Ackman Doubles Amazon Position; Tepper, Klarman Rotate Into Tech Giants Amid Macro Turmoil

Recent 13F regulatory filings from hedge fund titans reveal a coordinated rotation toward defensive mega-cap technology holdings and away from cyclical and airline exposures. David Tepper's Appaloosa Management nearly doubled its Amazon position, making the e-commerce and cloud infrastructure giant its largest disclosed equity holding at the end of March 2026. Simultaneously, Appaloosa completely exited every major US airline holding, signaling a dramatic shift away from cyclicals that face margin pressure from higher fuel costs and capital borrowing rates. Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management built a substantial new position in Microsoft, citing the software giant's durability, cloud scale in AI, and pricing power in a higher-rate environment.

Seth Klarman's Baupost followed suit, boosting its Amazon stake by 47% and initiating new positions in Visa and Aon, a diversified conglomerate focused on professional services and insurance. These moves reflect a common thesis across elite allocators: mega-cap technology and financial platform businesses can sustain or grow margins despite rising rates because they benefit from structural secular tailwinds (AI, cloud computing, e-commerce) and pricing leverage. In contrast, traditional cyclicals, energy, and airlines face headwinds from both macro deterioration and the specific shock of elevated oil prices from the Iran conflict.

The shift is also notable for what these funds avoided. Insider filings show that D1 Capital's Joshua Harris notably did not accumulate traditional mega-cap social media names like Meta, instead focusing on well-established enterprise tech. This suggests that even tech-bullish allocators are being selective, avoiding names that face elevated valuation risk if AI capex cycles moderate or if growth expectations reset lower. Berkshire Hathaway, under new CEO Greg Abel, has boosted Alphabet significantly while trimming Amazon exposure, suggesting a split between mega-cap mega-cap tech strategies depending on near-term risk tolerance.

The risk is that this concentration of hedge fund capital into a handful of mega-cap names further hollows out the equity market's breadth and creates feedback loop dynamics where selling forces tech names lower, which then triggers further deleveraging across the hedge fund complex. If macro conditions deteriorate further and margin calls accelerate, the forced liquidations from these mega-cap positions could be violent.