RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #8

Thirty-Five of 83: The Superinvestors Own Amazon. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

October 8, 2026

GetCoattail Research — Amazon just posted its fastest AWS growth in 18 quarters and the market is arguing about a $200 billion spending plan. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. The concentrated money is not just present — at 35 of 83 tracked managers, it is broader than for any stock audited in this series so far. And in the entire parsed insider record, no Amazon insider has ever bought a share on the open market.

Start with the narrative, because it is a live argument. Amazon reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 30: net sales of $200.6 billion, up 20% year over year, operating income of $27.5 billion, up 43%, and AWS revenue of $42.2 billion, up 36.7% — the cloud unit's fastest growth in 18 quarters, producing $16.6 billion of operating income at a 39.4% margin. Headline net income included a $53.4 billion non-operating gain tied mainly to the Anthropic investment, which lifted diluted EPS to $5.75. The counter-argument is the spending: roughly $200 billion of guided 2026 capital expenditure, with trailing free cash flow reported negative as the build-out absorbs cash. Analyst consensus targets average roughly $321 to $324 against an October 2, 2026 close of $251.52 in our price file — up 9.0% year to date, below the 252-session closing high of $284.02 (August 3, 2026). Amazon was the eighth most-searched ticker on Benzinga Pro for October; its third-quarter report is expected on October 28, 2026.

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 Amazon — the eighth Filing Tape audit, after IREN, CoreWeave, Micron, NVIDIA, Tesla, AMD and Apple — the sponsorship question answers itself at the top of the register. The tension is further down.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — thirty-five long holders, the broadest bench in this series

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, thirty-five held Amazon in long common-stock positions — every one of the 35 reported rows is a long position, with no option rows in the count. That is the highest holder count of any stock audited in this series (Apple, the previous widest, had 22). In the same collection, only Microsoft, at 37 long holders, and Alphabet's Class A, at 36, sit above it, with Alphabet's Class C (34) and Meta (31) in the same range. The cohort's combined long position rose on a like-for-like pipeline basis from 76,415,369 shares at March 31 to 87,172,409 shares at June 30 — up 14.1% — in a quarter when the share price itself rose 14.4%, from a $208.27 close to $238.34 in our price file. The EDGAR collection's own second-quarter long total is 87,173,409 shares, worth $20,776,956,912 (see methodology for the 1,000-share difference between the two aggregations).

The bench is broad rather than concentrated. The largest holder, Dodge & Cox Funds, holds 16,708,513 shares and increased 10.6% — but that is only 19.2% of the cohort's Amazon stock, a different world from Berkshire Hathaway's 88.0% share of the Apple cohort in the previous audit. Tiger Global holds 9,683,558 shares (down 3.2%); the top three holders together account for 40.1% of the cohort. Two managers opened new positions: Pershing Square with 8,563,857 shares (10.49% of its portfolio) and Viking Global with 3,700,862 — 12,264,719 new shares between them. Appaloosa increased 15.7% to 5,000,000 shares, Davis Advisors 24.8%, Baupost 20.0%, Egerton 51.2%. The direction count is not one-way, though: of the 35 long holders, 19 decreased, 10 increased, 4 were unchanged and 2 were new — AltaRock trimmed 24.3%, Polen 27.9%, AKO 34.0%, Vulcan 37.8%. The cohort added shares in aggregate because the new and increased positions outweighed the trims, not because the trims were absent.

Amazon through six filing lenses

Lens 2: institutions — 6,145 filers, shares up 18.45%

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register matches the superinvestor picture. At June 30, 2026, 6,145 institutions reported positions in Amazon, up from 5,936 at March 31 — a 3.5% rise — and 6,126 of them reported long positions. Reported share counts rose 18.45%, from 6,037,399,361 to 7,151,104,181 shares. The register churned underneath: 1,843 filers entered and 1,634 left. The dataset's reported aggregate value rose 36.2% to $1,728,350,206,539; 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 — Amazon sits in nearly every index basket. But here the concentrated cohort moved the same way as the broad register: its share count rose 14.1% while two managers opened large new positions.

Lens 3: the 5% register — passive, topped by the founder

Three SC 13D/G filings cover Amazon, 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. The largest reporter is the founder himself: Jeffrey P. Bezos reported 964,340,319 shares, 9.0%, as of September 30, 2025, in a 13G/A filed October 14, 2025. The other sized reporter is Vanguard Capital Management at 6.77% (727,679,638 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: the register's top line is a founder's retained stake and an index fund — ownership, not intent.

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

In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, Amazon insiders filed 14 reports covering 26 sale transactions totalling $364,782,442.61 — 1,280,238 shares sold by seven insiders, all 26 transactions by officers. 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 72 filings covering 129 sale transactions totalling $457,207,233.21 by ten sellers, and zero open-market purchases. Across the entire parsed Form 4 record (124 filings), purchases total exactly zero transactions, against 225 sale transactions totalling $6,181,908,010.44 by ten 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: in a year when the stock traded from a $198.79 closing low (February 13, 2026) to a $284.02 closing high, no Amazon 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, 26 sales, $364,782,442.61, seven sellers.

Lens 5: Congress — two members, three buys against five sells

Across the Senate and House transaction record we maintain (as of October 3, 2026), two members of Congress have traded Amazon: three purchases and five sales, with the most recent purchase on July 8, 2026, and both parties represented. All three purchases are in the House record, which also carries four of the five sales; the Senate aggregate records one sale. The counts are small, and congressional disclosures report ranges rather than exact values, so we record direction only.

Lens 6: short interest — 0.76% of shares out, falling since July

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 81,440,414 Amazon shares were sold short: 0.76% of the 10,786,311,572 shares the company most recently reported outstanding, with days-to-cover of 2.77. That is a small borrow for a stock of Amazon's size.

Short interest in Amazon, January 2021 to September 2026

The latest reading sits 27.4% below the series peak of 112,243,921 shares on June 15, 2022, and the borrow has fallen at four consecutive settlements since July 15, 2026 — from 106,566,350 shares to 81,440,414, down 23.6%, with an 11.54% drop in the final settlement alone. It is 16.5% above its year-ago level of 69,908,794 shares, so the borrow is not at its lows — but at 0.76% of shares outstanding, it is not a large short position either.

The gap, stated plainly

Amazon's filing record is the mirror image of the series opener. IREN had a loud story and no concentrated holders at all; Amazon has the broadest concentrated sponsorship we have measured — 35 of 83 tracked managers, cohort shares up 14.1% in the second quarter, two large new positions, and a full register of 6,145 filers with shares up 18.45%. The 5% register is passive, topped by the founder's own 9.0% stake. The short borrow, at 0.76% of shares outstanding and falling since July, says almost nobody is betting against the story either. And yet the insider lens is the one lens that does not move with the story: 225 sales totalling $6,181,908,010.44 in the parsed record — $364,782,442.61 of it in the last 90 days — and not one open-market purchase, ever, in that record. The institutions are buying the AWS story in size. The people inside the company, on the record, only sell.

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 a stock the concentrated money demonstrably owns — more broadly than any audited in this series — trimmed by a majority of its tracked holders even as it added shares in aggregate, held passively at the 5% level by its founder and an index fund, and never, on the record, bought by the people who work there.

Related reading: Twenty-Two of 83: One Holder Is 88% of the Superinvestors' Apple Stock — Filing Tape #7; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1; 80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors. Amazon's own page: Amazon (AMZN) 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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