First Filings In: What 193 Early 13F Filers Show About Q1 2026 Positioning

The deadline for Q1 2026 institutional filings is May 15, but the first wave has already arrived. As of April 8, 193 managers have filed March 31 reports with enough position-level data to compare against their December 31 holdings. The sample skews toward smaller managers — mostly RIAs and regional banks in the $100M–$500M range, with only six above $5 billion — but the portfolio shifts are consistent enough to read as a signal.

The S&P 500 fell 4.3% in Q1 2026. The Nasdaq 100 dropped 5.8%. AI disruption fears compressed software valuations in February, and trade policy uncertainty kept sentiment fragile through March. Those headwinds show up clearly in how these managers repositioned.

The weight rotation: from growth and index funds into bonds and energy

The clearest signal is in how average portfolio allocations shifted. Measured as equal-weighted averages across all 193 managers — so no single large fund distorts the picture — the changes break down by theme:

Mega-cap tech shed the most weight — dropping from 10.4% to 9.2% of the average portfolio. Microsoft alone lost half a percentage point of average portfolio weight, the largest single-name decrease in the sample. On the other side, short-duration bonds and energy gained nearly a full percentage point combined — with Exxon Mobil, T-bill ETFs, and ultra-short income funds leading the shift.

Where managers added weight

The individual names gaining the most portfolio weight are almost entirely in energy and fixed income:

• Exxon Mobil (XOM) — average weight +0.27pp, held by 77% of managers at 1.3% each
• JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income (JPST) — average weight +0.17pp, 51 holders averaging 1.8% each
• SPDR 1-3 Month T-Bill (BIL) — average weight +0.16pp, holders averaging 1.6% each
• iShares 7-10 Year Treasury (IEF) — average weight +0.16pp, holders averaging 2.6% each
• Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity (SCHD) — average weight +0.14pp, gaining 4 new holders
• iShares 0-3 Month Treasury (SGOV) — average weight +0.12pp, gaining 5 new holders with 2.5% average allocations
• Chevron (CVX) — average weight +0.10pp, adding 7 new holders to reach 129

The pattern is consistent: shorter duration, higher quality, more yield. Four of the top seven weight gains are in Treasury or ultra-short bond ETFs. The managers who hold them tend to hold them in meaningful size — SGOV averages 2.5% of the portfolio for its holders, and IEF averages 2.6%.

What lost weight: Microsoft, index funds, and growth

The largest weight reductions came from the names you'd expect in a risk-off quarter:

• Microsoft (MSFT) — average weight −0.52pp, still held by 88% of managers but at lower allocations
• SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) — average weight −0.23pp
• Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight (RSP) — average weight −0.20pp
• iShares Core S&P 500 (IVV) — average weight −0.17pp
• Amazon (AMZN) — average weight −0.16pp
• Apple (AAPL) — average weight −0.16pp
• Meta (META) — average weight −0.12pp

Apple and Nvidia remain the two most widely held names in the sample — 90% and 81% of managers, respectively — and their holder counts barely moved. The trimming was more visible in the broad index and growth ETFs. Managers appear to have reduced their exposure to equity beta broadly rather than picking off individual mega-cap names.

Who's adding holders: energy, power infrastructure, industrials

Holder breadth — what share of the 193 managers owns a given name — shifted meaningfully in a few sectors. The names adding the most holders:

• Caterpillar (CAT) — 96 → 110 holders (+15%)
• GE Vernova (GEV) — 79 → 93 holders (+18%)
• ASML (ASML) — 55 → 67 holders (+22%)
• Chubb (CB) — 54 → 66 holders (+22%)
• NextEra Energy (NEE) — 85 → 96 holders (+13%)
• Micron Technology (MU) — 73 → 83 holders (+14%)
• Vertiv Holdings (VRT) — 32 → 42 holders (+31%)
• Valero Energy (VLO) — 39 → 49 holders (+26%)

Energy, power infrastructure, and capital goods dominate the gains. Caterpillar, GE Vernova, NextEra, and Vertiv all sit at the intersection of the data center buildout and domestic industrial spending — a cluster that has attracted new holders even as broad equity exposure shrank. Energy refiners like Valero also gained, suggesting some managers are expressing a tariff-resilient, domestic-revenue preference.

The names losing the most holders are a narrower group. Adobe (ADBE) lost 13 holders (73 → 60), Oracle (ORCL) lost 7, and Salesforce (CRM) lost 6 — all enterprise software names caught in the SaaS multiple compression that defined February's sell-off.

