Three of 147: One Holder Is 86.6% of the Superinvestors' AutoZone Stake. All Three Holders Trimmed in Q2.

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #103. AutoZone arrived at the top of an automotive watch list weeks after reporting its fiscal fourth-quarter results, and the filings describe a register moving the other way at the tracked end: 3 of the 147 superinvestors we track hold the stock, one is 86.6% of the cohort, all three trimmed in Q2, insiders have recorded 4 purchases against 77 sales, and short interest just jumped 14.17% in a single settlement.

The Hype

AutoZone's attention this week is a list ranking and a recent report, not a tape. The stock stood first on MarketBeat's automotive-stocks-to-consider list for October 16, 2026, as carried by The Markets Daily, ahead of Monolithic Power Systems and O'Reilly Automotive — the highest-ranked name on that list not already audited in this series. On September 22, 2026, the company reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter, the 16 weeks ended August 29, 2026, via GlobeNewswire: quarterly sales rose against the prior-year quarter, and the fiscal year closed with the store network still expanding. Our own price file shows the other side of the session: a second quarter down 5.4% to $3,195.94 on June 30, and a last close of $2,792.03 on October 2 — the lowest close in 252 sessions, down 17.7% year to date and 34.4% below the 252-session closing high of $4,253.71, set on October 2, 2025.

The Tape

For AutoZone — the one hundred and third Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a three-name superinvestor cohort that is 86.6% one holder and trimmed at every seat, a full market that added shares while its filer count slipped, an insider record with four small purchases against seventy-seven sales, a congressional aggregate with a single sale, six passive 5% filings, and a borrow that just reversed upward.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: three holders, one at 86.6%, and all three trimmed. We track 149 managers whose 13F portfolios we collect 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 3 holder rows sit at June 30, 2026, on the single CUSIP 053332102, totalling 281,913 shares worth $895,377,893, long positions only, and every one of the three is labelled DECREASED. PineStone Asset Management is most of the cohort: 244,260 shares worth $780,640,304 — 86.6% of the tracked stake — at a 4.82% portfolio weight, down 4.9% in the quarter. Saturna Capital holds 32,123 shares (DECREASED, -21.6%, a 1.18% portfolio weight, 11.4% of the cohort) and Tweedy Browne holds 5,530 shares (DECREASED, -0.1%, a 1.34% portfolio weight, 2.0% of the cohort). All three continuing holders verify row by row against the first quarter, moving from 303,345 shares at March 31 to 281,913 at June 30 (-21,432 shares, -7.1%) — in a quarter the price fell 5.4%. No tracked manager opened a new position, and none exited. Two rows imply exactly $3,195.94, the June 30 close; Saturna Capital's implies $3,021.64, 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 September earnings report entirely.

Lens 2 — institutions: five fewer filers, 2.5 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 1,278 institutions reported positions, down 5 from 1,283 at March 31 (-0.39%); 1,267 of them are long. Reported shares rose 19.20%, from 12,965,596 to 15,454,404, while reported value rose 14.23% to $49,785,419,754, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (see methodology). That value implies $3,221.44 per share against a June 30 close of $3,195.94, a gap of +0.80%.

Lens 3 — insiders: four purchases in the record, against 77 sales. The parsed Form 4 record holds 107 filings through October 2, 2026, with exactly 4 open-market purchase transactions, all of them inside the one-year window: 512 shares for $1,672,110.58, by 3 buyers, 1 of them an officer purchase. Sales number 77 across the record: 63,863.54 shares for $237,134,619.99, by 12 sellers, 72 of them officer sales. The one-year window holds 19 of those sales (14,120.84 shares for $51,257,085.41, by 6 sellers) across 56 filings, and the last 90 days hold 1 sale (1,455 shares for $4,510,500.00, by 1 seller, an officer sale) across 5 filings, with no purchase at all in that window. Every window prices inside its own traded range: the 90-day sale implies $3,100.00 per share, inside that window's close range of $2,792.03 to $3,142.17; the one-year purchases imply $3,265.84 and the one-year sales $3,629.89, inside the one-year range; and the full-record sales imply $3,713.15, inside the full-period range — so this audit cites dollar totals for all three windows (see methodology).

