Alibaba Stake Boosted: Hedge Fund Titans Go Shopping While Asia Peers Bow Out

Michael Burry's bullish bets on stocks, including Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA, followed stake boosts by other top hedge funds, including Moore Capital Management and Third Point LLC, in the first quarter.
Asia-based firms, including Simon Sadler's Segantii Capital Management Ltd. and Alpine Investment Management Ltd., accounted for nearly half of Alibaba ADRs offloaded by the quarter's top 10 most prominent hedge fund sellers, Bloomberg cites 13F filings.
The sole Asia-headquartered firm among the top 10 buyers was Hermes Li's Aspex Management (HK) Ltd.
As per the filings, a handful of Asia-based peers were among the biggest sellers. Tairen Capital Ltd., Prime Capital Management Co Ltd, and CoreView Capital Management Ltd exited positions.
Alibaba ADRs have lost close to 2023's peak in January amid news of Softbank Group Corp's SFTBF SFTBY plan to pare its stake and rising geopolitical tension.
Asia-based hedge funds typically invest most of their capital outside U.S. exchanges, implying their 13F filings reflect just a small percentage of their investments.
The most popular holding that those six Asian sellers added to during the quarter was Trip.Com Group Limited TCOM. Ariose, CoreView, Segantii, and Tairen more than tripled their combined Trip.com ADR holdings.
CoreView and Segantii also built new positions in Baidu, Inc BIDU during the quarter, betting on its ChatGPT counterpart and a planned $5 billion share buyback.
Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.27% at $80.75 premarket on the last check Tuesday.