RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #7

Twenty-Two of 83: One Holder Is 88% of the Superinvestors' Apple Stock

October 8, 2026

GetCoattail Research — Apple just printed a record June quarter, hit a record price, and became the first $5 trillion company in the headlines. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. The concentrated money is there — but it is mostly one holder, unchanged, while thirteen of the twenty-two long holders trimmed in the second quarter. And in the entire parsed insider record, no Apple insider has ever bought a share on the open market.

Start with the narrative, because it is a strong one. Apple reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 results on July 30: revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16% year over year, with iPhone revenue up 22% to $54.3 billion and Mac revenue up 29%. Earnings per share reached $2.02, up 29%, a figure that included a one-off tariff reimbursement of about $0.11 per share. In September the shares set a record at $344.94 and the company's market value crossed $5 trillion for the first time. In our own price file the stock closed at $333.69 on October 2, 2026, up 22.7% year to date, after a closing high of $341.07 on September 25. Apple was the seventh most-searched ticker on Benzinga Pro for October, and its fiscal fourth-quarter report is scheduled for October 28, 2026. Morgan Stanley trimmed its target from $360 to $355 in early October while keeping an Overweight rating.

Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the portfolios, trades and disclosures of the investors with the most information about any company: superinvestors, institutions as a whole, insiders, members of Congress, and 5% holders. For Apple — the seventh Filing Tape audit, after IREN, CoreWeave, Micron, NVIDIA, Tesla and AMD — the headline number looks like broad sponsorship. It is not. It is concentration.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — twenty-two long holders, one of them 88%

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, twenty-two held Apple in long common-stock positions. A twenty-third manager, Appaloosa Management, reported a new position too — but it was a put option row on 835,000 shares, not a long holding, so we do not count it as ownership. The cohort's combined long share count went from 265,265,709 shares across 24 holders at March 31 to 258,983,287 shares across 22 holders at June 30 — down 2.4%, in a quarter when the share price itself rose 14.0%, from a $253.79 close to $289.36 in our price file.

The distribution is the story. Berkshire Hathaway holds 227,917,808 shares worth $65,950,296,923 — 22.04% of its portfolio, unchanged in the quarter — and that single position is 88.0% of everything the cohort owns in Apple. The second holder, H&H International Investment, holds 27,098,707 shares (41.05% of its portfolio) and trimmed 6.4%. Together, two holders account for 98.5% of the cohort's Apple shares. The remaining twenty holders combined own about 1.5%: Markel Group with 1,227,290 shares, Mairs & Power with 1,138,448 (down 5.8%), Jensen Investment Management with 860,969 (down 46.1%), and seventeen more at 152,173 shares or fewer. The direction count confirms the picture: of the 22 long holders, 13 decreased, 7 were unchanged, and only 2 increased — and no manager opened a new long position. For scale, 35 of the same 83 managers hold Amazon and 19 hold NVIDIA; Apple's 22 long holders come with the thinnest bench behind the leader in this series.

Apple through six filing lenses

Lens 2: institutions — breadth at a record count, value up 40%

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register is genuinely broad. At June 30, 2026, 6,132 institutions reported positions in Apple, up from 6,032 at March 31 — a 1.7% rise — and 6,111 of them reported long positions. Reported share counts rose 21.03%, from 7,925,334,658 to 9,591,862,099 shares. The register churned underneath: 1,639 filers entered and 1,539 left. The dataset's reported aggregate value rose 40.1% to $2,776,088,024,826; the aggregate includes option rows, so we treat filer and share counts as the reliable series and the dollar figure as reported (see methodology). One plausible reading is that part of this breadth is mechanical — Apple sits in nearly every index basket, so filer counts rise without any filer forming a view. But note the contrast: the broad register added 100 net filers and a fifth more shares, while the concentrated cohort lost two holders and trimmed 2.4%.

