Druckenmiller Sold Big Tech in Bear Market as Soros Dove Back In

(Bloomberg) — Stanley Druckenmiller’s family office took a different approach than the investment firm of his former mentor, George Soros, as US stocks entered a bear market and reached their lows of 2022.

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Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office sold its entire $199 million position in Amazon.com Inc. in the three months through June, while scaling back its stake in Microsoft Corp., according to the firm’s 13F filing Monday. Offloading big tech was a theme for the legendary investor in the first quarter, too, when the firm dumped about $274 million of Alphabet Inc. shares.

Soros Fund Management, by contrast, bolstered its stakes in Amazon, Salesforce Inc. and Alphabet in the second quarter, with all three ranking among its top 10 holdings as of the end of June. The firm also added a new $20 million position in Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., though that represents only about 0.4% of Soros’s $4.6 billion US equities portfolio.

Read more: Soros Reloads on Big Tech With Amazon, Google and New Tesla Bet

The S&P 500 Index plunged more than 16% in the second quarter, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped about 22%, as investors fretted that the Federal Reserve would tighten monetary policy enough to cause a recession as it fends off the highest inflation in decades.

Markets have been more sanguine of late. The S&P 500 is up about 18% from its low, set in mid-June.

“My best guess is that we’re six months into a bear market,” Druckenmiller said on June 9 at the 2022 Sohn Investment Conference. “For those tactically trading, it’s possible the first leg of that has ended. But I think it’s highly, highly probable that the bear market has a ways to run.”

Read more: Druckenmiller Warns ‘Bear Market Has a Ways to Run’ as Fed Hikes

Duquesne added some new positions in the second quarter: $96.3 million in Eli Lilly & Co., $38.7 million in Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. and $29.7 million in Moderna Inc.

Iconiq Capital, a multifamily office that has had billionaire Silicon Valley clients including Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Reid Hoffman, also added to its tech positions. The firm reported a new $275 million position in DoorDash Inc. in the second quarter, while adding to stakes in companies including Alphabet and Meta Platforms Inc.

Iconiq uses its network to invest globally in startups, including Procore Technologies Inc. before its IPO last year. The cloud-based construction software company makes up almost a quarter of its $8.4 billion US equities portfolio.

David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management added to its stake in Meta Platforms, which tumbled 34% in the first quarter and another 27.5% in the three months through June. It reduced its exposure to Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.

Other billionaire family offices made more modest changes amid the market tumult.

An investment firm for the Walton family, which mostly buys and sells low-cost exchange-traded funds, added to its position in emerging-market stocks through the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (ticker: IEMG). The fund now makes up 12.6% of WIT LLC’s $4 billion US equities portfolio.

The firm didn’t add any new positions, but sold out of funds including the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (ticker: EWJ) and the Vanguard Small-Cap Value ETF (ticker: VBR). It also exited a small stake in Coinbase Global Inc.

Wildcat Capital Management, the family office of David Bonderman, added a new $10.2 million position in Global-e Online Ltd., while selling off Datto Holding Corp., which was acquired by Kaseya Ltd. in a deal valued at about $6.2 billion.

Hong Kong-based Blue Pool Capital, which manages part of the fortunes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founders Joe Tsai and Jack Ma, sold an $8 million position in Mirion Technologies Inc. in the second quarter. Its $491 million US equities portfolio is now entirely invested in Blue Owl Capital.