GetCoattail Research — Home Depot is the home-improvement retailer working through a high-rate housing market, and it sits second on MarketBeat's October 11 retail watchlist after a year in which its shares fell while its tracked superinvestor register did the opposite. The filings describe a sharp split: ten tracked superinvestors hold the stock and the cohort's share count more than tripled in the second quarter on three new positions, the largest a brand-new 2,603,189-share position from Lone Pine Capital; the full market added shares too, more modestly; insiders, by contrast, have recorded just two purchases in the entire parsed record against 22 sales, and none at all in the last year; and the share price has fallen 19.8% since the quarter-end the ownership lenses describe.
Start with the narrative. Home Depot reported its most recent quarter on August 18: earnings of $4.92 a share against a $4.73 consensus, on revenue of $47.86 billion, up 5.7% from a year earlier, and the company set full-year guidance of $14.69–$15.28 a share. Analysts, in aggregate, have stayed constructive through the slide: MarketBeat's consensus is a Moderate Buy with an average target of $375.93, and in October Melius Research opened coverage with a Buy rating and a $397 target even as the stock sat well below its highs, with the 30-year mortgage rate at its highest reading since late 2023. Options traders noticed the name too — a report on October 10 counted 33,592 call contracts, 54% above the average daily volume. Our own price file, which ends October 2, puts the last close at $282.85 — down 28.4% from the 252-session closing high of $395.06 set on October 3, 2025, just 0.1% above the 252-session closing low of $282.46 set on October 1, 2026, and down 17.8% year to date on that file.
Now the filings. For Home Depot — the forty-ninth Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a tracked cohort that bought aggressively into the second quarter, a broad register that added at a steadier pace, an insider record with almost no purchases at all, and a 5% register that is, again, a Vanguard hand-off.
Lens 1: the superinvestors — ten holders, 5,741,720 shares, and a register that tripled
We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 10 held Home Depot long — no option rows — totalling 5,741,720 shares worth $2,024,989,982. The direction count, on the collection's own labels, is three new positions, three increases and four decreases, with one exit. The cohort total moved from 1,735,834 shares at March 31 to 5,741,720 at June 30, a change of +230.78%, a difference of +4,005,886 shares.
The largest holder is Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, with 2,603,189 shares worth $918,092,697, a 5.61% portfolio weight, flagged as a new position — 45.3% of the tracked cohort's Home Depot shares. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust holds 1,000,000 shares worth $352,680,000, a 1.02% weight, also flagged new. Thomas Gayner's Markel Group holds 922,500 shares worth $325,347,299, a 2.48% weight, flagged increased by 0.3%. Viking Global Investors holds 920,595 shares worth $324,675,445, a 0.93% weight, flagged new in the collection — though our pipeline's first-quarter file already carried a 504,257-share Viking row, so on that basis the position grew 82.6% rather than appearing from zero (see methodology; it is the one label that does not reconcile). The three labelled-new rows together total 4,523,784 shares. Below them, Mairs & Power Funds holds 152,452 shares worth $53,766,917, flagged decreased by 0.6%; David Katz's Matrix Asset Advisors holds 64,544 shares worth $22,763,405, flagged increased by 25.0%; First Eagle Investment Management holds 52,776 shares worth $18,613,039, flagged increased by 3.8%; Dodge & Cox Funds holds 22,382 shares worth $7,893,684, flagged decreased by 0.3%; Torray Funds holds 2,485 shares worth $876,410, flagged decreased by 22.4%; and Jensen Investment Management holds 797 shares worth $281,086, flagged decreased by 45.5%. The one exit is Terry Smith's Fundsmith, whose 28,611 first-quarter shares no longer appear. The cohort's implied price, $352.68 per share, matches the June 30 close exactly. The price rose from $328.89 at March 31 to $352.68 at June 30, a change of +7.2% — the tracked register's expansion happened in a rising quarter, and almost all of it came from new positions rather than from existing holders adding.
