California Public Employees’ Retirement System sharply raised its exposure in retail giant Walmart Inc WMT and adjusted positions in Tesla Inc TSLA and the so-called FAANG stocks in the second quarter, regulatory filings showed.
The Trades: The largest U.S. pension fund by assets added 15.6% more volume in Walmart, taking the total to 10.57 million shares in the retail giant by the end of the second quarter.
Walmart reported another quarter of rising sales in the U.S. and both revenue and profits exceeded the Wall Street estimates. Store visits offset slower online growth as buyers flocked to stores as the economies reopened along with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
CalPERS, as the fund is popularly known, owned shares worth $1.49 billion in Walmart at the end of the second quarter.
Walmart shares have risen 3.3% so far this year and closed 1.06% lower at $149.10 on Wednesday.
FAANG Trades: CalPERS lowered its position in Facebook Inc FB by 2.1% to 5.4 million shares by the end of the second quarter.
The fund trimmed its position in Apple Inc AAPL by 3% to 35.23 million shares and owned $4.8 billion worth shares in the Cupertino, California-based tech giant at the end of the quarter.
Apple shares, which have risen 10.3% so far this year, closed 2.55% lower at $146.36 on Wednesday.
The pension fund also trimmed its position in Google-parent Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL by 2.76% to 1.37 million shares, both Class A and Class C combined.
The Sacramento, California-based CalPERS, also lifted its Netflix Inc NFLX stake by 15.4% to 1.17 million shares, worth about $619 million at the end of June.
CalPERS raised its position in Amazon.com Inc AMZN by 3% to 1.08 million shares — worth about $3.74 billion - by the end of June quarter.
Netflix shares have fallen 3.5% so far this year and those of Amazon have risen 1.74%. Netflix shares closed 0.57% higher at $521.87 on Wednesday and those of Amazon slipped 1.27% lower at $3,201.22.
Alphabet Class A shares have risen about 54.6% and Class C are up about 55.9%. Those of Facebook have risen 30.2% respectively, so far this year. Facebook shares closed 0.84% lower at $355.45 on Wednesday and those of Alphabet closed at $2,708.98, down 0.89%.
Other Trades: In Tesla, the pension fund cut its position by 0.7% to about 1.75 million shares.
The shares of the Elon Musk-led company, which have slipped 2.33% since the start of the year, closed 3.50% higher at $688.99 on Wednesday.
The fund also trimmed about 1% of its stake in Microsoft Corp. MSFT to about 18.2 billion shares; the tech giant remains its largest holding.
CalPERS reported a value $133 billion for the stocks in the 13F filing at the end of the second quarter, compared to the $131.4 billion the previous quarter.
See also: PENSION VS. SAVING FOR RETIREMENT
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