GetCoattail Research — Alphabet is the market's spending argument: a quarter that beat estimates by a wide margin, cloud revenue up 82%, and a stock marked down anyway when the spending bill grew. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. Thirty-six of our 83 superinvestors hold the Class A shares long — but one holder is 64.4% of the cohort, 23 of the 36 cut in the quarter, and the insider register records zero purchases across the parsed record.
Start with the narrative: a beat the market chose to argue with. Alphabet's second quarter of 2026 was large by every measure: revenue of $119.8 billion, earnings per share of $9.11 against an estimate of $2.88, Google Cloud revenue up 82% year over year to $24.8 billion, and a cloud backlog of $460 billion. The argument came with the spending line. Management raised full-year 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to $195–$205 billion, from $180–$190 billion, with second-quarter capex reported at about $44.92 billion, roughly double the year-earlier level — and the shares fell roughly 4–8% after hours on the guidance. Coverage in the week of October 5 added an enterprise model, Gemini 4 Argon. AltIndex counted 431 Reddit mentions for Alphabet, listed as GOOG, in the 24 hours to October 9, up 19.7%, with Bullish sentiment. This audit covers GOOGL, the Class A share, because Alphabet's Form 4 aggregation is maintained under GOOGL — the reason the Class C line was skipped in our October 9 run.
Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the investors best placed to know any company: superinvestors, institutions, insiders, Congress, and 5% holders. For Alphabet — the twenty-third Filing Tape audit — the story is a superinvestor headline that reverses when its largest holder is removed, an insider register with no purchases at all, and a full market that grew on every axis.
Lens 1: the superinvestors — 36 holders, and one of them is the story
We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 36 held Alphabet Class A in a long common-stock position — long rows, with no option rows in the count. Together the 36 held 122,437,406 shares worth $43,755,493,755. The quarter-to-quarter comparison, on the pipeline's CUSIP basis in both quarters, runs from 114,096,324 shares across 38 rows at March 31 to 122,437,406 shares across 36 rows at June 30 — up 7.31%. The pipeline and EDGAR-collection totals agree exactly. The direction count cuts the other way: zero new, four increased, 23 decreased, nine unchanged — no manager opened a position, and nearly two-thirds of the holders trimmed in a quarter when the price rose from $287.56 to $357.37 in our price file, up 24.3%.
One holder explains the headline. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holds 78,791,167 shares worth $28,157,599,351, a 9.41% portfolio weight, increased 45.2% in the quarter — 64.4% of the entire cohort. Remove Berkshire (first-quarter pipeline position: 54,249,798 shares) and the change reverses: the other 35 holders went from 59,846,526 shares to 43,646,239 shares, down 27.07%. The second-largest holder is Dodge & Cox Funds, with 10,658,860 shares worth $3,809,156,798, a 1.99% weight, increased 0.3%. The third, Bill Nygren at Oakmark Funds, holds 6,264,999 shares worth $2,238,922,832, a 2.97% weight, decreased 25.4%. Those three together hold 95,715,026 shares, 78.2% of the cohort. Daniel Loeb at Third Point rose 485.7% to 1,025,000 shares, the cohort's largest percentage increase. The cuts were broad: Tiger Global −45.4% to 5,805,687 shares, Fundsmith −40.0%, First Eagle −56.7%, Cantillon −95.4% to 171,066 shares. Nine holders, including Himalaya Capital's 2,543,300 shares at a 24.55% weight, were unchanged.
Lens 2: institutions — more filers, more shares, higher reported value
Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register grew on every axis. At June 30, 2026, 5,742 institutions reported positions, up from 5,510 at March 31 (+4.21%), and 5,723 reported long positions. Reported shares rose 17.53%, from 3,963,450,425 to 4,658,384,541 shares, with 1,972 filers entering and 1,740 exiting. Reported aggregate value rose 46.69% to $1,667,362,990,012; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $357.93, sits just 0.2% above the June 30 close of $357.37.
