Fourteen of 147: One Holder Is 28.5% of the Superinvestors' AppLovin Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #101. AppLovin arrived in the trending lists amid a securities class action, two analyst target cuts and a November 4 earnings date, and the filings describe a register set before the August break: 14 of the 147 superinvestors we track hold the stock, one is 28.5% of the cohort, verified holders cut 6.3% in Q2 while the full market added 20.20%, its insiders have recorded zero purchases against 1,485 sales, and short interest sits 58.6% below its 2024 peak.

The Hype

AppLovin drew attention this week on conflicting tracks. StockTwits' October 16 trending list carried the name, and MarketBeat's October 16 gainers list put it first on the day, up 6.52% as reported. The news track runs the other way. A securities class action was filed on October 5, 2026, according to a plaintiff firm's notice: the complaint, a plaintiff-side allegation, claims the company overstated the pace of improvement in its AI ad models, covers buyers from February 12 to August 5, 2026, and sets a lead-plaintiff deadline of November 16, 2026. The break it points to followed the August 5 second-quarter report — revenue of $1.92 billion against a $1.94 billion consensus, as reported — after which the stock closed at $335.67 on August 6, down 19.66% in our own price file. Analyst targets moved down in October, as reported: Oppenheimer cut from $560 to $490 on October 12 and Wedbush from $610 to $560 on October 14, both keeping Outperform. The third-quarter report is scheduled for after the close on November 4, 2026, with revenue guidance of $2.055 billion to $2.085 billion, as reported. Those are outside figures, kept separate from our files below — which show a second quarter up 29.5%, then a fall of 47.9% from the June 30 close to $268.22 on October 2, the lowest close in 252 sessions.

The Tape

For AppLovin — the one hundred and first Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a cohort that trimmed modestly while the full market added a fifth more shares, an insider record with no purchase at any point, a congressional record split evenly, fourteen passive 5% filings, and a borrow that never rebuilt.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: 14 holders, one at 28.5%, and a verified cut of 6.3%. We track 149 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR — 147 are in the collection: 144 at a June 30 period-end, and 3 early filers at September 30. For this name there is no period mix and no option row: all 14 holder rows sit at June 30, 2026, on the single CUSIP 03831W108, totalling 11,158,186 shares worth $5,749,176,380, long positions only. The labels read seven DECREASED, three UNCHANGED, two INCREASED and two NEW. Kensico Capital Management is the largest holder: 3,182,850 shares worth $1,639,899,806 — 28.5% of the cohort — at a 28.12% portfolio weight, labelled DECREASED (-3.1%). Next, Jericho Capital Asset Management holds 1,677,224 shares — 15.0% of the cohort — UNCHANGED, and Coatue Management holds 1,171,189 shares, DECREASED (-9.2%). All twelve continuing holders verify row by row against the first quarter, moving from 11,153,705 shares at March 31 to 10,447,587 at June 30 (-706,118 shares, -6.3%) — in a quarter the price rose 29.5%. The two NEW holders are Terry Smith - Fundsmith (696,568 shares) and Atalanta Sosnoff Capital (14,031 shares); two managers exited entirely: Chase Coleman - Tiger Global Management (1,000,000 shares in the prior quarter) and DJE Kapital (19,200 shares). Twelve rows imply exactly $515.23 per share, the June 30 close; Christopher Davis - Davis Advisors' row implies $515.69 and GQG Partners' $515.17, printed as filed. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026; funds have up to 45 days to file, so this is the complete second-quarter picture — a lagging one that predates the August break entirely.

Lens 2 — institutions: 97 more filers, 37.8 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 1,471 institutions reported positions, up 97 from 1,374 at March 31 (+7.06%); 1,454 are long. Reported shares rose 20.20%, from 187,180,805 to 224,989,397, while reported value rose 50.73% to $121,552,745,870, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (see methodology). That value implies $540.26 per share against a June 30 close of $515.23, a gap of +4.86%.

Lens 3 — insiders: zero purchases in the record, against 1,485 sales. The parsed Form 4 record holds 145 filings through October 2, 2026, with exactly 0 open-market purchase transactions in any window — the 90-day window, the one-year window and the full record all print zero purchases and zero buyers. Sales number 1,485 across the record: 3,856,098 shares for $1,666,421,897.68, by 11 sellers, 1,211 of them officer sales. The one-year window holds 704 of those sales (1,113,842 shares for $574,147,419.19, by 9 sellers) across 80 filings, and the last 90 days hold 9 sales (3,076 shares for $1,603,489.12, by 1 seller, none of them officer sales) across 10 filings. Every window prices inside its own traded range: the 90-day sales imply $521.29 per share, inside that window's close range of $268.22 to $543.79; the one-year sales imply $515.47 and the full-record sales $432.15, both inside their ranges — so this audit cites dollar totals for all three windows (see methodology).

