Want to invest like a billionaire? Good news! Thanks to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we know exactly how some billionaires, including Warren Buffett, Ken Griffin, and Chase Coleman III, are investing their money.
The funds these billionaires oversee are required to report their quarterly stock transactions to the SEC, and November's reports contained some big surprises for investors. Here are three of the most eye-opening stocks that Buffett, Griffin, and Coleman reported spending money on late last year.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Buffett's biggest buy
Although Warren Buffett has been notoriously tech-averse, he's made some exceptions in recent years, picking up shares of Apple and Amazon for the portfolio of his company, Berkshire Hathaway. But nobody could have guessed the just-retired CEO would green-light a massive purchase of Alphabet (GOOGL 1.45%) (GOOG 1.47%).
And yet in November, Berkshire reported it had opened a new position in Google's parent company, scooping up more than 17.8 million shares for a purchase price of about $3.6 billion, or $200.68 a share. The investment already seems to be paying off for Berkshire, with Alphabet's shares now trading at $313 a share, meaning the company has already made about $2 billion on that investment in less than six months:
NASDAQ: GOOGL
Key Data Points
Under its new leadership, it seems likely that Berkshire may invest more heavily in tech stocks, particularly massive tech companies like Alphabet, where the trillion-dollar Berkshire can take a multibillion-dollar stake and still not come anywhere close to owning the company outright. Alphabet is doing particularly well right now as YouTube's audience continues to grow and its AI tools like Gemini get rave reviews.
Griffin quadruples down on a longtime loser
Billionaire Ken Griffin's portfolio at Citadel Advisors is much more diverse than Buffett's, with more than 14,000 positions including plenty of option calls and puts, and thousands of active trades each quarter.
However, one stock he's surprisingly held on to for years is electric vehicle maker Nio (NIO +2.29%). Griffin first purchased shares of the Chinese automaker in September 2018, possibly at its initial public offering price of $6.26 a share. That means he rode the stock up to its all-time high price of $62.84 a share in 2021, and all the way back down to its low of $3.14 a share in April.
NYSE: NIO
Key Data Points
Despite Nio's steadily increasing production numbers, Griffin seemed bearish on the stock in last year's Q2, reducing both the number of shares he owned outright and the number of call options he held, while increasing the number of put options. You might have expected him to dump more of the stock in Q3.
Instead, he reversed course, buying nearly 5 million shares of the automaker. That more than quadrupled his direct stake, bringing his total Nio stock position to $48.3 million. He also added 4.5 million additional call options on Nio, increasing his total call amount to $103.7 million. He did also increase the number of puts he had on the stock, but by a much smaller amount of about 2.4 million. Altogether, it was a sharp shift in the automaker's favor.
Nio's stock hit its 2025 high of $7.89 a share just after Q3 ended, but it's since dropped to just $5.35 a share. However, that's still higher than Griffin's average reported share price of $5.08 a share, so perhaps the billionaire's bet on this up-and-coming electric car maker is finally paying off.
Chase Coleman's biggest new holding
Plenty of billionaires add to or subtract from their existing positions, but when a billionaire takes a brand new stake in a company, especially a big one, it's worth paying attention.
Billionaire Chase Coleman III reported a doozy of a new position in his Tiger Global Management fund in November: more than 2 million shares of Netflix (NFLX 0.11%). At an average price of $122.66 a share, it cost the Coleman nearly $250 million. Perhaps he was anticipating the streaming giant's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD 0.79%) or maybe he's just a big Stranger Things fan. Either way, things haven't worked out so well for him at present; Netflix's shares have tumbled sharply this past month, to just $94.14 a share, well below the hedge fund's average price.
NASDAQ: WBD
Key Data Points
Still, even for billionaires, the success of a stock investment isn't measured in weeks or months, but over the lifetime of the position. If Netflix posts a blockbuster Q4 earnings report in late January, or if Paramount Skydance withdraws its rival bid for Warner Bros Discovery, the stock price could jump immediately. Investors will want to keep an eye on how the situation at Netflix plays out.