Lens 3: the 5% register — five filings, all 13G, no activist
Five SC 13D/G filings cover Alphabet — zero in the 13D family and five 13G filings, four of them amendments, with 13 reporting names in aggregate, most recently filed April 29, 2026, maximum reported percentage 7.48%. Vanguard Capital Management reported 436,027,408 shares (7.48%) as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026. Sergey Brin reported 359,414,947 shares (5.81%) as of December 31, 2025, filed February 17, 2026. The Vanguard Group reported a 0-share row as of March 13, 2026, filed March 26, 2026 — the same sequence seen in several earlier audits, where a Vanguard position reappears under a related reporting name; we report rows as filed, without summing them or calling the zero an exit. The remaining filings are Schmidt group amendments: Schmidt reported 48,808,584 shares (0.83%) as of June 30, 2025 and 56,921,959 shares (0.97%) as of December 31, 2024, each alongside eight affiliated reporting names.
Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the entire parsed record, against $276,481,771.15 of sales
The buy side of this register is not small. It is empty. Across the parsed Form 4 record (306 filings through October 2, 2026), there are zero open-market purchases in any window we maintain. Against that stand 413 sales totalling 1,170,213 shares and $276,481,771.15, by nine sellers, 244 of them recorded as officer sales. In the most recent year (171 filings), the pattern is identical: zero purchases against 240 sales totalling $141,163,836.19, by six sellers. In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, 46 filings covered zero purchases and four sales totalling 696 shares and $232,894.35, by two sellers, one of them recorded as an officer sale. Our site's insider aggregate (October 9, 2026) records three sales and $204,637.00 for the same 90 days — it does not match the full parse (see methodology); both registers agree on the zero in the buy column. Some selling is mechanical — vesting, tax withholding and pre-arranged plans — and we assign no motives.
Lens 5: Congress — two members, five purchases, twelve sales
Across the Senate and House record we maintain (combined record as of October 3, 2026), Alphabet's register is small and one-sided in party, not direction: two members, five purchase transactions and 12 sale transactions, the most recent purchase dated August 11, 2026, with one party represented, the Republicans. The House accounts for all of it — two members, five purchases and 12 sales (House record as of October 3, 2026) — while the Senate aggregate carries no Alphabet record at all (Senate record as of October 1, 2026). Congressional disclosures report value ranges rather than exact amounts, so we record direction and counts only.
Lens 6: short interest — up 29.8% in a year, at 0.71% of the share count
As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 87,393,404 Alphabet shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 3.5, up 12.48% from the prior settlement. The level sits just under the series peak: the June 15, 2026 settlement recorded 89,840,649 shares, so the latest reading is 2.7% below the peak, and the June 30 settlement recorded 85,860,436 shares. Against the 12,230,000,000 shares in our fundamentals file — a count covering all share classes — the borrow is 0.71% of the share count. Year over year the direction reverses: the September 15, 2025 settlement recorded 67,329,048 shares, so the borrow is up 29.8%.
The recent settlements run 78,667,609 on July 15, then 70,493,725, 72,705,550, 77,698,668 and 87,393,404. The series began at 2,455,331 shares on January 15, 2021, and its lowest reading is 1,776,723 shares on April 14, 2022 — the borrow at the June 2026 peak was roughly fifty times that low.
The gap, stated plainly
The registers describe a headline that depends on a single name. The tracked superinvestors added 7.31% more shares as a cohort — and 23 of the 36 holders cut, the cohort excluding Berkshire fell 27.07%, and no manager opened a position. Berkshire alone is 64.4% of the 122,437,406 shares; the top three holders are 78.2%. The full market moved the other way: filers rose 4.21% to 5,742 while reported shares rose 17.53% to 4,658,384,541 and reported value rose 46.69%. Insiders have not bought once in the parsed record — zero purchases against 413 sales totalling $276,481,771.15. Congress registers modestly: two members, five purchases, 12 sales. And the borrow, at 87,393,404 shares and 0.71% of the share count, is up 29.8% in a year and 2.7% below its June peak, in a stock 14.7% below its May closing high in our file. One plausible reading is that the registers describe two different Alphabets — the 13F register one very large holder adding into a rising quarter while most peers trimmed, the borrow a persistent, growing position against the same name. 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:
- 1. The 2026Q3 13Fs (filing window closing mid-November 2026). Q3 contains the earnings print and the guidance argument. Whether Berkshire Hathaway's 78,791,167 shares survived it, whether the other 35 holders' combined 43,646,239 shares stabilised after a 27.07% cut, and whether any of the other 47 tracked managers opens a position after a zero-new quarter, is the whole lens: at 64.4% single-name concentration, one filer's decision rewrites this register.