Lens 4 — Congress: one member, two purchases against two sales. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) carries 1 member, 2 recorded purchases and 2 sales, the most recent purchase dated July 17, 2026, party D. The House aggregate carries the same row; the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no row at all. That purchase predates the August break; no transaction here postdates it.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: fourteen filings, all passive, headed by a founder print at 10.6%. Our full parse holds 14 SC 13D/G filings matching the site aggregate exactly — 4 SC 13G and 10 SC 13G/A filings, 10 of them amendments, across 25 reporter names, and no 13D filing at all. The register maximum is 10.6%: Arash Adam Foroughi reports 36,337,732 shares as of December 31, 2024, filed February 7, 2025 as SC 13G/A. The latest filing is FMR LLC's SC 13G, reporting 15,691,413.93 shares (5.1%) as of March 31, 2026, filed May 6, 2026, with Abigail P. Johnson reporting the same shares and percentage alongside it. Just before it, Vanguard Capital Management reported 19,337,914 shares (6.29%) as of March 31, 2026 (filed April 29, 2026), while The Vanguard Group filed an SC 13G/A reporting 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026 — a change of reporting entity inside one fund family, recorded exactly as filed.

Lens 6 — short interest: 10,944,088 shares, down 58.6% from the 2024 peak. This lens uses all 130 FINRA settlements for the symbol, every one an AppLovin row, from April 30, 2021 to September 15, 2026. As of September 15, 2026, 10,944,088 shares were sold short, up 3.68% from the prior settlement (10,555,736 on August 31, 2026), at 2.52 days to cover. The series maximum is 26,452,543 shares on May 15, 2024 — so the latest sits 58.6% below the peak, after stepping 12,114,286 (June 30) up to 12,561,495 (July 15), then down through 11,911,631 (July 31), 11,372,027 (August 14) and 10,555,736 (August 31) before the latest uptick — a reading 9.7% below June 30. Against 335,291,000 shares outstanding, the borrow is 3.26% of the share count.

The Gap

The narrative arriving with this session is a shock: a class action built around the August 6 fall of 19.66%, two October target cuts, and an earnings date three weeks out. The filings mostly end before the shock, and describe a register not braced for it. In Q2, while the price rose 29.5%, the full market added: 97 more filers (+7.06%) holding 37,808,592 more shares (+20.20%). The tracked cohort trimmed gently, with new money arriving: verified holders moved from 11,153,705 shares to 10,447,587 (-6.3%), Fundsmith opened a 696,568-share position, and Kensico — 28.5% of the cohort at a 28.12% portfolio weight — cut just 3.1%. Insiders are the tape's one absolute: zero purchases in 145 filings, in any window, against 1,485 sales worth $1,666,421,897.68 — 704 of them, worth $574,147,419.19, inside the last year. Congress is the only lens with a purchase at all: two, the latest on July 17, 2026, before the break, from a single member who also sold twice. The 5% register is fourteen passive prints whose maximum is dated December 31, 2024. And the borrow, through a fall of 63.4% from the December 2025 high, stands at 3.26% of the share count, 58.6% below its 2024 peak. One plausible reading is that October's argument is happening over a register the second quarter set and August repriced — a broad market that had added, a concentrated cohort that had barely moved, insiders who have never bought, and a borrow that never rebuilt.

What Would Change the Picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These filings would change it:

• 1. The 2026Q3 13Fs (filing window closing mid-November 2026). Every holder row here sits on a June 30 period-end, before the August break; the September 30 filings are the first read on post-break positioning. Whether Kensico's 3,182,850-share position — 28.5% of the cohort at a 28.12% portfolio weight — is still there, and whether the verified 6.3% trim deepens, decides whether the register still reads as concentrated and steady.
• 2. A first insider purchase, ever. The record holds exactly 0 purchases in 145 filings against 1,485 sales. A purchase by any insider, at any size, would be the first fact of its kind in this lens.
• 3. A congressional transaction dated after August 6, 2026. The aggregate records 2 purchases and 2 sales from 1 member, the latest purchase on July 17, 2026 — before the break. A fresh PTR of either kind would be this lens's first post-break fact.
• 4. A fresh 5% print. The register's newest filing is dated May 6, 2026 (FMR LLC at 5.1% as of March 31, 2026), and its maximum — Arash Adam Foroughi at 10.6% — is dated December 31, 2024. A new filing moving either figure, or a first 13D, would be this lens's first change of substance in months.
• 5. Short interest picking a direction. The borrow stands at 10,944,088 shares, up 3.68% at the latest settlement and down 9.7% from June 30, 2026. A move above the July 15, 2026 reading of 12,561,495 would signal a building borrow; a fall below the August 31, 2026 reading of 10,555,736 sustained across settlements would extend the decline.