Lens 4 — Congress: one sale, and no Senate row. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) carries 0 recorded purchases and 1 recorded sale, with no member count and no most-recent-purchase date printed in the aggregate — recorded here exactly as the aggregate prints it. The House aggregate carries the same row; the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no row at all. There is no congressional purchase in this lens to date anything by.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: six filings, all passive, headed by a Vanguard print at 7.53%. Our full parse holds 6 SC 13D/G filings matching the site aggregate exactly — 2 SC 13G and 4 SC 13G/A filings, 4 of them amendments, across 4 reporter names as printed, and no 13D filing at all. The register maximum is 7.53%: Vanguard Capital Management reports 1,241,699 shares as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026 as SC 13G. The latest filing is a JPMorgan Chase SC 13G/A, reporting 1,235,814 shares (7.5%) as of June 30, 2026, filed July 27, 2026 — the same reporter's third print above 5% in this parse, after 870,571 shares (5.1%) as of December 31, 2024 and 1,122,977 shares (6.8%) as of March 31, 2026. The Vanguard Group itself 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. JPMorgan Chase appears in the parse under two punctuation variants of its name, which is why the aggregate counts 4 reporter names for what reads as three reporting families.

Lens 6 — short interest: 496,329 shares, back to the June 30 level in one jump. This lens uses all 137 FINRA settlements for the symbol, every one an AutoZone row, from January 15, 2021 to September 15, 2026. As of September 15, 2026, 496,329 shares were sold short, up 14.17% from the prior settlement (434,741 on August 31, 2026), at 1.51 days to cover. The series maximum is 555,299 shares on March 31, 2022 — so the latest sits 10.6% below the peak. The recent path fell, then reversed: 496,299 (June 30), 494,460 (July 15), 432,888 (July 31), 409,917 (August 14), 434,741 (August 31) and 496,329 (September 15) — the latest reading is 30 shares above the June 30 reading. Against 16,325,355 shares outstanding, the borrow is 3.04% of the share count.

The Gap

The narrative arriving with this session is a watch-list story: first place on an automotive list, a fiscal year closed in September with sales and the store count growing. The filings describe the register that story lands on after a year in which the stock fell by a third from its high. Only 3 of 147 tracked managers hold the name at all, the cohort is one holder deep — PineStone Asset Management is 86.6% of the stake — and unlike the market at large, every tracked seat shrank: the verified cohort total fell 7.1% in Q2 while the full market's share count rose 19.20% on a filer count that slipped by 5. Insiders are nearly as one-sided: 4 purchases totalling 512 shares and $1,672,110.58 in the entire parsed record, none of them in the last 90 days, against 77 sales worth $237,134,619.99 — 19 of them, worth $51,257,085.41, inside the last year. Congress records one sale and no purchases. The 5% register is six passive prints whose maximum is dated March 31, 2026, and the borrow jumped 14.17% in the latest settlement to stand at 3.04% of the share count, 10.6% below its 2022 peak. One plausible reading is that October's argument is happening over a register where the tracked money trimmed into the decline, the broad market added shares through fewer filers, and the borrow just turned back up — a tape that neither confirms the watch-list story nor argues with it, because its tracked end holds exactly three names.

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 September earnings report; the September 30 filings are the first read on positioning since. Whether PineStone Asset Management's 244,260-share position — 86.6% of the cohort at a 4.82% portfolio weight — is still there, and whether Saturna Capital (32,123 shares) or Tweedy Browne (5,530 shares) rebuilds after trimming, decides whether this lens ever reads as more than one name.
• 2. An insider purchase at scale. The record's entire buy side is 4 transactions totalling 512 shares, none in the last 90 days, against 77 sales. A single purchase larger than that 512-share total, or a purchase inside a 90-day window, would be a new kind of fact in this lens.
• 3. A first congressional purchase. The combined aggregate records 0 purchases against 1 sale, and the Senate aggregate carries no row. A recorded purchase of either chamber would be this lens's first buy-side fact.
• 4. A fresh 5% print. The register's newest filing is dated July 27, 2026 (JPMorgan Chase at 7.5% as of June 30, 2026), and its maximum — Vanguard Capital Management at 7.53% — is dated March 31, 2026. A new filing moving either figure, or a first 13D, would be this lens's first change of substance since the summer.
• 5. Short interest through the peak, or back below the August low. The borrow stands at 496,329 shares, up 14.17% in the latest settlement and 10.6% below the series maximum of 555,299 shares (March 31, 2022). A reading above that maximum would set a new high for this series; a move back below the August 14, 2026 reading of 409,917 would resume the summer's decline.

