Q2 2026 13F Season Preview: Five Questions the August Filings Will Answer

The second quarter of 2026 is in the books, and it was a monster. The S&P 500 returned roughly 15% — its best quarter in six years — while the Nasdaq gained 21.6%, its strongest showing since 2020. Semiconductors posted their best quarter in nearly three decades, up 88% as a group, with Micron up 241%, Intel up 216%, and Marvell up 200%.

Now comes the interesting part. Institutional managers with over $100 million in assets have until August 14 to file their Q2 13Fs, disclosing what they held as of June 30. Those filings will tell us who positioned for this rally before it happened, who chased it, and who sold into it.

Here are the five questions we'll be watching when the filings drop.

1. Did the Q1 chip bulls take profits or press their bets?

The Q1 filings already showed smart money rotating into AI hardware. Druckenmiller rotated into AI hardware, Bridgewater favored chips over software, Tiger Global rotated into semiconductors, and Tepper held a major Micron stake before its 241% quarter. The Q2 filings will reveal whether these managers rode the full move — or trimmed into strength. A wave of profit-taking at June 30 prices would be one of the loudest "late innings" signals 13F data can produce.

2. Do the short sellers capitulate or double down?

Not everyone was long. Situational Awareness LP — the AI-focused fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner — disclosed large put option positions on Nvidia, Broadcom, Oracle, AMD, and Taiwan Semiconductor in its Q1 filing, even while adding to AI infrastructure equities. Michael Burry, meanwhile, exited China in Q1. After a quarter where semis nearly doubled before pulling back in late June, the Q2 filings will show whether the skeptics closed out, rolled their hedges, or sized them up. Watch the options columns closely — puts and calls tell a different story than common stock.

3. Does small-cap breadth show up in the filings?

The Russell 2000 returned 21.5% in Q2 — evidence the rally finally broadened beyond the Magnificent Seven. If that breadth is real, we should see it in 13F data: new small- and mid-cap positions appearing across multiple top portfolios at once. Our overlap tool is built for exactly this — when three or four unrelated managers initiate the same under-the-radar name in the same quarter, that's rarely a coincidence.

4. Where did the sellers' money go?

Q1 filings showed notable exits: Chris Hohn's TCI sold out of Microsoft, Tepper exited airlines, and defensive managers like Howard Marks leaned into credit-adjacent equity. Money that left software and cyclicals in Q1 had to land somewhere in Q2. Energy and power infrastructure — the "AI electricity trade" — remains a candidate, as does the space-adjacent infrastructure theme that emerged late in the quarter. The flow dashboard will aggregate sector-level buying and selling across every tracked filer once the filings are ingested.

5. Does the macro consensus shift?

Heading into Q2, the aggregate positioning of tracked investors leaned toward hardware over software, inflation hedges, and selective defensiveness. A 15% quarter has a way of changing minds. As Q2 filings arrive, our macro consensus page will re-score the aggregate signal — and the most informative outcome is disagreement. When Druckenmiller and Bridgewater read the same quarter differently, the divergence itself is the signal.

How to read the season without fooling yourself

A few reminders before the deluge. First, 13Fs are a snapshot of June 30, filed up to 45 days later — positions may have changed. Second, filings show long US equity positions and listed options only; shorts, futures, and international holdings are invisible. Third, giant multi-strategy filers like Citadel mix market-making inventory with directional bets, so their headline numbers are mostly noise. The signal lives in concentrated, low-turnover portfolios where a new position reflects a real decision.

The best approach: track a consistent set of managers quarter over quarter, watch changes rather than levels, and pay attention when unrelated investors converge on the same idea. That's the entire premise behind our investor tracker — and the next six weeks are its Super Bowl.

Mark August 14 on your calendar. We'll be covering the filings as they land.

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