Lately the big boys of Wall Street have been busy.
By “big boys” I’m talking about the billionaire investors, which we can easily keep tabs on with our TradeSmith Billionaires Club.
I always keep a watchful eye on what these big-money players because let’s face it – these super-successful billionaires didn’t get that way by accident. They’ve spent years developing winning stock-picking strategies and have built impressive track records.
So, what are the big-money billionaires up to these days? Let’s find out. Because while most are buying, there’s one legendary investor who’s doing the opposite…
2024’s Big Money Movements
Warren Buffett seems to think the stock market is too expensive today. His recent Berkshire Hathaway 13F filings with the SEC reveals he has been mostly selling stocks for the last eight straight quarters, with cash holdings hitting a record $352.2 billion.
Most significantly, the Oracle of Omaha seems to be steadily reducing his largest stake in Apple (AAPL), even though it remains his largest position. In 2024 alone, Berkshire sold more than 600 million shares of the iPhone maker, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, over at Pershing Square, fellow Billionaire Bill Ackman has been buying up stocks. His most recent 13F filing reveals that he’s loading up shares of the iconic American brand name stock Nike (NKE). After the struggling athletic apparel maker’s earnings disappointed in the third quarter, Ackman pounced on what he clearly sees as a bargain, adding 13.2 million shares worth more than $1 billion, according to Yahoo Finance.
And then there’s David Tepper, another key player in our Billionaire Club, who is buying Chinese Stocks with both hands. Tepper, known for his stellar track record of 28% annual returns, says buy “everything” in China.
He’s convinced that both the government and central bank will do whatever it takes to boost China’s economy – and the stock market along with it. And Tepper is putting his money where his mouth is. His largest position is in e-commerce giant Alibaba (BABA), which accounts for nearly 12% of his $6 billion stock portfolio, according to Motley Fool.
Mind you, I’m not saying that you should rush out to buy any of these stocks just because these billionaires are. But make no mistake – these guys do their homework. They spend many hours of intensive research to find the best stocks at the right time. So, it’s worth keeping track of where they are investing their own money.
And there’s an easy way to stay up to date on the latest buying and selling of some of the world’s smartest investors: By usingour exclusive TradeSmith Billionaires Club portfolio tracker.
How to Keep Tabs on the Billionaires Club
At TradeSmith, we closely track the stock holdings of some of the world’s smartest investors, including Buffett, Ackman, Tepper, and 24 other “smart money” investors. These legends have made plenty of money, not just for themselves but for the savvy investors who were smart enough to invest alongside them over the years.
We track their publicly available 13F filings from these famous investors and their funds. And we’ve recreated their portfolios so that you can follow their moves each quarter using the Billionaires Club.*
*Please Note: This feature is available to TradeStops Pro, TradeStops Elite, Ideas by TradeSmith Elite, Trade360, TradeSmith Essentials, and Platinum customers. If you don’t see this in your TradeSmith Finance dashboard, and would like to, please call our dedicated Customer Care team at 866-220-1107 to find out how to get access.
The easiest way to access the Billionaires Club is to start at the Dashboard in the main menu. Simply click on Explore Billionaires Portfolios in the sub menu located just below the major market indexes, as shown above.
That take will take you to the My Services tab and bring you directly Billionaires Club home page. Once there, you can look up your favorite Billionaires by name and scan their open or closed positions to see which stocks they’re buying and selling.
These wizards of Wall Street have done the heavy lifting for us. By using the Billionaires Club to follow in their footsteps, so to speak, we’re investing with the smart money — and we have the stats to prove it.
Backtesting the Billionaires
When we developed the Billionaires Club here at TradeSmith, we asked ourselves a simple question: How can we make it even better and potentially more profitable?
To answer that, we performed extensive backtesting, filtering stocks owned by these prolific billionaires through our proprietary tools to find the best of the best. The results were outstanding.
By ranking stocks based on recent entry signals, the average Volatility Quotient (VQ), and the number of Billionaires Club members holding them, we found that our strategy outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 10 times over.
The result is our Best of the Billionaires strategy – exclusively available to Ideas Elite, Trade360 Elite, TradeSmith Essentials, and TradeSmith Platinum customers.
Better yet, you can also use our popular TradeSmith Screener tool to find stocks that Billionaires Club members are actively investing in right now. Instead of analyzing each billionaire’s holdings one by one, you can scan the portfolios of all the big-shot investors in our Billionaires Club at the same time.
Here’s how to set up a simple Billionaires screener:
- Log in to TradeSmith Finance account.
- Navigate to the Invest tab and select the Screener option.
- Click on the green + Create New Screener button.
Now, to keep things simple, we’ll focus on the stocks owned by several billionaires. Our Best of the Billionaires research shows us that when several billionaires own the same stocks, they tend to outperform.
So, next, you’ll…
- Click on +Manage Filters, select TradeSmith Strategies and check the box under Ideas Lab for Best of the Billionaires to apply this strategy.
- Under Asset Type, select Stock.
- Finally, sort the results by Billionaires, DESC (descending).
As shown below, this will give you the list of stocks that the billionaires own in rank order, with the best on top.
Remember, you can always narrow the list by adding more filters if you wish.
For example, try adding additional TradeSmith filters like Business Quality Score or Seasonality Patterns. Or consider including a few fundamental filters like P/E Ratio or Dividend Yield to narrow your results. The sky’s the limit!
Below, here are the top 10 out of 100 results from my screener:
Let me call your attention to the Billionaires column, fourth from the left. The numbers in this column indicate how many Billionaires Club members own the same stocks in the list. As you can see, Ziff Davis (ZD), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), and Trimble (TRMB) are each owned by two billionaires.
Remember, we found in our research that when more billionaires own a stock, it has a higher potential to outperform the market. So, the more the merrier.
Mike Burnick’s Bottom Line: It pays to follow the “smart money.” It’s a great source of new potential investment ideas. And our TradeSmith Billionaires Club can help you do just that. You can keep a close eye on the stocks favored by successful investors like Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, David Tepper, and dozens of other Billionaire Club members we follow.
Good investing,
Mike Burnick
Senior Analyst, TradeSmith
P.S. From Ackman buying into Nike and Tepper doubling down on Chinese stocks, these legendary investors have shown once again why it pays to keep a close eye on their strategies. Our tools not only make it easier follow their footsteps but also provide the insight you need to potentially outperform the market.
And speaking of outperformance, one such tool was unveiled during The Auspex Anomaly Event, hosted by my colleague Luke Lango over at our corporate partner, InvestorPlace. This exclusive event introduced a new stock screening strategy that has delivered consistent gains every month for the past five months.
Luke’s Auspex system uses a blend of fundamental, technical, and sentiment-driven factors to identify top-performing stocks for the months ahead. And it didn’t just focus on bull markets; it aimed to outperform during both upswings and pullbacks.
With market volatility expected to continue into 2025, there’s never been a more critical time to try new adaptive strategies. If you missed it, don’t worry—there’s still time to catch the replay and see how this system can help you thrive in any market environment.