Nike Is In, Tech Stocks Are Out. What These Big Investors Are Buying and Selling.

Hedge funds and other big investment fund managers shifted out of the Magnificent Seven tech stocks in the second quarter and took on new stakes in a variety of stocks in the healthcare and consumer sectors.

For example, activist investor Nelson Peltz didn’t exit his stake in Walt Disney entirely, but it was substantially lower compared with the first quarter after he lost his proxy battle at the entertainment company.

Instead, Peltz’s Trian Fund Management took on new stakes in Solventum , the healthcare company spun off from 3M in April, and U-Haul, the storage and moving company, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Paul Singer’s Elliott Investment Management reported a new 6 million-share stake in Southwest Airlines as of June 30. The fund this week started a proxy battle at the carrier, with plans to nominate a slate of directors to largely replace the board.

And Pershing Square Capital’s Bill Ackman, who recently withdrew a planned initial public offering of a $2 billion closed-end fund, reported new stakes in apparel maker Nike and investment management firm Brookfield Corp.

The regulatory filings reflect investment manager holdings as of the end of June, and portfolios may have shifted since then.

Trian Fund Management

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management reported 2.65 million shares of Disney as of June 30, down from 32 million in March. It reported a new 5.36 million share stake in Solventum and a nearly 1.3 million-share stake in U-Haul in two different share classes.

Trian reported no stake in food services company Sysco , compared with 1.2 million shares in March.

Elliott Investment Management

Paul Singer’s Elliott Investment Management snapped up nearly 8 million shares of the dating platform Match, doubled its stake in craft marketplace Etsy to 4.5 million shares, and bought about 500,000 more shares of communications firm Liberty Broadband to bring its total to just under 2.2 million.

Soros Capital

Soros Capital, the family office for billionaire George Soros, made a cryptocurrency play in the second quarter, taking on new stakes in Bitcoin mining-related companies.

Soros reported a new 2.3 million-share position in Bitcoin mining firm Terawulf and a new 1.5 million-share stake in Core Scientific, another Bitcoin miner. It took a new 1.3 million share stake in Iris Energy , a Bitcoin miner that operates data centers using renewable energy.

Soros took a smaller new 32,000 share stake in Portillo’s, a fast casual restaurant chain that specializes in Chicago-style hot dogs and the Italian beef sandwiches popularized in the Hulu series The Bear.

On the flip side, Soros cut or eliminated stakes in most of the Magnificent Seven stocks. It reported no holdings of Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices , and Microsoft and smaller holdings in Amazon , Meta Platforms , and Netflix compared with the first quarter. It also reported no holdings of Ozempic and Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk as of June 30, compared with a 77,000-share stake in March.

Pershing Group

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital snapped up a new 7 million-share stake in Brookfield Corp.and 3 million shares of Nike. Pershing reported smaller holdings of Chipotle Mexican Grill , Alphabet , and Hilton Worldwide compared with its first quarter filing. It reported $10.4 billion of assets.

Baupost

Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group reduced its holdings of Alphabet by more than 60%, leaving it with just under 3 million shares. It also shed some 2 million shares of fintech firm Fidelity National Information Services and more than 3 million shares of Liberty Media ’s SiriusXM Group.

Baupost’s biggest new stake reported among its $3.6 billion in holdings was 420,000 shares of healthcare company Humana . It also picked up 1 million shares of Capri Holdings , the fashion group that owns Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors, and 1.8 million shares of healthcare company Solventum.

Starboard

Activist investment firm Starboard Value, which is run by Jeff Smith and reported $4.3 billion in assets, nearly halved its shares of healthcare company Humana to 507,000 from 906,000 in the prior quarter.

It also slashed its holdings in GoDaddy by nearly 2 million to 4.6 million. Its biggest purchase was 2.7 million shares of clinical research firm Fortrea to a total of 8 million shares.

Third Point

Dan Loeb’s Third Point disclosed several new stakes in the second quarter, including 1.95 million shares of Apple and 2.8 million shares in communications firm Amphenol . Third Point maintained its 5.1 million-share stake in Amazon.

Greenlight Capital

With $2 billion under management, David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital reported a new stake in Peloton of 6.8 million shares. It also upped its shares of pharmaceutical firm Viatris by 2.9 million shares to 7.4 million and doubled down its stake in HP Inc to 3.37 million shares.

