0.4%) for Oakmark.
The stock is up 27% in the Magic Formula portfolio.
That's it for this week's edition!
A lot to digest from a single round of 13F filings, but a few clear trends came out of it, and a handful of names worth looking into.
For me, the two I’ll be watching most closely are Netflix and Moody’s. Both had multiple Gurus buying in Q2, and both could end up in the Guru Gems portfolio if I can get comfortable with the business and the price. I’ll keep you posted.
You can follow me on X @guru_gems and Substack @gurugems for more insights.
Until next week!