Related reading: Three of 147: One Holder Is 99.8% of the Superinvestors' Teledyne Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #102; Fourteen of 147: One Holder Is 28.5% of the Superinvestors' AppLovin Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #101. AutoZone's own page: AutoZone (AZO) 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 July 27, 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 September 22, 2026 earnings report and the October 16, 2026 list appearance; the first post-period 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); AutoZone positions are counted on the single CUSIP 053332102 only, long rows only, and there are no option rows for this name in the collection. Three distinct managers hold long positions, all at June 30, 2026, totalling 281,913 shares worth $895,377,893 — no period mix. The direction count is three DECREASED and nothing else: PineStone Asset Management (-4.9%), Saturna Capital (-21.6%) and Tweedy Browne (-0.1%). PineStone Asset Management's share is 86.6% = 244,260 / 281,913; Saturna Capital's share is 11.4% = 32,123 / 281,913, and Tweedy Browne's share is 2.0% = 5,530 / 281,913. All three 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 303,345 shares at March 31 moving to 281,913 at June 30 (-7.1%), with no unverified continuing holder and no new holder. First-quarter rows: PineStone Asset Management 256,845; Saturna Capital 40,965; Tweedy Browne 5,535. No tracked manager exited in the second quarter: the collection's exited list carries no AutoZone row, and the pipeline register's first-quarter count for this name is the same three managers. Implied per-share values: PineStone Asset Management and Tweedy Browne each imply exactly $3,195.94, the June 30, 2026 close; Saturna Capital's row implies $3,021.64, printed as filed — an internal inconsistency in that filing's value field that we record rather than adjust. The pipeline register totals match the collection for this name in both quarters (3 rows and 281,913 shares in the second quarter; 3 rows and 303,345 shares in the first).
• 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; 1,267 reported long positions out of 1,278 filers). AutoZone carries a single CUSIP in this aggregation (053332102), 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 (1,086 and 1,091, a net of -5 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($49,785,419,754 over 15,454,404 shares) implies $3,221.44 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $3,195.94 in our price file, a gap of +0.80% — 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 (107 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 4 across the record — 0 in the 90-day window (July 5 to October 2, 2026), 4 in the one-year window (October 3, 2025 to October 2, 2026) and 4 in the full record, with 3 buyers in the one-year and full windows and 1 officer purchase transaction. Sale transactions total 77 across the record (63,863.54 shares, $237,134,619.99, 12 sellers, 72 officer sale transactions), of which the one-year window holds 19 (14,120.84 shares, $51,257,085.41, 6 sellers, 14 officer sale transactions) and the 90-day window holds 1 (1,455 shares, $4,510,500.00, 1 seller, 1 officer sale transaction) across 5 filings. The site's insider aggregate (as of October 17, 2026, a 90-day window) carries this name, and its row matches the full parse's 90-day window exactly — 0 purchases, 1 sale, 1 seller and $4,510,500.00. Window price checks on our price file: the 90-day sale implies $3,100.00 per share, inside that window's close range ($2,792.03 to $3,142.17); the one-year purchases imply $3,265.84 and the one-year sales $3,629.89, inside the one-year range ($2,792.03 to $4,215.08); and the full-record purchases imply $3,265.84 and the full-record sales $3,713.15, inside the price file's full-period close range ($1,374.53 to $4,354.54) — so dollar totals are cited for all three windows.