It also reported new investments in fashion firm Capri Holdings and media conglomerate IAC of 700,000 and 300,000 shares, respectively.

It reported no position in clean energy firm Net Power, compared with 2 million shares in March. It also reported no holdings in Johnson & Johnson spinoff Kenvue , which sells Aveeno, Band-Air, Tylenol, and other consumer health brands. It held 710,000 Kenvue shares in March.

Must even steak be politicised? The American Heart Association recently recommended eating more “plant-based” protein in a move to counter the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidelines calling for more red meat.

Few would argue that eating a Big Mac a day is good for you.

On the other hand, growing evidence, including a study last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that eating more meat—particularly unprocessed red meat—can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s in the quarter or so of people with a particular genetic predisposition.

The APOE4 gene variant is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s.

You inherit one copy of the APOE gene from each parent. The most common variant is APOE3; the least is APOE2.

The latter carries a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while the former is neutral. A quarter of people carry one copy of the APOE4 variant, and about 2% carry two.

APOE4 is more common among people with Northern European and African ancestry. In Europe the variant increases with latitude, and is present in as many as 27% of people in northern countries versus 4% in southern ones. God smiled on the Italians and Greeks.

For unknown reasons, the APOE4 variant increases the risk of Alzheimer’s far more for women than men.

Women’s risk multiplies roughly fourfold if they have one copy and tenfold if they have two. Men with a single copy show little if any higher risk, while those with two face four times the risk.

What makes APOE4 so pernicious? Scientists don’t know exactly, but the variant is also associated with higher cholesterol levels—even among thin people who eat healthily.

Scientists have found that cholesterol builds up in brain cells of APOE4 carriers, which can disrupt communications between neurons and generate amyloid plaque, an Alzheimer’s hallmark.

The Heart Association’s recommendation to eat less red meat may be sound advice for people with high cholesterol caused by indulgent diets.

But a diet high in red meat may be better for the brains of APOE4 carriers.

In the JAMA study, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined how diet, particularly meat consumption, affects dementia risk among seniors with the different APOE variants.

Higher consumption of meat, especially unprocessed red meat, was associated with significantly lower dementia risk for APOE4 carriers.

APOE4 carriers who consumed the most meat—the equivalent of 4.5 ounces a day—were no more likely to develop dementia than noncarriers. (

The study controlled for other variables that are known to affect Alzheimer’s risk including sex, age, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education.)

APOE4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat were at significantly lower risk of dying over the study’s 15-year period and had lower cholesterol than carriers who ate less. Go figure. Noncarriers, however, didn’tenjoy similar benefits from eating more red meat.

The study’s findings are consistent with two large U.K. studies.

One found that each additional 50 grams of red meat (equivalent to half a hamburger patty) that an APOE4 carrier consumed each day was associated with a 36% reduced risk of dementia.

The other found that older women who carried the APOE4 variant and consumed at least one serving a day of unprocessed red meat had a cognitive advantage over carriers who ate less than half a serving, and that this advantage was of roughly equal magnitude to the cognitive disadvantage observed among APOE4 carriers in general.

In all three studies, eating more red meat appeared to negate the increased genetic risk of APOE4.

Perhaps one reason men with the variant are at lower Alzheimer’s risk than women is that men eat more red meat.

These findings might cause chagrin to women who rag their husbands about ordering the rib-eye instead of the heart-healthy salmon.

But remember, the cognitive benefits of eating more red meat appear isolated to APOE4 carriers.

Nutrition is complicated, and categorical recommendations—other than perhaps to avoid nutritionally devoid foods—would best be avoided by governments and health bodies.

Readers can order an at-home test from any number of companies to screen for the APOE4 variant.

The Swedish researchers hypothesize that APOE4 carriers may be evolutionarily adapted to carnivorous diets, since the variant is believed to have emerged between one million and six million years ago during a “hypercarnivorous” period in human history.

The other two APOE variants originated more recently, during eras when humans ate more plants.

APOE4 carriers may absorb more nutrients from meat than plants, the researchers surmise. Vitamin B12—low levels have been associated with cognitive decline—isn’t naturally present in plant-based foods but is abundant in red meat.

Foods high in phytates (such as grains and beans) can interfere with absorption of zinc and iron (also high in red meat), which naturally declines with age. So maybe don’t chuck your steak yet.