- 2. A first insider purchase — anywhere, at any size. Zero purchases stand against 413 sales totalling $276,481,771.15 in the parsed record. A single purchase would be the first in the record we maintain; continued absence keeps the buy column where it has always been.
- 3. The next short-interest settlements after a near-peak reading. The borrow stood at 87,393,404 shares on September 15, up 29.8% from 67,329,048 a year earlier and 2.7% below the June 15 peak of 89,840,649. The next settlements show whether borrowers treat the June peak as a top or a pause: FINRA publishes every two weeks.
- 4. Congressional filings after August 11. Five purchases and 12 sales by two members of one party, the most recent dated August 11, 2026, and no Senate record at all. A Senate filing, or a third member, would widen a register that currently sits in one chamber.
- 5. Any 13D, from anyone. The 5% register holds five 13G filings and nothing else — passive and founder rows from Vanguard Capital Management at 7.48% and Sergey Brin at 5.81%. A first 13D, or a new 13G filer above 5%, would create a register that does not currently exist.
Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock held by 36 of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 122,437,406 shares, 64.4% of them with a single holder who raised his stake 45.2% while 23 holders cut — whose insiders have recorded no purchase in the parsed record against $276,481,771.15 of sales, and whose borrow, at 87,393,404 shares, has risen 29.8% in a year.
Related reading: Ten of 83: Six Superinvestors Raised Adobe as the Price Fell 15.7%. Short Interest Is Up 92.5% in a Year. — Filing Tape #22; Thirty-Seven of 83: The Superinvestors Own Microsoft. Its Insiders Have Bought Twice. — Filing Tape #21; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. Alphabet's own page: Alphabet (GOOGL) on GetCoattail.
Methodology and data notes
- Superinvestor lens: 83 managers collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection), positions as of June 30, 2026; Alphabet Class A identified by CUSIP 02079K305. Thirty-six distinct managers hold a long position totalling 122,437,406 shares; all 36 reported rows are long (no put or call rows). Quarter-to-quarter cohort totals (114,096,324 shares across 38 pipeline rows at March 31; 122,437,406 across 36 pipeline rows at June 30) are from the site pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis in both quarters; the change is +7.31% ((122,437,406 / 114,096,324) − 1), and the pipeline's second-quarter totals agree exactly with the EDGAR collection's long totals (difference: 0 shares and $0). The largest holder's share of the cohort is 78,791,167 / 122,437,406 = 64.4%; the top three holders' share is 95,715,026 / 122,437,406 = 78.2%. The ex-Berkshire comparison uses Berkshire Hathaway's first-quarter pipeline position of 54,249,798 shares (holdings accession 0001193125-26-226661; the same filer's second-quarter accession, 0001193125-26-352200, reports the 78,791,167 shares, an implied price of exactly the March 31 close in the first-quarter file, and a change of +45.24%, matching the EDGAR collection's +45.2% change field): the remaining 35 holders held 114,096,324 − 54,249,798 = 59,846,526 shares at March 31 and 122,437,406 − 78,791,167 = 43,646,239 shares at June 30, a change of −27.07%. Direction counts across the 36 long holders: 0 new, 4 increased, 23 decreased, 9 unchanged. No series-record claim is made for the 64.4% figure: it is reported as a plain concentration fact for this cohort.
- Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation (the fixtures underlying our 2026Q1–Q2 market tables). Holders = distinct filers reporting the CUSIP; 5,723 of the 5,742 reported long positions. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($1,667,362,990,012 over 4,658,384,541 shares) implies ≈$357.93 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $357.37 in our price file, a gap of 0.2%. 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 (306 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 zero across the full record — the title's "never bought" is scoped to this parsed record. Sale transactions total 413 across the full record (1,170,213 shares, $276,481,771.15, nine sellers), of which 244 are recorded as officer sales. In the most recent year: zero purchases; 240 sale transactions, $141,163,836.19, six sellers. In the 90 days through October 2, 2026: zero purchases; four sale transactions, 696 shares, $232,894.35, two sellers. The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 9, 2026) records three sale transactions and $204,637.00 for the same 90 days: it does not match the full-parse figures, and we report both rather than claim an exact match; the two registers agree that purchases are zero.
