The Q4 hedge fund filings are in, and they tell a story that's hard to ignore. Fourteen of the world's largest investment managers just revealed their holdings, and the message is surprisingly unified: the trades that won in 2025 are getting dumped, fast.

SoftBank sold every single share of Nvidia (NVDA) it owned. Warren Buffett cut his Amazon (AMZN) position by 77%. Stan Druckenmiller purged more than 30 positions in a single quarter. These aren't subtle adjustments or minor rebalancing moves. This is a wholesale rotation happening in real time.

The 13F Cycle That Wasn't Subtle

Let's start with what got sold. Druckenmiller exited Meta, Bank of America, GE Vernova, and over 20 other names. Lone Pine liquidated its entire $971M Meta position. Bridgewater slashed Meta by 52% and Uber by 70%. SoftBank dumped its $6B Nvidia stake completely and pivoted into crypto, including $781M in a Bitcoin treasury company. Even Buffett, who rarely makes dramatic moves, trimmed Apple (AAPL) and gutted his Amazon holdings.

The pattern here isn't random. These are the stocks that defined the last few years of market outperformance. The mega-cap tech names that everyone owned because they kept working. And now the smartest institutional money is walking away.

So Where Did The Money Go?

The new positions are where things get interesting. Three themes stand out.

First, value and cyclicals are back. Druckenmiller's buys look like a deliberate bet on economic breadth rather than concentration. He added financials (XLF), equal-weight S&P exposure via (RSP), airlines like Delta (DAL) and United (UAL), and emerging market plays including Brazil (EWZ) and YPF (YPF). David Tepper tripled his Micron (MU) position and bought American Airlines (AAL). These aren't AI momentum plays. They're bets that the market rally can broaden beyond five stocks.

Second, hard assets are getting serious money again. Bridgewater went absolutely wild on gold miners. They increased their Newmont (NEM) position by 496%, added 306% to Barrick (B), and piled into Harmony Gold (HMY) with a 1,973% boost. That timing looks prescient now that gold just crossed $5,000 per ounce for the first time, up 2.2%. Oil also jumped 4.6% to $65 after comments from Vice President Vance about Iran not addressing U.S. concerns. With the Fed now openly discussing potential rate hikes if inflation stays sticky, the inflation hedge playbook is getting real capital behind it.

Third, contrarian conviction trades are popping up. Buffett opened a $352M position in the New York Times (NYT), which nobody saw coming. Bill Ackman went massively long Meta with a $1.76B position right as Druckenmiller, Lone Pine, and Bridgewater were all selling it. And in perhaps the most eyebrow-raising move, Nvidia itself bought $7.93B worth of Intel. That's the kind of number that makes you read it twice and wonder what they know.

What The Fed Is Thinking

The backdrop for all this rotation makes it more understandable. Minutes from the January Fed meeting revealed a central bank that's more divided than markets expected. Several officials floated the possibility of rate hikes rather than cuts if inflation remains elevated. Markets are still pricing in 93% odds of a hold in March, and the base case remains two to three rate cuts for 2026. But the tone was noticeably more hawkish than anticipated.

That shift matters because it changes the game theory for portfolio positioning. If rates stay higher for longer or even tick up, the growth stocks that thrived in a zero-rate world face continued pressure. Meanwhile, financials benefit from better margins, commodities hold value against inflation fears, and diversification becomes less about theory and more about survival.

What This Means For Your Portfolio

Here's the important caveat: 13F filings are backward-looking snapshots. These positions reflect holdings as of December 31st. Some of them may already be different today. You shouldn't blindly copy what hedge funds were doing three months ago.

But the direction absolutely matters. The largest, most sophisticated investment managers in the world are actively diversifying away from mega-cap tech concentration. They're rotating into value, breadth, real assets, and contrarian ideas. They're positioning for a market that doesn't look like 2025.

If your portfolio is still heavily concentrated in the same five tech stocks that dominated the last few years, these filings are worth paying attention to. Not because you need to panic and sell everything, but because the risk-reward calculation has clearly shifted for professional investors who have access to better information and longer time horizons than most retail traders.

The question isn't whether these specific trades will work. It's whether you're comfortable being concentrated in exactly what smart money is exiting, or whether some diversification makes sense while everyone's still figuring out what 2026 actually looks like.

That's something worth thinking about.