Lens 2: institutions — 4,110 filers, and a share count up 18.09%
Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the same direction shows up at a steadier scale. At June 30, 2026, 4,110 institutions reported positions, up 21 from 4,089 at March 31 (+0.51%), and 4,096 reported long positions. Reported shares rose 18.09%, from 627,502,715 to 740,991,224 shares — 113,488,509 more shares than the prior quarter. Reported aggregate value rose 27.76% to $260,711,812,072; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $351.84, sits 0.2% below the June 30 close of $352.68. Set the two 13F lenses side by side and both point up in the same quarter — but the tracked cohort's +230.78% is more than twelve times the broad market's +18.09%, and it rests on three labelled-new positions rather than on a broad-based build.
Lens 3: the 5% register — three filings, all of them 13G paper, and a Vanguard hand-off
Our full parse holds just three SC 13D/G filings for Home Depot — one SC 13G and two SC 13G/A amendments, and no SC 13D of any kind in the parsed set, 3 reporting-person rows across 2 names, the most recent filed April 30, 2026. The register's largest row is its oldest: The Vanguard Group prints 100,011,247 shares (10.04%) as of November 28, 2025 in an SC 13G/A filed December 3, 2025. The same name's next filing prints the opposite: in an SC 13G/A filed March 27, 2026, The Vanguard Group prints 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026. The register's most recent filing is also its only original filing: Vanguard Capital Management prints 74,847,725 shares (7.51%) as of March 31, 2026 in an SC 13G filed April 30, 2026. Read as filed — and the rows are reported here exactly as filed, never summed — the register describes one Vanguard entity's row going to zero in the same weeks another Vanguard entity's row appears at 7.51%. There is no activist paper in this register and no 13D at all: three 13G-family filings, two names, and a hand-off pattern the filings themselves do not explain.
Lens 4: insiders — two purchases in the entire parsed record, against 22 sales
The parsed Form 4 record holds 149 filings through October 2, 2026. Across the whole record, open-market purchases total exactly 2 transactions — 2,884 shares and $999,767.44, by a single buyer, and neither of them an officer purchase. Against that stand 22 sales totalling 86,453 shares and $33,195,232.63, by eleven sellers, all 22 of them recorded as officer sales. The last year holds 10 of those sales, totalling 19,135 shares and $6,690,457.26 by seven sellers, and no purchases at all. The recent window is the same shape: the last 90 days hold four sales and no purchases — 9,829 shares for $3,339,313.80, by four sellers, all officer sales. Our site's insider aggregate, compiled as of October 12 over its 90-day window, records the same four sales at the same amount, by the same number of sellers, with no purchases; on this lens the two collections agree completely. We assign no motives to any of it; a tape with 22 sales and two purchases in the parsed record is the fact.
Lens 5: Congress — five buys, twelve sells, and a September buy
Across the congressional record we maintain (combined record as of October 3, 2026), Home Depot shows three members recorded, five buy transactions and twelve sell transactions, with a most-recent buy on September 22, 2026, and with both parties represented. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries all five buys and eleven of the sells, across the same three members, with the same September 22 most-recent buy. The Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries the remaining sell, with zero members recorded, no buys and no most-recent buy date — we report that figure as the aggregate prints it. Outside reporting adds one named example on the House side: a disclosure filed October 5 showed a House member buying between $1,001 and $15,000 of the stock in a trade dated September 17. The register as a whole still leans to the sell side by count — twelve sells against five buys — but unlike the insider tape, it is not one-sided, and its most recent recorded act is a buy.
Lens 6: short interest — 10,572,996 shares, below a 2023 peak
FINRA's files carry the borrow across 137 settlements, from January 15, 2021. As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent settlement — 10,572,996 Home Depot shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 2.76, up 19.07% from the prior settlement. That reading is not the series maximum: the peak is 14,118,285 shares on May 15, 2023, a fact we verified by taking the maximum across the whole series, and the latest reading sits 25.1% below it. Against the fundamentals file's 997,689,626 shares outstanding, that is 1.06% of the share count. Against September 15, 2025 the latest reading is down 20.4% from 13,290,337 shares. The June 30, 2026 settlement — the date the 13F lenses snapshot — printed 13,269,053 shares, so the borrow has eased since the quarter-end the ownership lenses describe, even after the latest settlement's step back up. The recent settlements run 12,827,409 on July 15, then 12,299,979, 10,319,915, 8,879,597 and 10,572,996. The series minimum is 7,231,266 shares on February 12, 2021; the latest reading sits about half again above that low.