Related reading: One of 147: The Only Superinvestor Long in Strategy Trimmed in Q2. The Other Row Is a Put 22.9 Times Larger. — Filing Tape #100; Fifteen of 147: One Holder Is 41.4% of the Superinvestors' ServiceNow Stake. Its Insiders Have Bought Twice. — Filing Tape #99. AppLovin's own page: AppLovin (APP) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

• As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later; Form 4 runs through October 2, 2026; Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through May 6, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Three limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster expanded before the recent audits — from 85 managers (83 filing) to 149 (147 filing) — so "of 147" counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' "of 83" figures. Second, every 13F figure here predates the August 5, 2026 report and the August 6 break; the first post-break 13F picture is the September 30 season. Third, this month's session (through October 16, 2026) postdates every lens here; the session is known to this audit only from outside coverage, not from our own files.
• Superinvestor lens: 147 managers in the collection (of a 149-manager roster; 144 at a June 30, 2026 period-end and 3 early filers at September 30, 2026) collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection, regenerated October 15, 2026 for the expanded roster); AppLovin positions are counted on the single CUSIP 03831W108 only, long rows only, and there are no option rows for this name in the collection. Fourteen distinct managers hold long positions, all at June 30, 2026, totalling 11,158,186 shares worth $5,749,176,380 — no period mix. The direction count is seven DECREASED, three UNCHANGED, two INCREASED and two NEW (Terry Smith - Fundsmith, 696,568 shares; Atalanta Sosnoff Capital, 14,031 shares). Kensico Capital Management's share is 28.5% = 3,182,850 / 11,158,186; Jericho Capital Asset Management's share is 15.0% = 1,677,224 / 11,158,186. All twelve continuing holders verify row by row against the first quarter under the rule used in the previous audits — each continuing holder's first-quarter row accepted only when it sits under the same filing-agent prefix as the manager's second-quarter accession and its implied shares-change reproduces the EDGAR shares-change label at one decimal place — so the verified continuing total is 11,153,705 shares at March 31 moving to 10,447,587 at June 30 (-6.3%), with no unverified continuing holder. First-quarter rows: Kensico 3,284,250; Jericho 1,677,224; Lone Pine 1,464,923; Coatue 1,290,008; Sands 971,561; Whale Rock 695,537; D1 669,282; Winslow 431,891; Davis 335,810; Dorsey 316,952; Edgewood 14,400; GQG 1,867. Two tracked managers exited in the second quarter: Chase Coleman - Tiger Global Management (1,000,000 shares, $398,000,000 prior value) and DJE Kapital (19,200 shares, $7,269,312 prior value). Implied per-share values: twelve rows imply exactly $515.23, the June 30, 2026 close; Christopher Davis - Davis Advisors' row implies $515.69 and GQG Partners' $515.17, printed as filed. The pipeline register totals match the collection for this name in the second quarter (14 rows, 11,158,186 shares); its first-quarter register carries 14 rows totalling 12,172,905 shares, which is the verified continuing total plus the two exits.
• Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation. The primary table is the full13f collection's by-ticker file (holders = distinct filers reporting the ticker's CUSIP; 1,454 reported long positions out of 1,471 filers). AppLovin carries a single CUSIP in this aggregation (03831W108), and the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row for it matches the by-ticker row on every field — holders, long holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value — exactly. The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (1,220 and 1,123, a net of +97 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($121,552,745,870 over 224,989,397 shares) implies $540.26 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $515.23 in our price file, a gap of +4.86% — printed here as found. The aggregate sums the VALUE of every information-table row — including put and call option rows — while the share count covers long common-stock rows only, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollar values "reported."
• Insider lens: full-parse Form 4 aggregation (agg_by_ticker), record as of October 2, 2026 (145 filings). Sale and purchase counts are transaction-code counts (S and P) in non-derivative rows; grants and exercises are not counted as purchases, and one filing can contain many transaction rows. Purchase transactions total 0 across the record — 0 in the 90-day window (July 5 to October 2, 2026), 0 in the one-year window (October 3, 2025 to October 2, 2026) and 0 in the full record, with 0 buyers in every window. Sale transactions total 1,485 across the record (3,856,098 shares, $1,666,421,897.68, 11 sellers, 1,211 officer sale transactions), of which the one-year window holds 704 (1,113,842 shares, $574,147,419.19, 9 sellers, 619 officer sale transactions) and the 90-day window holds 9 (3,076 shares, $1,603,489.12, 1 seller, 0 officer sale transactions) across 10 filings. The site's insider aggregate carries no row for this name, so no site cross-check is available for this audit and none is claimed; the figures above are the full parse alone. Window price checks on our price file: the 90-day sales imply $521.29 per share, inside that window's close range ($268.22 to $543.79); the one-year sales imply $515.47, inside the one-year range ($268.22 to $733.60); and the full-record sales imply $432.15, inside the price file's full-period close range ($9.30 to $733.60) — so dollar totals are cited for all three windows.
