One of Wall Street’s Best-Known Hedge Funds Just Loaded Up on These 5 Stocks

Joel South

Wed, August 19, 2026 at 7:03 PM GMT+3 5 min read

Quick Read

Maverick built a $663M NU position using shares and call options while buying $512M of INTC against a demoralized retail base.
Lee Ainslie trimmed over 3 million NVDA shares and 525,000 TSM shares, rotating proceeds into AMD at a 132x P/E.
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Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital executed one of its most dramatic portfolio rotations in years, pivoting away from mature chip leaders and consumer discretionary names. The fund trimmed NVDA by more than 3 million shares and cut TSM by 525,601 shares and plowed proceeds into a different mix of bets.

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To rank the five most surprising new positions, we weighted three factors: profile mismatch versus Maverick's typical large-cap growth playbook, contrarian nature relative to consensus at purchase, and position size. Here are the five names that stood out most.

5. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

A $430.4 million new position covering 764,041 shares is a big check, but Meta is the least surprising name on this list. Maverick stepped in as sentiment cracked. Meta missed Q2 EPS estimates by 14.42%, snapping a six-quarter beat streak, and shares are down 13.66% year to date and off 27.31% over one year. Free cash flow collapsed to just $784 million, down 91% year over year, as capex hit $30.12 billion in the quarter. Buying a hyperscaler mid-capex-panic at 21x earnings is the contrarian angle.

4. Advanced Micro Devices

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD)

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Maverick added $429.5 million to bring its AMD position to $567.2 million while trimming NVIDIA, a directional call inside the AI GPU trade. Q2 revenue of $11.5 billion, up 50% year over year, with data center revenue of $6.7 billion more than doubling. Lisa Su told analysts AMD has "multi-generation gigawatt scale deployments with OpenAI and Meta" and a new two-gigawatt MI450 partnership with Anthropic. Shares are up 136.27% year to date, but the stock trades at a P/E of 132. Paying that multiple as a fresh entry is the surprise.

3. Snowflake

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW)

A $248.8 million new position covering 977,710 shares in a business with a 67.2% gross margin but a -30.6% operating margin and -54% ROE is off-profile for Maverick. What likely tipped the calculus: Q1 FY27 product revenue of $1.334 billion, growing 34% year over year, with net revenue retention at 126% and 779 customers above $1M ARR. Cortex Code adoption exploded to 7,100+ accounts in one quarter, and management raised FY27 product revenue guidance to $5.84 billion, or 31% growth, up from a prior 27% outlook. Shares jumped 94.7% between May 19 and August 17, 2026, so this was a momentum entry.

2. Intel

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Maverick added $380.1 million to build a $512.3 million Intel position, and the rotation gets aggressive. Intel is a turnaround story with a negative P/E, a -0.04% operating margin, and a -0.25% ROE. But Q2 delivered $16.13 billion in revenue, up 25.4% year over year and beating estimates by 11.64%. Lip-Bu Tan told the Street this marked "the seventh consecutive quarter of exceeding our financial expectations" and "the strongest revenue growth in more than 15 years". Reddit sentiment tells the contrarian story: retail flipped from very-bullish scores of 85 to 91 in early July to very-bearish 12 to 30 by late July, and the $15 billion stock offering announced August 10 did not reignite retail interest. Maverick bets against a demoralized retail base.

1. Nu Holdings

Nu Holdings (NYSE:NU)

The most surprising bet by a wide margin. Maverick built a $662.7 million total position combining 35.6 million shares worth $475 million and call options on 14 million share equivalents worth $187.7 million. Adding options to a Brazilian fintech is not standard Maverick behavior. Fundamentals support conviction: Q2 net income of $1.1 billion, the first billion-dollar quarter, with return on equity at 33% and a customer base of 139 million. Mexico just received its banking license in August 2026, and the OCC conditionally approved a U.S. national bank charter. The counterweight: Brazil's IBS/CBS financial-services tax reform starts January 1, 2027 at 10.85%, rising to 12.50% by 2033, and Stage 3 loans climbed to 8.3% from 6.2%. Shares are still down 11.95% year to date despite an 8.46% gain over the past month. Adding calls into that setup signals Ainslie sees a coiled spring, not just a compounder.

The Rotation In Focus

The five bets fulfill the opening premise: Maverick is rewriting its book. The fund exited streaming, dining, and travel names, then wrote checks into an AI-CPU turnaround, an unprofitable data cloud, a beaten-down hyperscaler, a chipmaker at 131x earnings, and a Latin American digital bank levered with calls. The Nu Holdings position is the loudest signal: sizing plus derivatives plus emerging-market geography separates a portfolio hedge from a conviction call.