The borrow peaked more than three years ago and has trended down since, with a one-settlement step back up in September. Set beside the ownership lenses, that leaves a register with no urgent pressure in either direction: the tracked cohort built a large new position, the broad market added steadily, and the short side remains well below its old high.
The gap, stated plainly
The narrative describes a retailer whose latest quarter beat the consensus on both earnings and revenue — $4.92 against $4.73, $47.86 billion in revenue, up 5.7% — rated a consensus Moderate Buy with an average target of $375.93, above the $282.85 close on our price file through October 2, with fresh Buy coverage opened in October and a spike in call buying, all while the stock itself closed the file just 0.1% above its 252-session low and down 17.8% year to date. The tracked superinvestors held 5,741,720 shares at June 30 across ten holders, having raised the count 230.78% in a quarter when the price rose 7.2%, with Lone Pine Capital at 45.3% of the cohort on a position that did not exist in the register the quarter before — and with the price then falling 19.8% from that June 30 close by October 2, after the snapshot the 13F lenses describe. The full market moved the same way, smaller: 740,991,224 reported shares, up 113,488,509, across 4,110 filers — 21 more than the prior quarter. The 5% register printed three filings, all of them 13G-family paper and not one a 13D: its maximum row is a 10.04% Vanguard Group print from November 2025, its next Vanguard Group row is zero, and its newest row is a different Vanguard entity at 7.51%. Insiders, across 149 parsed filings, recorded exactly two purchases totalling $999,767.44 against 22 sales totalling $33,195,232.63 — and no purchase at all in the last year. Congress registers five buys and twelve sells across three members, its most recent act a buy on September 22. And the borrow, at 10,572,996 shares, stands below a peak it set in May 2023. One plausible reading is that the registers are pricing different Home Depot stories on different clocks: the tracked cohort and the broad market used the second quarter to build positions the price has since marked down, the analysts are paying for an earnings recovery the August print partly supported, the insider tape offers sales and almost no confirming purchase in its entire history, and short sellers, who built their largest borrow in a stronger housing market, have not rebuilt it. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right, and it cannot — the largest position in this audit is a June 30 snapshot taken before a 19.8% fall.
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). The tracked cohort held 5,741,720 shares at June 30 across ten holders, after a +230.78% move built on three labelled-new positions. Whether Lone Pine's 2,603,189 shares and the Gates Trust's 1,000,000 shares survive a quarter in which the price fell 19.8% from the snapshot is the first thing the next register will answer: an exit or a sharp cut by either would unwind the story this audit describes, and a hold or an increase would extend it.
- 2. A recent insider purchase. The parsed record holds exactly 2 purchase transactions against 22 sales across 149 filings, and none in the last year. Any open-market purchase in the current window, by any insider, would be the first of its kind in a year and would materially change a one-sided tape.
- 3. An original SC 13D, or a non-Vanguard 13G. The 5% register holds three filings, all 13G-family, two names, both Vanguard entities. A first 13D in the parsed set — any filer declaring an active stake — would change this lens from passive paper into something else.
- 4. Whether the borrow returns toward its 2023 peak. Short interest stands at 10,572,996 shares, 25.1% below the May 15, 2023 peak of 14,118,285. A settlement back above that peak would mark a rebuilt borrow; a return below the August 31, 2026 print of 8,879,597 would resume the unwind visible through the summer.
- 5. Whether Congress keeps buying. The combined register holds five buys and twelve sells, with a most-recent buy on September 22, 2026. Further recorded buys would narrow a sell-side lead built over the full record; a return to sells only would widen it again.
Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock held by ten of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 5,741,720 shares, up 230.78% in the quarter its price rose 7.2% and built largely on new positions — whose full market added 21 filers and 113,488,509 reported shares in the same quarter, whose 5% register is three 13G-family filings across two Vanguard names, whose insiders have recorded two purchases and 22 sales in the entire parsed record and none in the last year, whose congressional register leans to sells but last acted with a buy, and whose borrow has eased from a peak set in 2023 — all of it snapshot at June 30, before a 19.8% fall the next register has not yet described.
Related reading: Seven of 83: Every Superinvestor in AbbVie Trimmed or Stood Still in Q2. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #48; Seven of 83: The Superinvestors Raised Their Intel Stake 35.8% in Q2. Its CEO Is One of Only Two Insider Buyers Ever. — Filing Tape #47; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. Home Depot's own page: Home Depot, Inc. (HD) 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; Home Depot identified by CUSIP 437076102. Ten distinct managers hold long positions totalling 5,741,720 shares; all ten reported rows are long (no put or call rows); the direction count on the collection's labels is three new, three increased and four decreased, and the collection's exit list contains one Home Depot row (Fundsmith, 28,611 first-quarter shares). Quarter-to-quarter cohort totals (1,735,834 shares at March 31 across nine filing rows; 5,741,720 shares at June 30 across ten filing rows; change +230.78%) are from the site pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis in both quarters, and the pipeline's second-quarter share and value totals match the EDGAR collection's long totals exactly (differences of 0 shares and $0). Per-holder quarter changes are matched by filing accession prefix and agree with the EDGAR collection's own percentage labels for nine of the ten holders. The exception is Viking Global Investors: the collection labels its 920,595-share row new, while the pipeline's first-quarter file carries a 504,257-share row under the same filer CIK, which would make the change +82.6%. We report the label as filed, flag the mismatch here, and do not use Viking's row in any "appeared from zero" claim — the two rows that are new on both bases are Lone Pine Capital and the Gates Foundation Trust. Lone Pine's share of the cohort is 45.3% = 2,603,189 / 5,741,720.
- 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 CUSIP; 4,096 reported long positions out of 4,110 filers). Home Depot reports under the single CUSIP 437076102, and the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row for that CUSIP matches the by-ticker row exactly (4,110 filers; 740,991,224 shares; $260,711,812,072 reported; 4,089 prior filers; $204,068,574,474 prior reported value). The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (2,059 and 2,038, a net of +21 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($260,711,812,072 over 740,991,224 shares) implies ≈$351.84 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $352.68 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 (149 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 exactly 2 across the parsed record (2,884 shares, $999,767.44, one buyer, no officer purchases) — and zero in both the 90-day window and the last year. Sale transactions total 22 across the record (86,453 shares, $33,195,232.63, eleven sellers, all 22 of them officer sales); the 90-day window holds four of them (9,829 shares, $3,339,313.80, four sellers, all officer sales) and no purchases, and the last year holds ten (19,135 shares, $6,690,457.26, seven sellers). The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 12, 2026, 90-day window) records the same four sales — 4 transactions, $3,339,313.80, four sellers — and no purchases, so the two collections agree on this lens in full. "Purchases" in this audit is scoped to this parsed record, whose 149 filings are the coverage stated here.
- 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G aggregation and parsed filings (3 filings matching issuer CIK 354950 on CUSIP 437076102, 3 reporting-person rows across 2 names: one SC 13G and two SC 13G/A amendments, no SC 13D filings), filings through April 30, 2026. The site aggregation's HD row counts the same 3 filings. The Vanguard Group's rows (100,011,247 shares at 10.04% as of November 28, 2025, filed December 3, 2025; then 0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 27, 2026) and Vanguard Capital Management's row (74,847,725 shares at 7.51% as of March 31, 2026, filed April 30, 2026) are reported as filed, under the reporting-person names exactly as they appear. No rows are summed, because aggregation totals across these rows would add different dates together. No reason for any change is asserted — the filings themselves are the record.
- Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site, combined record as of October 3, 2026 — three members recorded, five buy transactions and twelve sell transactions, with a most-recent buy on September 22, 2026, and both parties represented. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries three members, five buys and eleven sells with the same most-recent buy date. The Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries zero members, no buys and one sell, with no most-recent buy date, and this audit reports the Senate figures exactly as that aggregate prints them. The aggregates record counts and dates, not trade sizes, and this audit reports them on that basis. The named House example in the text rests on outside reporting (see market context), not on the aggregates, which do not name members.
- Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 (7,656,949 shares) to September 15, 2026. The latest reading is 10,572,996 shares on September 15, 2026, which sits 25.1% below the series maximum of 14,118,285 shares on May 15, 2023 (verified by a maximum query over the series, not read off the latest row), down 20.4% from the September 15, 2025 reading of 13,290,337 and up 19.07% from the prior settlement. The latest row's prior-settlement field (8,879,597) matches the prior settlement file's reported figure exactly. The series minimum is 7,231,266 shares on February 12, 2021. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact. The share-count ratio (1.06%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
- Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries Home Depot's revenue of $164,683,000,000 labelled fiscal 2026, its net income of $14,156,000,000 labelled fiscal 2026, and its assets of $105,095,000,000 labelled fiscal 2026. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 997,689,626 (as of August 18, 2026, sourced in the file to a dei EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding count) and a file-computed market value of $286,027,641,313.71. The file's price for the name is $286.69 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $282.85, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
- Prices: our own daily-close file for Home Depot through October 2, 2026 ($282.85 close, -17.8% year to date on that file; 252-session closing high $395.06 on October 3, 2025; 252-session closing low $282.46 on October 1, 2026; closes of $328.89 at March 31, 2026 and $352.68 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +7.2%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -19.8% ((282.85 / 352.68) − 1)). The drawdown from the 252-session closing high is -28.4%, the gain from the 252-session closing low is +0.1%, and the series in our price file begins June 1, 2021.
- Market context sources: MarketBeat's Top Retail Stocks to Watch list for October 11, 2026 (Amazon first, Home Depot second, Costco third — MarketBeat screener reporting, rechecked October 12, 2026); the company's most recent quarterly results as reported in October 2026 coverage (earnings of $4.92 a share against a $4.73 consensus; revenue of $47.86 billion against a $47.24 billion estimate, up 5.7% year over year; results reported August 18, 2026; full-year guidance of $14.69–$15.28 a share as reported — American Banking News reporting); the consensus detail (ratings as reported on October 10, 2026: 1 Strong Buy, 18 Buy, 13 Hold, 1 Sell; consensus Moderate Buy; average target $375.93 — American Banking News, on MarketBeat data; the report does not state a total firm count, and earlier October reports put the covering count at 32 with a slightly different breakdown, so no total is stated here); the Melius Research initiation (Buy rating, $397 target, October 6, 2026, with the shares down about 17% in 2026 and the 30-year mortgage rate at 7.28% as of October 1 — TIKR reporting); the unusual options activity (33,592 call contracts against an average daily volume of 21,805, an increase of 54%, reported October 10, 2026 — American Banking News); and the House purchase disclosure (a trade of $1,001–$15,000 dated September 17, 2026, disclosed October 5, 2026 — American Banking News). Figures we could not confirm against two sources were left out.
- Home Depot is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Home Depot, Inc. (HD) stock page. Series data: hd_lens_data.csv · hd_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: AbbVie · Intel · IREN.
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 12, 2026: first publication.
- v1.1 — October 12, 2026: corrected the analyst-consensus description: the October 10 report's ratings breakdown (1 Strong Buy, 18 Buy, 13 Hold, 1 Sell) sums to 33 ratings and states no total, so the earlier "32 firms" total — taken from earlier October reports with a different breakdown — has been removed. No filing-data figure or conclusion is affected.