• 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G parsed filings (6 filings matching issuer CIK 866787 on CUSIP 053332102: 2 SC 13G and 4 SC 13G/A, 4 of them amendments, no SC 13D), filings through July 27, 2026. The site aggregation carries this name under a ticker-keyed row; that row (6 filings, 0 D-filings, 6 G-filings, 4 amendments, 4 reporters, latest date July 27, 2026, maximum 7.53%, total reported 5,179,640 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: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. printing 870,571 shares at 5.1% as of December 31, 2024, filed February 10, 2025 as SC 13G/A; JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. printing 708,579 shares at 4.2% as of May 30, 2025, filed June 5, 2025 as SC 13G/A; The Vanguard Group printing 0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 26, 2026 as SC 13G/A; JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (printed without the trailing period in this filing) printing 1,122,977 shares at 6.8% as of March 31, 2026, filed May 14, 2026 as SC 13G; Vanguard Capital Management printing 1,241,699 shares at 7.53% as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026 as SC 13G (the register maximum); and JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. printing 1,235,814 shares at 7.5% as of June 30, 2026, filed July 27, 2026 as SC 13G/A (the latest filing). The JPMorgan name's two punctuation variants are why the reporter count is 4 for three reporting families. The parsed coverage for this issuer holds these 6 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 0 members, 0 purchase transactions and 1 sale transaction, with no most-recent-purchase date and no party printed for this name, exactly as the aggregates print them; 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 137 settlements under the symbol, every one an AutoZone row, from January 15, 2021 (490,173 shares) to September 15, 2026. The latest reading is 496,329 shares on September 15, 2026, up 14.17% from the prior settlement (434,741 on August 31, 2026), at 1.51 days to cover. The series maximum is 555,299 shares on March 31, 2022, so the latest reading sits 10.6% below it; the series minimum is 205,230 shares on October 15, 2025. The September 15 reading is 30 shares above the June 30, 2026 reading of 496,299 shares. 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 (3.04%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
• Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries AutoZone's revenue of $18,938,717,000, net income of $2,498,247,000 and assets of $19,355,324,000, each labelled fiscal 2025 in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 16,325,355 (sourced in the file to the shares-outstanding count as of June 5, 2026) and a file-computed market value of $47,320,185,358.34. The file does not flag the issuer as a foreign private issuer, and it carries SIC 5531, Retail-Auto & Home Supply Stores. The file's price for the name is $2,898.57 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $2,792.03, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them. The company's own fiscal-2026 release of September 22, 2026 covers a later fiscal period than this file's fiscal-2025 figures, and the two are not blended here either.
• Prices: our own daily-close file for AutoZone through October 2, 2026 ($2,792.03 close, -17.7% year to date on that file; the 252-session closing high is $4,253.71 on October 2, 2025, so the last close sits 34.4% below it; the 252-session closing low is $2,792.03 on October 2, 2026 — the last close is itself the low, so it sits 0.0% above it; closes of $3,377.78 at March 31, 2026 and $3,195.94 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of -5.4%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -12.6%; change from the September 30, 2025 close of $4,290.24 of -34.9%; the December 31, 2025 close is $3,391.50). The series in our price file begins June 1, 2021 at $1,410.85 and holds 1,342 rows; the file's full-period close range is $1,374.53 to $4,354.54.
• Market context sources: MarketBeat's automotive-stocks-to-consider list for October 16, 2026, as carried by The Markets Daily, which placed AutoZone first, ahead of Monolithic Power Systems and O'Reilly Automotive; the United States daily trending-search list for October 16, 2026 (mirror checked October 17, 2026), whose top ten carried no stock tickers. The earnings item is from the company's own GlobeNewswire release of September 22, 2026: results for the fiscal fourth quarter (16 weeks ended August 29, 2026), with quarterly sales up against the prior-year quarter and the store network still expanding at the fiscal year-end. Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported speech from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
• AutoZone is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: AutoZone (AZO) stock page. Series data: azo_lens_data.csv · azo_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Teledyne Technologies · AppLovin.

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.