Howard Marks Just Filed One of the Most Defensive 13Fs of the Quarter

While most of the Q1 2026 13F season has been dominated by AI infrastructure bets and tech rotation stories, Howard Marks' Oaktree Capital Management filed a 13F that reads almost like the opposite playbook. Distressed credit, gold miners, and a sizable options hedge dominate the $4.3 billion portfolio — a portfolio shaped less by what to own and more by what to be protected against.

It's a useful reminder that not every "smart money" signal points the same direction. You can track this filing and compare it against other top investors yourself on the InvestorLens investor pages.

A portfolio built around caution

Oaktree's Q1 2026 13F disclosed 53 total holdings worth roughly $4.3 billion. The top five positions — TORM PLC-A, Chesapeake Energy, AngloGold Ashanti, Garrett Motion, and Indivior Pharmaceuticals — together account for nearly half the portfolio. None of them are the kind of high-multiple growth names showing up across most of this quarter's institutional filings.

That's consistent with how Marks has long run Oaktree: distressed debt, special situations, and securities trading well below what the firm sees as intrinsic value. AngloGold Ashanti, a gold miner, stands out in particular — it's the kind of position that tends to show up in portfolios positioning for currency debasement, inflation persistence, or simple risk-off hedging rather than a bet on equity upside.

The hedge is the headline

The most striking detail in the filing isn't a stock pick at all. Oaktree disclosed a $551 million put option overlay, including a $329 million put position on the Invesco QQQ Trust and a $182 million put on the XOP oil & gas exploration-and-production ETF. That's one of the more aggressive macro hedges visible in any 13F this quarter — a direct bet that either tech-heavy indices, energy stocks, or both could see meaningful downside.

Pairing a QQQ put with a portfolio that's already light on tech exposure is a fairly clear statement: Marks isn't trying to time a crash, but he's positioned so that one wouldn't hurt much. The XOP put alongside long-side energy exposure (Chesapeake, Petroleo Brasileiro) suggests more of a relative-value or volatility-harvesting trade than outright bearishness on oil.

This kind of positioning is exactly what the Investor Macro Outlook tool on InvestorLens is built to surface — aggregating how defensive or aggressive the portfolios of top filers are skewing in a given quarter, beyond just individual stock picks.

What changed during the quarter

Oaktree was active. The filing shows 49 total changes: 14 brand-new positions, 14 full exits, 17 trimmed positions, and only 4 additions to existing holdings. The new buys included Indivior Pharmaceuticals, Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) ADRs, Credo Technology Group, YPF ADRs, and Embraer ADRs.

Credo Technology is the one name on that list that looks out of place next to the rest of the value-and-distress book — it's a high-growth connectivity chipmaker tied to AI data center buildouts. Even a famously valuation-disciplined firm appears to have found a price point it was willing to pay for AI-adjacent exposure, which says something about how broadly that theme has permeated institutional portfolios this cycle.

The two ADRs, Petrobras and YPF, point toward emerging-market energy as a value play — both trade at steep discounts to global energy majors on traditional multiples, and both have been recurring names in deep-value circles over the past year.

Why this filing is worth tracking, not just reading

A single 13F is a snapshot, not a forecast. But Oaktree's filing is a good example of why it's worth comparing positioning across multiple top investors rather than reading any one filing in isolation. If you want to see whether other major holders are also rotating into gold, energy, or hedged equity exposure this quarter, the stock overlap tool on InvestorLens will show you which other 13F filers hold the same names Oaktree just bought or sold.

It's also worth watching the next quarter or two of filings to see whether the put overlay gets unwound, expanded, or rolled — options positions in 13Fs are a snapshot of quarter-end exposure, and they can change quickly. Tracking changes quarter over quarter, rather than a single filing, is generally where the more useful signal is. The portfolio flow tracker is built for exactly that kind of longitudinal view.

The takeaway

Howard Marks has spent decades arguing that price reverts toward value and that periods of high optimism call for more defense, not less. His Q1 2026 13F looks like that philosophy expressed directly in position sizing: gold, distressed value names, emerging-market energy, and a meaningful hedge against both tech and energy drawdowns. Whether that caution proves early or well-timed will depend on how the next two quarters play out — but it stands in clear contrast to the more aggressive, AI-driven positioning showing up in a lot of other Q1 2026 filings.

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Data sourced from public SEC 13F filings. Educational research only — not investment advice.