The biggest individual portfolio moves

Looking at the largest single-manager weight changes across the 193 filers (limited to managers with at least $100 million), the defensive rotation is even more visible at the individual level.

The five largest weight increases all went into Treasury and ultra-short bond ETFs:

• Vigilare Wealth Management — moved iShares 0-3 Month Treasury (SGOV) from 5.5% to 30.3% of portfolio (+24.9pp)
• St. Louis Financial Planners — moved SPDR 1-3 Month T-Bill (BIL) from 8.6% to 29.2% (+20.6pp)
• Arlington Trust Co — took Vanguard Short-Term Treasury (VGSH) from near zero to 16.0% (+15.9pp)
• Moulton Wealth Management — initiated a 15.9% position in iShares Treasury Floating Rate (TFLO) and a 15.6% position in WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury (USFR)
• MJT & Associates — moved iShares Core S&P Total U.S. (ITOT) from 10.3% to 21.1% (+10.8pp)

The five largest weight decreases are the mirror image — exits from equity index and active strategies:

• McAlister, Sweet & Associates — cut Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight (RSP) from 18.4% to 2.2% (−16.2pp)
• BancFirst Trust — cut Walmart (WMT) from 15.1% to 1.1% (−14.0pp)
• Vigilare Wealth Management — exited PIMCO Multisector Bond (PYLD) entirely from 12.0% (−12.0pp)
• Moulton Wealth Management — exited SPDR S&P Kensho New Economies (KOMP) from 10.9% and iShares Core U.S. Bond (IUSB) from 8.8%
• InvesTrust — exited Vanguard S&P 500 (VOO) entirely from 9.5% (−9.5pp)

Vigilare's move is especially legible: it sold its entire Pimco active bond position and moved nearly all of it into zero-to-three-month Treasuries. That's not a sector rotation — it's a flight to the shortest, safest duration available.

One fund's contrarian bet on a stock in crisis

Greenhaven Associates, a concentrated value fund with $6.1 billion in assets and roughly 25 positions, made the most notable single-stock move in the sample. It took its allocation to ICON plc (ICLR) from 0.05% to 3.65% of the portfolio — nearly 2 million shares added in a single quarter.

The timing is striking. In February 2026, ICON disclosed an internal accounting investigation that found revenue for 2023 and 2024 may have been overstated by up to 2% per year. The stock dropped roughly 40%, multiple analysts downgraded, and Evercore ISI suspended coverage entirely. BMO Capital upgraded the name to Outperform in late March, but by then Greenhaven had already built its position into the selloff.

Greenhaven also trimmed its General Motors weight by nearly 5 percentage points (20.0% → 15.4%) — still its second-largest position — and exited Millrose Properties (MRP), the land-bank REIT that Lennar spun off in early 2025, selling a 2.2% position entirely. On the buy side, it added weight to Schlumberger (SLB) (+1.1pp), Arrow Electronics (ARW) (+1.1pp), Oshkosh (OSK) (+1.0pp), and Avnet (AVT) (+0.9pp) — continuing its tilt toward industrial cyclicals.

The big picture from a small sample

Across the 193 matched managers, aggregate assets rose slightly — from $126.3 billion to $127.8 billion — suggesting modest net inflows even as the market fell. Average top-10 concentration held steady at 53.6%, and the average position count ticked up from 278 to 290. Managers initiated 6,141 new positions and exited 3,865 — a net expansion, not contraction.

The overall shift adds up to roughly 2 percentage points of average portfolio weight rotating from growth and broad equity beta into income, energy, and defensives. That's meaningful for a single quarter, especially from a cohort that didn't panic — AUM was flat to up, concentration barely moved, and position counts grew.

Whether the bigger institutions that file over the next five weeks followed the same playbook — or used the volatility to add to growth at lower prices — is the question this early data can't answer yet.

Notes

This analysis covers 13F filings with a report date of March 31, 2026, filed between March 31 and April 8, 2026. Of the 262 total filers, 193 have complete position-level data for comparison against their December 31, 2025 filings. Portfolio weights are calculated as equal-weighted averages across all 193 managers (non-holders treated as 0% weight) to prevent any single large fund from distorting the aggregate picture. Individual manager weight changes are limited to firms with at least $100 million in reported assets in both periods. The full filing deadline is May 15, 2026. Ownership changes and individual manager portfolios are available through the changes tracker and manager screener.