Lens 3: the 5% register — passive, and only Vanguard

Three SC 13D/G filings cover Apple, and all three are 13G or 13G/A — the passive form. There is not one 13D, the filing an investor uses when it wants something from management. Both sized reporters are Vanguard entities: The Vanguard Group at 9.47% (1,415,826,462 shares, as of June 30, 2025) and Vanguard Capital Management at 7.48% (1,099,168,953 shares, as of March 31, 2026) — an index complex, filing passively. A separate Vanguard Group amendment reported 0 shares and 0.0% as of March 13, 2026; we record it without interpreting the internal reorganisation it appears to reflect. No activist has filed, and no holder outside the index complex appears on this register — the quietest lens in this audit.

Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the entire parsed record

In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, Apple insiders filed 15 reports covering 8 sale transactions totalling $4,342,254.52 — 13,430 shares sold by one insider, all eight transactions by an officer. Open-market purchases in the same window: zero.

Widen the window and the purchase side does not just stay empty — it has never been anything else. Over the full year through October 2, 2026, the record shows 49 filings covering 37 sale transactions totalling $174,685,993.92 by eight sellers, and zero open-market purchases. Across the entire parsed Form 4 record (79 filings), purchases total exactly zero transactions, against 53 sale transactions totalling $246,381,464.71 by nine sellers. Some selling is mechanical — vesting and tax withholding generate filings regardless of anyone's view — and we assign no motives. But the purchase side has no mechanical explanation: during a year in which the stock rose from a $245.27 closing low (October 10, 2025) to a record close, no Apple insider bought a single share at market price, and none appears in the parsed record at any earlier date either. Our site's separate 90-day insider aggregate matches the full-parse figures exactly: zero buys, eight sales, $4,342,254.52, one seller.

Lens 5: Congress — four members, seven buys against fourteen sells

Across the Senate and House transaction record we maintain (as of October 3, 2026), four members of Congress have traded Apple: seven purchases and fourteen sales, with the most recent purchase on September 8, 2026, and both parties represented. All seven purchases are in the House record; the Senate record shows four sales and no purchases. The counts are small, and congressional disclosures report ranges rather than exact values, so we record direction only. Even so, Apple's two-to-one sell-to-buy split leans the opposite way from AMD's nine-to-two buy split in the previous audit.

Lens 6: short interest — 0.88% of shares out, and falling from June

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 128,753,092 Apple shares were sold short: 0.88% of the 14,594,180,000 shares the company most recently reported outstanding, with days-to-cover of 2.85. That is a small borrow for the largest stock in the market.

Short interest in Apple, January 2021 to September 2026

The latest reading sits 18.0% below the series peak of 157,008,120 shares on December 31, 2024, and 10.7% below its June 15, 2026 level of 144,248,476 shares, falling 7.87% in the final settlement alone. It is 8.9% above its year-ago level of 118,199,377 shares, so the borrow is not at its lows — but at 0.88% of shares outstanding, it is not a large short position either.

The gap, stated plainly

Apple's filing record is a study in where the sponsorship actually sits. The broad register is at a record count — 6,132 filers, shares up 21.03% — and the headline superinvestor count, 22 long holders, looks deep until you open it: one holder, Berkshire Hathaway, unchanged, is 88.0% of the cohort's shares, the top two holders are 98.5%, thirteen of the twenty-two trimmed in the second quarter, and no one opened a new long position. Congress leans two-to-one toward selling. The 5% register holds only a passive index filer. The short borrow, at 0.88% of shares outstanding, says almost nobody is betting against the story either. And the insiders complete the pattern that has now appeared in every audit in this series, in its purest form: 53 sales in the parsed record, and not one open-market purchase, ever, in that record.

What would change the picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description, in the order the data will arrive:

Until one of those prints, the filing record describes the market's largest company as broadly held by everyone, concentrated in one unchanged holder, trimmed by most of its tracked owners, sold on balance by Congress — and never, on the record, bought by the people who work there.

Related reading: Six of 83: The Superinvestors Doubled Their AMD Shares. Its Insiders Still Haven't Bought. — Filing Tape #6; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1; 80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors. Apple's own page: Apple (AAPL) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.

Revision history

MORE RESEARCH

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80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors
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