Stanley Druckenmiller said last week that pretty much anyone could make money in the markets right now and that he was up 17% this year.
The latest regulatory filing from his Duquesne Family Office shows some of the ways he’s done this and what he’s betting on going forward.
The investor, worth $10.4 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, took a new $154.6 million position in Citigroup Inc., and a smaller stake in JPMorgan Chase & Co., a bet that could benefit from rising rates.
Duquesne also amassed a $69.7 million stake in online travel company Booking Holdings Inc. and boosted its holdings of Starbucks Corp. and Expedia Group Inc. -- a nod to the rapidly vaccinated U.S. and a potential return to more travel and work from the office.
Overall, the firm disclosed on Monday $3.9 billion of U.S. equity holdings in the 13F filing, a slight increase from the prior quarter.
Druckenmiller made some sizable trades involving consumer businesses inordinately impacted by the pandemic. He liquidated stakes in Walt Disney Co. and cruise liner Carnival Corp. Duquesne also trimmed its holdings in used-car retailer Carvana Co. and miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc., which is up 70% this year.
Extremely Private
Family offices, the closely held investment vehicles of the ultra-wealthy, are often impenetrably discreet. The 13F filings are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission of money managers overseeing more than $100 million in U.S. equities and must be filed within 45 days of the end of each quarter.
Only a handful of family offices out of the thousands operating globally file the forms. Most are too small or farm their equity investments out to external money managers. Some, such as Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, buy securities through swap arrangements with banks, which keeps their holdings hidden. Hwang’s family office, which blew up at the end of March, never filed a 13F.
For those required to file the forms, they offer a glimpse into the investment strategies of some of the world’s wealthiest people.
Soros Fund Management, for instance, revealed on Friday it snapped up shares of ViacomCBS Inc., Baidu Inc., Vipshop Holdings Ltd. and Tencent Music Entertainment Group. The investment firm, which oversees $27 billion, didn’t hold the shares prior to Archegos’s implosion, said a person familiar with the fund’s trading.