- 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G aggregation and parsed filings (5 filings matching CUSIP 02079K305, 13 reporting names in aggregate), filings through April 29, 2026. Vanguard Capital Management's row (436,027,408 shares at 7.48% as of March 31, 2026), Sergey Brin's row (359,414,947 shares at 5.81% as of December 31, 2025), The Vanguard Group's row (0 shares as of March 13, 2026) and the Eric E. Schmidt group rows (Schmidt: 48,808,584 shares at 0.83% as of June 30, 2025; 56,921,959 shares at 0.97% as of December 31, 2024) are reported as separate rows, as filed; they are not summed. The aggregation's totalSharesReported field sums overlapping reporters and successive amendments and is not used. Percentages are quoted exactly as reported in the respective filings.
- Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site, combined record as of October 3, 2026 (2 members, 5 purchase transactions, 12 sale transactions, most recent purchase August 11, 2026, one party — Republicans). The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) records 2 members, 5 purchases and 12 sales; the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no Alphabet record. Congressional disclosures report value ranges, so this lens records direction and counts only.
- Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution; the Alphabet series covers 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 to September 15, 2026. The maximum of the full collected series is 89,840,649 shares on June 15, 2026, so the latest reading of 87,393,404 shares on September 15, 2026 sits 2.7% below the peak ((87,393,404 / 89,840,649) − 1) and 29.8% above the September 15, 2025 reading of 67,329,048; the change from the prior settlement (77,698,668 shares on August 31, 2026) is +12.48%. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact. The share-count ratio uses the fundamentals file's share count of 12,230,000,000 — a shares-outstanding count (us-gaap CommonStockSharesOutstanding) as of June 30, 2026 that covers all of Alphabet's share classes, while the short-interest series is for the Class A line.
- Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries Alphabet's fiscal-2025 revenue of $402,836,000,000, fiscal-2025 net income of $132,170,000,000 and fiscal-2025 assets of $595,281,000,000. The market value of about $4.252 trillion uses that file's October 6, 2026 price ($347.68) and reported share count.
- Prices: our own daily-close file for Alphabet Class A through October 2, 2026 ($343.50 close, +9.7% year to date on that file; 252-session closing high $402.62 on May 13, 2026; 252-session closing low $236.57 on October 10, 2025; closes of $287.56 at March 31, 2026 and $357.37 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +24.3%; change from June 30 to October 2 of −3.9% ((343.50 / 357.37) − 1)). The drawdown from the 252-session closing high is −14.7% ((343.50 / 402.62) − 1), and the gain from the 252-session closing low is +45.2%.
- Market context sources: second-quarter 2026 revenue of $119.8 billion, EPS of $9.11 against an estimate of $2.88, Google Cloud revenue up 82% year over year to $24.8 billion with a cloud backlog of $460 billion, full-year 2026 capex guidance raised to $195–$205 billion from $180–$190 billion with an after-hours share move of roughly 4–8% on the guidance, and second-quarter capex of about $44.92 billion, roughly double year over year — earnings coverage of the 2026 second-quarter report, checked October 10, 2026, summarised in our own words; a new enterprise model, Gemini 4 Argon, unveiled in coverage in the week of October 5, 2026 — technology coverage, checked October 10, 2026; social-media attention ranking (431 Reddit mentions for Alphabet, listed as GOOG, in 24 hours, up 19.7%, Bullish sentiment, price shown $349) — AltIndex, checked October 10, 2026. Figures we could not confirm against two sources were left out.
- Share-class note: this audit covers GOOGL, the Class A share. Alphabet's Form 4 aggregation is maintained under GOOGL, and the Class C line (GOOG) was skipped in our October 9, 2026 run for that reason.
- Alphabet is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Alphabet (GOOGL) stock page. Series data: googl_lens_data.csv · googl_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Adobe · Microsoft · IREN.
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 10, 2026: first publication.