The Boldest Bets on Wall Street Right Now Are in the Same Handful of Stocks
Four of the sharpest hedge fund managers on the planet just stacked their portfolios into the same three stocks, and the reasons behind that rare convergence reveal something unusual about where the biggest money sees opportunity right now.
The Q1 2026 13F filings (holdings as of March 31, 2026, filed May 15, 2026) revealed a striking pattern: Several of the most concentrated hedge fund portfolios are crowding into the same handful of mega-cap names. Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square, David Tepper’s Appaloosa, Li Lu’s Himalaya Capital, and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway are all leaning hard into Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Uber (NYSE:UBER). The overlap reflects a shared thesis.
Amazon: Ackman and Tepper Size Up
Amazon has become one of the largest positions in two of the most-watched books on Wall Street. Pershing Square held Amazon at roughly 17.4% of its portfolio, while Appaloosa’s Amazon stake sat near 15.2% after Tepper nearly doubled his share count during the quarter. The fundamentals support the conviction. Q1 2026 EPS came in at $2.78 versus a $1.73 consensus, a 60.69% beat, while AWS grew 28% year over year, its fastest pace in 15 quarters, at a 37.7% operating margin.
The thesis is straightforward: Amazon is the toll booth for enterprise AI compute. Landmark deals with OpenAI (roughly 2 GW of Trainium capacity) and Anthropic (up to 5 GW) lock in demand years out, and the company plans about $200 billion in 2026 capex. Shares are up 10.37% year to date through July 20, well behind the fundamentals.
Alphabet: Li Lu and Buffett Get Louder
Alphabet is the more concentrated bet. Himalaya Capital’s combined GOOGL/GOOG weight sits near 44.8% of the portfolio, and Berkshire more than doubled its GOOGL stake while opening a new GOOG position that represents about 6% of Berkshire’s equity book. Buffett historically avoided the search giant. That reversal signals conviction.
The numbers explain the pivot. Q1 2026 revenue rose 21.8% to $109.90 billion, EPS beat by 94.10%, and Google Cloud grew 63% with backlog nearly doubling quarter over quarter to over $460 billion. Operating margin expanded to 36.1%, and Waymo is now doing more than 500,000 autonomous rides a week. At a roughly 16 P/E, Alphabet is priced like a mature ad business while operating like an accelerating AI platform. Shares are up around 12% year to date and more than 85% over the past year.
Uber: The Cash Flow Machine
Uber is the contrarian pick of the three. Ackman’s Pershing Square held Uber at roughly 15.7% of the portfolio, and Tepper nearly tripled his Appaloosa position to about 7.7%. Yet the stock is down nearly 13% year to date and nearly 21% over the past year.
The disconnect is the opportunity. Q1 2026 Gross Bookings grew 25% to $53.72 billion, Uber One membership hit 50 million driving half of Gross Bookings, and non-GAAP EPS rose 44%. Full-year 2025 free cash flow reached $9.76 billion, up 41.6%, and the company repurchased $3.011 billion of stock in Q1 alone. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is positioning Uber as “the largest facilitator of AV trips in the world”, effectively renting Waymo’s fleet rather than competing with it.
Should Retirement Investors Follow?
The signal is convergence. Four independent capital allocators, with different styles and time horizons, arrived at overlapping conclusions: AI compute demand is real, cash flow compounders are mispriced, and platform economics still win. For a retirement-focused investor, Alphabet offers the cleanest valuation setup, Amazon the deepest moat, and Uber the biggest gap between fundamentals and price. 13F data is point-in-time and lags by six weeks, so treat it as thesis confirmation rather than an actionable trigger. Size positions to conviction rather than to any name on a filing.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
