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Leon Cooperman on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.”
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Family offices are known to invest for the long haul, sometimes for generations. But after President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements in April, the family offices of billionaire investors were quick to make significant changes to their portfolios, according to second-quarter securities filings analyzed by CNBC.
Some moves were clearly connected to tariff and recession fears. In the three months ending June 30, the family offices of David Tepper, Leon Cooperman and George Soros exited their positions in casino stock Las Vegas Sands Corp. Casino operator shares tumbled on fears that a U.S.-China trade war would endanger their Macau operations.
However, some firms dialed back their exposure to stalwart tech stocks, with Cooperman’s Omega Advisors exiting its Microsoft position and reducing its Alphabet stock by nearly 90%. Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office sold down 37 positions, including Amazon and about a half dozen pharmaceutical stocks.
Cooperman told CNBC in June that he thought the stock market was too confident given uncertainties with tariffs and conflicts in the Middle East.
“I’m not a big bear, but I’m not a big bull either,” he said on “Squawk Box.”
Institutional investment managers — including family offices and hedge funds — that manage at least $100 million in certain securities, especially U.S.-listed equities, are required to disclose trades on a quarterly basis. While many family offices have stock portfolios worth well over $100 million, they do not have to file these 13F forms if they outsource investment decisions to a third party like JP Morgan or Bessemer Trust, according to lawyer David Guin, a partner at Withers who leads its U.S. corporate practice.
Not all the moves were related to bigger geopolitical concerns. Despite concerns about tariffs on semiconductors, family offices boosted their Nvidia holdings. Tepper’s Appaloosa Management increased its Nvidia holdings by nearly 500%. Soros Fund Management purchased about 932,000 share-equivalents in Nvidia, including options.
In another artificial intelligence play, several firms boosted their bets on other chipmakers, with Appaloosa buying 8 million shares of Intel and 755,000 shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Duquesne and Soros also increased their positions in TSMC.
Omega Advisors doubled down on energy providers, which are poised to benefit from AI’s energy demands, including Atlas Energy Solutions, Sunoco and Energy Transfer LP.
As family offices have long investment horizons, they can afford to be opportunistic and wait for stocks to rebound. Appaloosa bought 2.3 million shares in UnitedHealth Group, which suffered a 19% selloff in April after the insurer cut its annual profit forecast. Tepper’s hedge-fund-turned-family-office also bought new stakes in United Airlines and Delta Air Lines even as recession fears threw airline stocks for a loop.
Some of Appaloosa’s peers made similar bold bets, with Soros Fund Management and BlueCrest Capital Management, the family office of British hedge fund billionaire Michael Platt, also increasing their exposure to UnitedHealth. BlueCrest also started new positions in Delta and United.
— CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed to this report.
