Elliott Management's 770% Options Bet Against the AI Trade

Most 13F headlines chase what the smartest money is buying. Paul Singer's Elliott Investment Management is more interesting for what it's betting against. In its Q2 2026 filing, Elliott increased its put options on the Invesco QQQ Trust — the ETF that tracks the Nasdaq-100 and is dominated by the same handful of AI mega-caps everyone else is piling into — by roughly 770%. That single line item is now worth an estimated $2.56 billion, or about 11.3% of Elliott's $22.67 billion 13F portfolio, according to filing data compiled by Insider Monkey.

This isn't a new instinct for Elliott. Firm leadership told clients in a letter obtained by the Financial Times that Nvidia and other Big Tech names were trading in "bubble land," and warned that many AI applications would eventually prove unworkable because they'd "always cost too much, function poorly, consume too much energy, or betray users' trust." Back in early 2025, that skepticism showed up as direct Nvidia puts plus billions in notional downside exposure through QQQ and SPY options. The Q2 2026 filing shows the same playbook, just scaled up substantially as AI-linked valuations have kept climbing. Readers tracking sentiment across large filers can see how unusual this kind of concentrated hedge is on InvestorLens's macro-consensus page, which aggregates positioning signals across the largest 13F filers.

What the rest of the portfolio says

A hedge is only half a thesis — the other half is where the capital actually goes. Elliott's long book leans hard into hard assets and cash-generative energy rather than growth software. Triple Flag Precious Metals (TFPM), a gold and silver royalty and streaming company, remains the single largest position at roughly $3.99 billion, or 17.6% of the portfolio, even after a small trim. Phillips 66 (PSX) is the second-largest holding at $3.25 billion (14.4%), and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) — a name Elliott has pushed operationally as an activist — grew another 17.7% this quarter to $1.46 billion.

The moves away from prior favorites are just as telling. Suncor Energy was cut by roughly 44%, Southwest Airlines was trimmed nearly 20%, and Elliott fully exited both Crown Castle and Wayfair. New additions include a $101.5 million stake in Synopsys, the chip-design software firm, and a smaller position in Quantinuum, a quantum computing company — both arguably picks-and-shovels plays on the same AI buildout that Elliott is simultaneously hedging against at the index level. That combination — own the infrastructure and tooling, short the multiple — is a distinctly Elliott way of expressing "this theme is real but overpriced." Investors curious whether any of Elliott's names show up in other prominent 13Fs can check the overlap directly on InvestorLens's portfolio overlap tool.

Why a 13F hedge like this matters

Because 13Fs only require long equity positions and certain derivatives like listed options to be disclosed, most retail-facing 13F trackers focus on stock picks and miss what funds are doing to protect against those same picks. A jump this large in index puts is one of the few places where a fund's macro view leaks into a filing that's otherwise built around single-name conviction. It's also a useful reminder that a manager can be structurally bullish on a sector's long-term winners — Elliott's Synopsys and HPE stakes make that clear — while still thinking the market's pricing of that sector, reflected in a broad index like the Nasdaq-100, has run ahead of fundamentals.

It's worth being careful about over-reading a single quarter's options change. Put positions can be tactical hedges tied to a specific catalyst window rather than a standing bearish call, and 13F filings disclose positions with a 45-day lag, so this snapshot reflects where Elliott stood as of June 30, 2026, not necessarily where it stands today. Still, a fund with Elliott's track record of activist precision rarely moves a hedge by nearly 8x without conviction behind it. For anyone building a watchlist of funds with unusually large derivative or defensive positioning, InvestorLens's investor profiles page tracks quarter-over-quarter changes like this one across dozens of prominent filers, and the capital flow view shows how money has been moving between sectors as the AI trade has matured.

Whether Elliott's hedge pays off depends on a catalyst nobody can time from a 13F alone. But the filing is a clear data point: at least one of the market's most respected activist investors is treating the AI rally's biggest winners as a trade to be capital-efficient about, not a story to simply own and hold.

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