RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #20

One of 83: The Superinvestors Hold Just 5,380 AST SpaceMobile Shares. Short Interest Just Hit a Record.

October 9, 2026

GetCoattail Research — AST SpaceMobile is the market's space-broadband story: satellites built to connect directly to ordinary smartphones, and a stock that peaked at $133.09 in May before falling 34.2% from June 30 to October 2. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. One of our 83 tracked superinvestors holds it at all — 5,380 shares, unchanged — and short interest, at 65,261,118 shares, has just set the record for the entire collected series.

Start with the narrative: a build-out story running into execution questions. AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird satellites are designed to connect directly to standard smartphones, and coverage counts more than 60 mobile operator partners covering more than 3 billion subscribers, a contracted backlog of about $1.3 billion, pro-forma liquidity of about $3.7 billion after a July 2026 convertible offering (reported at about $1 billion, or $1.15 billion in some reports), and a fiscal 2026 revenue outlook of $150–200 million. The headwinds arrived in the same coverage: a launch vehicle left BlueBird 7 in too low an orbit, tied to a loss of about $125.9 million in the second quarter of 2026; first-quarter revenue of $14.73 million and second-quarter revenue of $31.52 million both missed consensus, in a run coverage described as six consecutive EPS misses; on July 15–16 the convertible offering was announced and the 45-satellite target was pushed from the end of 2026 to early 2027, with shares falling about 17% on July 16 and about 31% from early July to the October 2 close near $58. B. Riley downgraded the stock to Neutral on October 2 (target $85 to $65); a securities class action carries a November 13, 2026 lead-plaintiff deadline; three more BlueBird satellites were reported shipped to Cape Canaveral in early October. The consensus target in Koyfin data carried by Stocktwits is $79.61 (14 analysts: five Buy, seven Hold, two Sell); Roth MKM holds a Buy at $108. AltIndex counted 181 Reddit mentions in the 24 hours to October 8, up 229.1%, Neutral sentiment.

Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the investors best placed to know any company: superinvestors, institutions, insiders, Congress, and 5% holders. For AST SpaceMobile — the twentieth Filing Tape audit — the story is a tracked cohort that is essentially absent, a broad register that added shares, a 5% register full of strategic names rather than activists, and a borrow that has never been larger.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — one holder, 5,380 shares, unchanged

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, one held AST SpaceMobile in a long common-stock position — a long row, with no option rows in the count. That holder is David Katz at Matrix Asset Advisors, with 5,380 shares worth $478,067, a 0.04% portfolio weight. The position did not move in the second quarter: 5,380 shares at March 31 and 5,380 at June 30 — unchanged, 0.0% — in a quarter when the price rose from $82.87 to $88.86 in our price file, up 7.2%. The pipeline and EDGAR-collection share totals agree exactly. The direction count is one line: zero new, zero increased, zero decreased, one unchanged — and the single holder is, by construction, 100% of the entire cohort. The other 82 tracked managers hold no long position at all.

AST SpaceMobile through six filing lenses
Chart 1: Signal presence by cohort. Superinvestors: 83 managers, 2026Q2 13F (as of Jun 30, 2026). Institutions: full-market 13F aggregation, same date. Insiders: Form 4 record through Oct 2, 2026. Congress: Senate and House PTR record through Oct 3, 2026. 13D/G: filings through Jun 23, 2026. Short interest: FINRA biweekly settlement data through Sep 15, 2026. Source: SEC EDGAR; FINRA; GetCoattail collections.

Lens 2: institutions — 12.5% more filers, 23.07% more shares

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register is crowded where the tracked cohort is empty. At June 30, 2026, 767 institutions reported positions, up from 682 at March 31 (+12.5%), and 750 reported long positions. Reported shares rose 23.07%, from 139,446,446 to 171,613,694 shares, with 705 filers entering and 620 exiting. Reported aggregate value rose 36.9% to $20,966,650,170; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $122.17, sits 37.5% above the June 30 close of $88.86 — among the largest gaps this series has recorded on this check.

Lens 3: the 5% register — 17 filings, and this one contains 13Ds

Seventeen SC 13D/G filings cover AST SpaceMobile — 14 in the 13D family including amendments, and three 13G filings, 16 amendments, from 12 reporting names, the most recent filed June 23, 2026, maximum reported percentage 25.0%. Unlike most audits in this series, this register does contain 13Ds — but the names are strategic holders, not activists: a founder, carriers and infrastructure partners. We assign no motives. The largest chain is Abel Avellan's, running from 78,163,078 shares (25.0%) as of January 22, 2025 to 78,252,625 shares (20.8%) as of June 22, 2026 — share count essentially flat, percentage diluted down. The Rakuten chain shrank in shares: Rakuten Group and Hiroshi Mikitani reported 26,080,155 shares (8.9%) as of April 14, 2026, then 21,020,155 (7.2%) as of April 22, then 15,510,078 (5.3%) as of May 1. Vodafone reported 14,516,197 shares (6.0% to 5.0%, count unchanged); AT&T reported 6,260,440 shares (2.7%, SC 13D, February 3, 2025); American Tower and ATC TRS reported 2,382,036 shares (0.84%); BlackRock reported 10,582,540 shares (4.7%, 13G/A, March 31, 2025). The Vanguard Group reported 21,488,180 shares (7.68%) as of December 31, 2025, then a 0-share row as of March 13, 2026 — the same sequence seen in several earlier audits; we report rows as filed, without summing them or calling the zero an exit.

