{"id":10585,"date":"2022-08-15T19:16:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T00:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=10585"},"modified":"2022-08-15T19:16:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T00:16:45","slug":"legendary-financier-george-soros-bets-big-on-amazon-and-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=10585","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Financier George Soros Bets Big on Amazon and Alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The billionaire massively bought Amazon shares and strengthened his position at Alphabet in the midst of a market rout in the second quarter.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rout in financial markets in the second quarter did not scare billionaire George Soros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The legendary investor shopped in the tech sector even as investors liquidated tech stocks on fears of recession. Indeed, the second quarter was marked by a fall in the Nasdaq index, which is dominated by technology groups. The Nasdaq&nbsp;lost nearly 23% between April 1 and June 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rise in Federal Reserve rates to combat inflation, which was then the highest in 40 years, raised fears of a hard landing for the economy.\u00a0Investors fearing a recession were liquidating their positions in risky assets. This particularly affects tech, which lives mainly on promises of future products and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If I had to bet, I&#8217;d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we&#8217;ve seen in recent history,&#8221;&nbsp;Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of social media giant&nbsp;Facebook&#8217;s parent&nbsp;Meta Platforms&nbsp;(<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/quote\/META\">META<\/a><\/strong>)&nbsp;,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/technology\/mark-zuckerberg-has-an-original-idea-to-get-rid-of-employees\">told<\/a>&nbsp;employees on June 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Investors panicked when many tech groups including big names like Alphabet\u00a0\u00a0(<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/quote\/GOOGL\">GOOGL<\/a><\/strong>)\u00a0, parent company of Google, Meta, Microsoft\u00a0\u00a0(<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/quote\/MSFT\">MSFT<\/a><\/strong>)\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/technology\/microsoft-and-google-bring-bad-news-for-the-economy\">announced<\/a>\u00a0they would freeze or slow down the pace of hiring. These announcements reinforced the fear that the future was uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Soros Has Also Boosted His Stake in Salesforce, Qualcomm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It now appears that Soros, 92, was not more worried than that. The iconic investor began betting heavily on Amazon. He thus massively bought shares of the e-commerce giant. As of June 30, his firm Soros Fund Management held 2,004,500 Amazon shares worth about $213 million, compared to 70,717 Amazon shares as of March 31, a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/Archives\/edgar\/data\/1029160\/000090266422003931\/xslForm13F_X01\/infotable.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">regulatory document<\/a>&nbsp;filed on Aug. 12 shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The firm also boosted its Alphabet shares by 10.4% compared to March 31. Soros Fund Management held 53,175 Alphabet shares as of June 30 worth $5.8 million, according to the SEC filing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since June 30, Nasdaq has rebounded more than 18% after somewhat reassuring second-quarter earnings from tech companies. Amazon shares, for example, have jumped more than 35% since June 30, while those of Alphabet are up 11.7% over the same period. Basically, Soros has already seen the value of his latest acquisitions increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Besides Alphabet and Amazon, Soros also acquired additional shares in Salesforce&nbsp;&nbsp;(<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/quote\/CRM\">CRM<\/a><\/strong>)&nbsp;&nbsp;and semiconductor maker Qualcomm&nbsp;&nbsp;(<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/quote\/QCOM\">QCOM<\/a><\/strong>)&nbsp;.&nbsp;Soros Fund Management holds 627,509 Salesforce shares, up 138.3% from March 31, and 229,582 Qualcomm shares, up 49% from three months earlier. His stake in Salesforce is now valued at $103.56 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stock market regulations require managers of funds with more than $100 million in U.S. equities to file a document, known as a 13F, within 45 days of the end of the quarter to list their holdings in stocks that trade on U.S. exchanges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The value of Soros&#8217; U.S. equity portfolio rose 5.3% quarter over quarter to $5.6 billion. Soros Fund Management is&nbsp;a family office that manages public and private equity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;SFM invests globally in a wide range of strategies and asset classes, including public equities, fixed income, commodities, foreign exchange, alternative assets and private equity,&#8221; the firm<a href=\"https:\/\/sorosfundmgmt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;said<\/a>&nbsp;on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soros, whose net worth is estimated at $8.5 billion as of Aug. 12 according to\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/billionaires\/profiles\/george-soros\/#:%7E:text=%23%20245%20George%20Soros%20%248.50B\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg Billionaires Index<\/a>, is well known for pouring money into philanthropic efforts. Most of his firm&#8217;s assets belong to Open Society Foundations, which supports &#8220;people across the world who work for justice, equity and free expression.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The billionaire massively bought Amazon shares and strengthened his position at Alphabet in the midst of a market rout in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[254,3421,3422],"tags":[888,3425],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10586,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585\/revisions\/10586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}