• 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G parsed filings (14 filings matching issuer CIK 1751008 on CUSIP 03831W108: 4 SC 13G and 10 SC 13G/A, 10 of them amendments, no SC 13D), filings through May 6, 2026. The site aggregation carries this name under a ticker-keyed row; that row (14 filings, 0 D-filings, 14 G-filings, 10 amendments, 25 reporters, latest date May 6, 2026, maximum 10.6%, total reported 273,687,452.86 shares) matches the parsed filings on filings, form mix, amendments, latest date, maximum and the cross-date reported total. The rows are reported as filed, under the names exactly as they appear: Arash Adam Foroughi printing 36,337,732 shares at 10.6% as of December 31, 2024, filed February 7, 2025 as SC 13G/A (the register maximum); FMR LLC and Abigail P. Johnson each printing 15,691,413.93 shares at 5.1% as of March 31, 2026, filed May 6, 2026 as SC 13G (the latest filing); Vanguard Capital Management printing 19,337,914 shares at 6.29% as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026 as SC 13G; and The Vanguard Group printing 0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 26, 2026 as SC 13G/A. The parsed coverage for this issuer holds these 14 filings; a 5% holder that has not filed in the covered window would not appear here.
• Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) and the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) each record 1 member, 2 purchase transactions and 2 sale transactions, most recent purchase July 17, 2026, party D for this name; the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no row.
• Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers all 130 settlements under the symbol, every one an AppLovin row, from April 30, 2021 (3,523,965 shares, the series minimum) to September 15, 2026. The latest reading is 10,944,088 shares on September 15, 2026, up 3.68% from the prior settlement (10,555,736 on August 31, 2026), at 2.52 days to cover. The series maximum is 26,452,543 shares on May 15, 2024, so the latest reading sits 58.6% below it. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact, so the October price action is not yet in this series. The share-count ratio (3.26%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
• Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries AppLovin's revenue of $5,480,717,000, net income of $3,333,751,000 and assets of $7,259,610,000, each labelled fiscal 2025 in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 335,291,000 (sourced in the file to the shares-outstanding count as of June 30, 2026) and a file-computed market value of $93,472,424,570.71. The file does not flag the issuer as a foreign private issuer, and it carries SIC 7370, Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. The file's price for the name is $278.78 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $268.22, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
• Prices: our own daily-close file for AppLovin through October 2, 2026 ($268.22 close, -60.2% year to date on that file; the 252-session closing high is $733.60 on December 22, 2025, so the last close sits 63.4% below it; the last close is itself the 252-session closing low; closes of $398.00 at March 31, 2026 and $515.23 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +29.5%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -47.9%; change from the September 30, 2025 close of $718.54 of -62.7%; the December 31, 2025 close is $673.82; the August 5, 2026 close is $417.80 and the August 6, 2026 close is $335.67, a session change of -19.66%). The series in our price file begins June 1, 2021 at $68.86 and holds 1,342 rows; the file's full-period close range is $9.30 to $733.60.
• Market context sources: StockTwits' trending list as carried October 16, 2026, which included AppLovin among its other trending tickers, and MarketBeat's October 16, 2026 gainers list, which ranked the stock first on the day at +6.52% as reported. The class action items are from a plaintiff firm's notice carried by GlobeNewswire on October 13, 2026 (filed October 5, 2026; class period February 12 to August 5, 2026; lead-plaintiff deadline November 16, 2026) and are plaintiff-side allegations, not findings. Analyst items as reported in October 2026 coverage: Oppenheimer cut its target from $560 to $490 while keeping Outperform (reported October 12, 2026) and Wedbush cut from $610 to $560 while keeping Outperform (reported October 14, 2026). Second-quarter revenue of $1.92 billion against a $1.94 billion consensus, the third-quarter report scheduled for after the close on November 4, 2026, and revenue guidance of $2.055 billion to $2.085 billion are as reported in coverage of the company's announcements. Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported speech from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
• AppLovin is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: AppLovin (APP) stock page. Series data: app_lens_data.csv · app_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: ServiceNow · Strategy.

Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.

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

• v1.0 — October 17, 2026: first publication.