Lens 4: insiders — $806,436.31 of buys against $469,547,492.45 of sales; officers bought none of it

One distinction must be stated precisely: the buy side is not empty — one column of it is. Across the parsed Form 4 record (111 filings through October 2, 2026), there are eight open-market purchases totalling 13,587 shares and $806,436.31, by two buyers — and zero of those purchases are officer purchases. Against that stand 27 sales totalling 5,958,630 shares and $469,547,492.45, by nine sellers, 21 of them officer sales. Every purchase falls inside the most recent year (69 filings; the same eight purchases; 16 sales totalling $459,346,189.60, by eight sellers). In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, 16 filings covered three purchases totalling 10,822 shares and $619,200.26, by one buyer — again zero officer purchases — and two sales totalling 52,000 shares and $3,063,880.00, by two sellers. Our site's insider aggregate (October 9, 2026) matches the full-parse 90-day figures exactly. Some selling is mechanical — vesting, tax withholding and pre-arranged plans — and we assign no motives. The record establishes only this: purchases total $806,436.31 against $469,547,492.45 of sales, and the officer-purchase column is empty in every period we can parse.

Lens 5: Congress — no row in either chamber

Across the Senate and House record we maintain (combined record as of October 3, 2026), AST SpaceMobile has no row at all — not in the combined, House or Senate aggregate. There are therefore zero recorded purchases and zero recorded sales: this lens is not quiet, it is absent. Had there been trades, congressional disclosures report value ranges, so we would record direction only; here there is nothing to record.

Lens 6: short interest — a series record, at 25.49% of the share count

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 65,261,118 AST SpaceMobile shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 6.93. That reading is not near the top of the series; it is the top: across all 131 settlements we collect, from April 15, 2021 to September 15, 2026, no settlement has recorded a larger borrow, so the latest reading sits 0.0% below the peak because it is the peak. Year over year, the September 15, 2025 settlement recorded 41,767,317 shares, so the latest reading is up 56.2%. Against the 255,982,592 shares in our fundamentals file, the borrow is 25.49% of the share count — with the caveat, stated in the methodology, that this share count is a weighted-average basic figure as of December 31, 2025 rather than a period-end outstanding count.

Short interest in AST SpaceMobile
Chart 2: Shares sold short in AST SpaceMobile at each FINRA biweekly settlement, Jan 2024 – Sep 15, 2026 (n = 65 settlements in the chart window; the full collected series runs 131 settlements from Apr 15, 2021). The latest reading, 65,261,118 shares on Sep 15, 2026, is the peak of the full collected series and 56.2% above the 41,767,317 shares recorded on Sep 15, 2025. Source: FINRA Equity Short Interest files; GetCoattail collection (asts_short_interest_series.csv).

The recent settlements run 59,349,055 on July 15, then 56,847,259, 57,475,212, 64,140,398 and 65,261,118. The series began at 2,198,812 shares on April 15, 2021; the largest settlement in the series is its most recent one.

The gap, stated plainly

The registers disagree on scale. The tracked superinvestors hold 5,380 shares across one manager, unchanged, while the full market holds 171,613,694 shares across 767 filers (+12.5% filers, +23.07% shares in one quarter). The 5% register is dominated by strategic names: a founder chain diluted from 25.0% to 20.8% on a flat count, a Rakuten chain down from 26,080,155 shares to 15,510,078 in under three weeks, carrier rows from Vodafone and AT&T. Insiders bought $806,436.31 across the entire parsed record — none of it by officers — against $469,547,492.45 of sales. Congress has no row. And the borrow stands at a series record: 65,261,118 shares, 25.49% of the share count, up 56.2% year over year, in a stock down 56.1% from its 252-session closing high of $133.09. One plausible reading is that the registers are pricing two different companies — the broad register and strategic holders the network being built, the borrow the losses and delays already filed — while the tracked cohort, with 5,380 shares, has priced neither. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right.

What would change the picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description:

Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock whose broad register added 23.07% more shares in Q2 while its tracked superinvestors stood still at 5,380 shares, whose insiders sold $469,547,492.45 against $806,436.31 of non-officer purchases and zero officer purchases, and whose borrow, at 65,261,118 shares, is the largest in the entire collected series.

Related reading: Eight of 83: Six Superinvestors Cut Fair Isaac as the Price Rose 11.9%. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #19; Seven of 83: One Holder Is 94.1% of the Superinvestors' Nike Stake. Short Interest Just Hit a Record. — Filing Tape #18; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. AST SpaceMobile's own page: AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) 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

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