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Quarterly-filed Form 13Fs offer a way for investors to track which stocks and trends are piquing the interest of Wall Street's brightest money managers.
Billionaire David Tepper has sold shares of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cloud infrastructure titan Oracle for five consecutive quarters.
Meanwhile, he's more than doubled Appaloosa's stake in an AI hardware company that's, arguably, even more important than Nvidia.
There's nothing more valuable on Wall Street than information. Thanks to the internet, professional and everyday investors have instant access to income statements, balance sheets, investor presentations, management commentary, economic data releases, and the top headlines driving the stock market.
But this vast sea of information can sometimes be overwhelming for investors and allow something of importance to slip through the cracks. For instance, you might have overlooked the filing of Form 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission in mid-August.
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A 13F provides a roadmap that allows investors to track which stocks Wall Street's brightest money managers were buying and selling in the latest quarter. Though 13Fs aren't perfect -- they can offer a stale snapshot for active hedge funds since they're filed up to 45 days following the end to a quarter -- they yield invaluable clues as to the industry-leading stocks and trends piquing the attention of fund managers.
Image source: Getty Images.
For example, billionaire David Tepper has been finding incredible stocks hiding in plain sight for his fund, Appaloosa, spanning more than three decades. He's also a huge fan of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, but has been particular about the AI stocks he's buying and sending to the chopping block.
Looking back at more than a year of Appaloosa's 13Fs reveals that Tepper has been a seller of cloud infrastructure goliath Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) for five consecutive quarters. These filings also show that he's more than doubled his fund's stake in what might be considered the most-critical of all AI stocks -- and I'm not talking about Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).
At the end of March 2024, Appaloosa's position in Oracle peaked at 2,300,000 shares. Since then, Tepper has been a persistent seller, with this stake being slashed by 93%:
In hindsight, this is a move David Tepper has probably been kicking himself over in recent months. Over the trailing-six-month period, shares of Oracle have doubled, with liftoff occurring earlier this month when the company dazzled Wall Street with its forward-looking sales guidance.
Oracle's fiscal 2026 first-quarter operating results featured a 359% increase in its remaining performance obligations (RPOs) to $455 billion. RPOs represent the value of future revenue from signed contracts.
What's more, CEO Safra Catz projected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure sales would catapult from approximately $10.3 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025 to $144 billion by FY 2030. For those of you keeping score at home, this works out to a scorching-hot compound annual growth rate of 69.5% for this high-margin, AI-driven segment.
Why did Tepper sell nearly all of Appaloosa's stake in Oracle? Simple profit-taking is one logical answer. Shares of Oracle had rallied by nearly 50% between the end of March 2024 and the midpoint of November 2024. This is a pretty big move for a megacap company.
Appaloosa's billionaire chief may have also been concerned about the stock market's historically pricey valuation. The S&P 500's Shiller price-to-earnings (P/E) Ratio ended Sept. 19 just a few hundredths from cresting a multiple of 40, which is a level that's only been achieved two times during continuous bull markets spanning 154 years. Historical precedent strongly suggests the stock market is due for regression, and leading growth stocks like Oracle could be among the hardest-hit companies.
The other factor that might have come into play is Oracle's inability to meet or beat consensus earnings per share (EPS) expectations. Following the release of its fiscal first-quarter operating results, Oracle has missed the consensus EPS estimate of analysts in three of the last four quarters.
Image source: Getty Images.
On the other end of the spectrum, billionaire David Tepper changed his tune and became a buyer of AI hardware stocks in the June-ended quarter of 2025. He purchased shares of Nvidia for the first time in two years and added 8 million shares of Intel (NASDAQ: INTC).
But the biggest about-face in the hardware space is a company that's, arguably, even more important than Nvidia to the evolution of AI. I'm talking about world-leading chip fabrication company Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM), which is commonly referred to by its shorthand, "TSMC."
Despite halving Appaloosa's stake in TSMC from 500,000 shares to 250,000 shares between March 31, 2024 to Dec. 31, 2024, Tepper has been a big-time buyer in each of the last two quarters:
While there's no argument that Nvidia's AI-graphics processing units (GPUs) are the brains powering split-second decision-making and large language model training in AI-accelerated data centers, these chips don't get made without chip-fabricating juggernaut TSMC.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing plays a critical role in the AI supply chain via its chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) technology. TSMC's CoWoS technology packages the high-bandwidth memory needed in high-compute data centers. Advanced AI chip orders represent TSMC's biggest growth opportunity, with no other chip fabricators more important to the success of the AI revolution than TSMC and its efforts to expand monthly CoWoS capacity.
But what Tepper might really appreciate is TSMC's sales diversification and addressable opportunity beyond the AI arena. For instance, TSMC is a key fabricator for wireless chips and accessories used in smartphones, as well as Internet of Things devices and next-generation automobiles. Though these segments aren't growing at the same lightning-fast pace as advanced AI chips, they offer a steady floor and predictable cash flow.
The final piece of the puzzle for Appaloosa's billionaire boss is that Taiwan Semiconductor is less-costly than most trillion-dollar stocks on the basis of forward-year earnings. Tepper was piling into TSMC stock during the second quarter at a forward P/E ratio ranging from 12 to 18. With TSMC projected for solid double-digit sales growth, this was an attractive entry point.
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Sean Williams has positions in Intel. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intel, Nvidia, Oracle, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short November 2025 $21 puts on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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