Billionaire Philippe Laffont Sold 53% of Coatue's AMD Stake in Favor of an ETF Whose Underlying Asset Has Gained Nearly 165,000,000% in 15 Years
- - Billionaire Philippe Laffont Sold 53% of Coatue's AMD Stake in Favor of an ETF Whose Underlying Asset Has Gained Nearly 165,000,000% in 15 Years
Sean Williams, The Motley FoolAugust 26, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Key Points -
Form 13Fs are an invaluable tool that allows investors to follow which stocks, exchanged-traded funds (ETFs), and select options Wall Street's premier money managers are buying and selling.
Billionaire Philippe Laffont is an avid artificial intelligence (AI) investor, but he's been paring down his position in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) since mid-2023.
Coatue's most eyebrow-raising purchase in the June-ended quarter is an ETF whose underlying asset has crushed Wall Street's major stock indexes since August 2010.
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Less than two weeks ago, on Aug. 14, one of Wall Street's most important data dumps occurred, and there's a real chance you might have missed it.
No later than 45 calendar days after a quarter ends, institutional investors are required to file Form 13F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A 13F is a filing that allows investors to see which stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and select options Wall Street's top-tier money managers purchased and sold in the latest quarter.
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Don't get me wrong -- generally nothing is more valuable than earnings season and getting a bead on the financial health of the stock market's leading businesses. However, being able to track which stocks, industries, sectors, and trends have intrigued Wall Street's savviest fund managers can be equally telling.
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Image source: Getty Images.
The June-ended quarter was an especially busy period for Coatue Management's billionaire boss Philippe Laffont. He opened 13 new positions and added to 19 existing holdings, as well as reduced his fund's stake in 19 positions and sent 13 packing. Among this laundry list of trades, two stand out.
On one end of the spectrum, Laffont meaningfully reduced Coatue's stake in artificial intelligence (AI) titan Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), which is commonly referred to by its shorthand, "AMD." But at the same time, he was scooping up an ETF whose underlying asset has crushed Wall Street's major stock indexes over the past 15 years.
Billionaire Philippe Laffont continued to chip away at his fund's AMD stake
Among billionaire fund managers, Laffont is one of the few who's aggressively investing in the AI revolution. Though he's found quite a few artificial intelligence stocks to captivate his attention (and Coatue's capital), he's been a persistent seller of AMD stock over the last two years.
At the midpoint of 2023, AMD was Coatue Management's fifth-largest holding by market value, with Laffont overseeing 13,974,624 shares. But as of June 30, 2025, this position has been whittled down to "just" 1,530,241 shares, with 53% of Coatue's remaining stake (1,709,930 shares) shown to the door during the second quarter.
Profit-taking is the most-logical of all explanations as to why Laffont has been a relatively persistent seller of AMD stock. When he was building his fund's position in AMD, its shares regularly traded between $60 and $100. Much of Laffont's off-loading has occurred with shares of the company priced firmly between $100 and $200.
Based on 13F data aggregated by WhaleWisdom.com, Coatue Management's top-10 positions have been held for an average of a little over 18 months. In short, its billionaire boss isn't shy about cashing in his chips when the opportunity presents itself.
But it's also possible there may be more to this selling activity than just a desire to lock in gains.
One of the biggest question marks is whether or not AMD can become a serious competitor to Nvidia in AI-accelerated data centers. The latter has seen its Hopper (H100) and Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) dominate in enterprise data centers, while AMD's Instinct series chips have been left with minimal share. On a compute basis, AMD isn't relatively close to Nvidia's hardware.
If there is a silver lining here, it's that AMD's AI-GPU pricing power may be improving. In late July, it sizably increased the selling price of its high-end Instinct MI350 AI-accelerating chip by $10,000 to $25,000. This implies strong demand for AI hardware (not all of which can be met by Nvidia), as well as the potential for ongoing AI-GPU scarcity, which is beneficial to its growth and margins.
Philippe Laffont may also have valuation concerns. AMD hasn't been blowing away Wall Street's consensus sales and profit expectations like other AI leaders. It's valued at 43 times forecast earnings per share (EPS) for the current year, which is a notable premium in an already historically pricey stock market.
A physical gold Bitcoin stood on its side in front of a digital cryptocurrency chart.
Image source: Getty Images.
Coatue's billionaire chief loaded up on Wall Street's most-popular Bitcoin ETF
Though it wasn't the biggest new addition during the June-ended quarter on a dollar basis, the most eyebrow-raising purchase for Laffont was one of the most-popular Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) ETFs, the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ: IBIT).
According to Coatue's 13F, Laffont oversaw the purchase of 56,508 shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, worth about $3.5 million by the midpoint of 2025. The underlying asset (Bitcoin) that this ETF attempts to mirror the performance of has risen by nearly 165,000,000% -- no, that's not a typo -- over the trailing-15-year period.
The beauty of ETFs is they provide investors with instant diversification or concentration in one click. The best thing about Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) ETFs is they afford investors exposure without having to buy digital assets on an unknown or untrusted platform. It's viewed as a safe and liquid way to mirror the price movements of Bitcoin.
One of the likely reasons Coatue's billionaire chief opened a position in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF is as a hedge against inflation. Whereas U.S. money supply continues to expand to fresh all-time highs, and President Trump's tariffs are expected to have a modest inflationary impact, the lifetime mined supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million tokens. This perception of a supply ceiling makes Bitcoin an advantaged asset in an inflationary climate.
In addition, Philippe Laffont may have established a position ahead of President Trump's signing of cryptocurrency legislation. The Trump administration has taken a favorable view toward digital currencies, which has encouraged institutional investment into Bitcoin and other digital assets.
But in spite of Bitcoin's almost 165,000,000% gain spanning 15 years, it's not a slam-dunk investment going forward. It failed the real-world utility test in El Salvador, and its blockchain network is neither the fastest nor the cheapest. While it once possessed first-mover advantages, it's become a first-generation network that's been long surpassed by third-generation blockchain networks, in terms of utility.
Bitcoin's token cap is also something of a mirage. Whereas physical commodities are genuinely limited to what can be mined on planet Earth, Bitcoin's token cap is based on lines of computer code that can be changed with developer consensus. Even though consensus is unlikely, the chance of this happening isn't zero.
Lastly, steep bear market declines and emotion-driven downturns are par for the course when owning cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has endured over a half-dozen declines of at least 50% since its inception, which suggests another sizable decline is inevitable sooner, rather than later.
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Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Bitcoin, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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