What 13F Filings Actually Tell Us About Billionaire Portfolios in Q1 2026

What 13Fs Actually Tell Us: The Best Investors Don't Diversify

The first thing I check on any new 13F is how much of the portfolio sits in the top one or two names. Going through the Q1 2026 filings this quarter, the same pattern keeps showing up. The legendary names running tens of billions don't manage their books the way most personal-finance content tells retail investors to.

On paper, they hold 30 to 50 positions. In reality, the top five to seven names usually account for 70 to 80 percent of assets. The rest are tracking positions or small bets that barely move the needle. Concentration, not diversification, is the through-line.

1. Bill Ackman — Brookfield, Big Tech, and Uber

Pershing Square's top holding is Brookfield Corporation, the alternative-asset platform that bundles real estate, credit, renewable power, and energy transition. Behind it sit Uber, Amazon, Google, and Meta. Two pillars: Big Tech compounders and a real-asset platform.

The Uber stake is the interesting one. Ackman has framed Uber as a platform that just turned the corner on cash generation. Unlike the Big Tech four, the multiple still has room to re-rate. He's pairing late-cycle compounders with one mid-cycle re-rating story.

2. Bill Gates — The Most Conservative Book on the List

The Gates Foundation portfolio barely moves quarter to quarter. Top spot: Berkshire Hathaway. Then Waste Management, Canadian National Railway, Microsoft, and Caterpillar.

Look at the businesses: garbage collection, freight rail, construction equipment, an insurance-led conglomerate. These are companies with the highest probability of still existing a century from now. And note that Microsoft has been gradually trimmed for years. The man who built it weights infrastructure-grade businesses heavier than the company he founded.

3. Chase Coleman — Tiger Global's Big Tech Cluster

Coleman runs roughly $50 billion at Tiger Global, and the top names are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia. The "AI four," basically.

Coleman is worth studying because of what's not in the book anymore. Tiger took heavy losses on private growth bets a few years back. The current portfolio is the post-mortem version: businesses still growing fast, but with verified scale and cash flow. Concentration plus quality, not concentration plus speculation.

4. Warren Buffett — Apple, Banks, and Coke

The Berkshire list barely needs an introduction. Apple, American Express, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Moody's, and a long tail of smaller positions.

Buffett has trimmed Apple in recent quarters but it's still number one. He's repeatedly described Apple not as a stock but as a business he wanted to own outright. The financial weighting matters too. Berkshire is functionally a bet on US consumption and the credit card payment rails — Coca-Cola, Amex, and Bank of America cover that triangle directly.

5. Chris Hohn — Five Companies, Maximum Moat

Hohn's TCI Fund manages around $75 billion, and the holdings list is short enough to memorize. General Electric, Visa, Microsoft, Moody's, S&P Global. That's the book.

The common thread is one thing only: businesses that are extremely hard to displace. Try competing with Visa's payment network. Try displacing Moody's or S&P in credit ratings. I think Hohn's style is the easiest to describe and the hardest to actually execute. The list is simple. Concentrating 75 percent of capital across five names is not.

6. Harvard's Endowment — Why a Bitcoin ETF Sits at #1

The most surprising entry this quarter was Harvard's. The endowment's largest reported holding is IBIT, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF. Behind it: Google, gold, Microsoft, Nvidia, and TSMC.

For an institution as conservative as Harvard to hold a Bitcoin ETF at the top, the framing has shifted. Bitcoin isn't being treated as a speculative trade anymore — it's slotted alongside gold and Big Tech as a balance-sheet hedge. Five years ago that mix would have been hard to imagine in a university endowment.

What I Take Away from Reading 13Fs

Diversification isn't wrong, but the people running the biggest books all share one habit: when they have conviction, they size up. A portfolio where the top name is five percent of assets is structurally a "no big mistakes, no big wins" portfolio.

Two cautions when using 13Fs. They lag by up to 45 days, and they don't show short positions or options. So copying them line by line is risky. I use 13Fs to read what theme a given investor is leaning into right now, not as a buy list.

FAQ

Q: Where can I read 13F filings?

A: They're free on the SEC's EDGAR site. They're filed within 45 days of quarter end, so even the latest data is roughly six weeks behind. For visual aggregation, Whalewisdom and Dataroma are clean. The Carbon Finance Instagram account does the visualization the original video referenced.

Q: Can I just copy a famous 13F portfolio?

A: I wouldn't. The data lags, shorts and options aren't reported, the cost basis is different from yours, and hedge funds use position-sizing rules retail investors usually don't. Use 13Fs to track themes and conviction shifts, not as a shopping list.

Q: Why is Gates trimming Microsoft?

A: He has been gradually transferring his Microsoft holdings to the Gates Foundation for years, and the Foundation has diversification mandates. The selling is mostly philanthropic and tax-driven rather than a view shift on the company.