While retail investors debated the headlines on Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), the "smart money" was quietly picking sides during the third quarter.
- TSLA stock is at all-time highs. See the chart and price action here.
The 13F filings for Q3 reveal a split among Wall Street’s elite: one side ran for the exits and the other poured hundreds of millions into Tesla right before the stock’s massive year-end breakout.
Tesla Q3 Bulls
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Leading the bullish charge was Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, who reinforced her well-known long-term conviction in Tesla by adding a massive 512,158 shares. The move suggests she viewed Q3 price action as a prime buying opportunity.
With the stock up roughly 37% since the Q3 average of $346, the 512,000 shares Wood bought are likely sitting on a paper gain of over $65 million in just a few months.
Wood was closely followed by Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors, who purchased 509,497 Tesla shares, and the quantitative giant Renaissance Technologies, which added 424,490 shares.
The mix of bullish investors is notable because it represents several different investment philosophies—from aggressive growth (Wood) to fundamental equity picking (Halvorsen) and complex algorithmic trading (Renaissance).
The fact that such diverse funds were all heavy buyers signals broad institutional confidence in the stock.
Tesla Q3 Bears
However, not everyone was buying.
Peter Thiel stands out as the primary bear in the dataset, offloading 207,613 shares. While significant, Thiel's sell-off is less than half the volume of shares purchased by any single one of the top three buyers.
Other legendary investors, Ray Dalio and George Soros, also reduced their exposure, selling 19,413 and 3,209 shares respectively. However, the trims were relatively minor when compared to the hundreds of thousands of shares flowing into the portfolios of the top buyers.
The Takeaway
In the high-stakes game of portfolio positioning, the “smart money” bullish vote for Tesla in Q3 was clear.
While Thiel led a retreat, the combined buying power of Wood, Halvorsen and Ren Tech shows that top-tier institutional sentiment remained heavily skewed toward accumulating Tesla stock in the third quarter.
TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares were up 0.76% at $478.94 at the time of publication on Tuesday. The stock is trading near its 52-week high of $488.53, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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