Zero of 147: The Superinvestors Hold No IonQ — and the One They Held Exited in Q2

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #180. IonQ through six filing lenses, as of the latest filings. Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.

The Hype

IonQ is trending again — and the reason is dilution, not a rally. The quantum-computing stock sits at No. 10 on MarketBeat's trending list (seven-day MarketBeat searches and followers, checked October 24, 2026), the first name on that list this series has not yet covered: the nine names above it — Amazon, Meta, Apple, Alphabet, AMD, Broadcom, Applied Digital, Marvell and Microsoft — are all already in the archive. Its line on that list reads $31.28, up 0.4%, matching our daily refresh almost exactly ($31.27 at the October 23 close).

The event behind the attention arrived on October 14, 2026, when IonQ priced a $2 billion equity offering at $40 per share or warrant — 20.5 million common shares plus pre-funded warrants covering 29.5 million shares, with further seven-year warrants at $69.46 — bought by an entity managed by Heights Capital Management, with J.P. Morgan as sole underwriter (FINCHANNEL, reporting Barron's account). The shares fell about 9.5% that day, closing at $31.42 (Yonhap Infomax, October 15, 2026). Two days earlier, IonQ had agreed to acquire cybersecurity firm Elisity in an all-stock deal valued at up to $1.3 billion (Yonhap). The contrast with a year earlier is stark: in October 2025 Heights paid $93 a share for IonQ stock; this October the same $2 billion bought roughly 2.3 times as many shares and warrants (TheStreet).

The operating backdrop, as reported from IonQ's August 5 earnings release, is fast revenue growth alongside a large loss: second-quarter revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% from a year earlier, and a quarterly net loss of $1.8677 billion, or $5.08 per share (FINCHANNEL, summarising the release). The price tape tells the same two-sided story: IonQ closed 2026's first trading day at $46.77, fell to $28.83 by March 31, then rose 84.7% in Q2 to $53.26 and fell 17.6% in Q3 to $43.86. The daily refresh puts the October 23 close at $31.27 — cross-source, since our price file ends October 2 — 28.7% below its September 30 close, 33.1% down year to date, and 57.5% below the $73.65 52-week-high field. The question the filings let us ask: while the market repriced dilution in October, what did the filing record already show at the end of June — and did anyone with a track record actually hold the stock?

The Tape

Chart: IonQ through six filing lenses — who is actually there?

Superinvestors. The June-quarter register is empty. Zero of the 147 tracked managers hold IonQ ordinary shares at June 30, 2026 — no long rows, no option rows, no non-common rows. That zero is a checked finding, not a data gap: the managers file holds 8,740 holding rows across 147 managers, and IonQ appears in it exactly once — in an exited list. Polen Capital Management lists IonQ as exited in its Q2 filing: 42,109 shares, $1,214,002 of prior value (filed August 4, 2026). No other tracked manager lists IonQ as exited, and no September early filer — Matrix, Sarasin or Montrusco Bolton, all filed October 13 — holds IonQ either. The Q2 pipeline register independently shows zero accessions carrying IonQ's CUSIP. One caveat for readers cross-checking the exit: the only first-quarter register accession carrying IonQ sits on shared-series CIK 0001172661, whose IonQ row matches Polen's exited figures exactly, but a shared series CIK cannot by itself attribute that row to Polen. The exit claim therefore rests on Polen's own filing, not on register pairing.

All institutions. The full 13F market moved the other way — it grew fast. Filers rose by 172 to 801, and reported shares rose 16.54% (+27,666,653 shares to 194,895,494). Reported value rose 121.22% to $12.54 billion, a larger jump than the share count because the quarter's 84.7% price rise is inside that value figure — and because the value definition includes option rows, it is not a pure common-stock market value (the full-market implied price of $64.34 sits 20.8% above the June 30 close for exactly that reason, and the same gap appears in Q1 at +17.6%). Underneath, 745 filers entered and 573 exited, but the net was a broadening register. So the June picture is split: the broad market added IonQ exposure while the tracked cohort went to zero — the single holder it had left entirely, in the quarter the wider market added 27.7 million shares.

Insiders. The Form 4 tape is quiet in the last 90 days and modest over longer windows — and, unusually for this series, it contains real buys, just none recently and none by officers. In the last 90 days (July 5 – October 2, 2026) there are 6 filings, zero open-market purchases, and a single sale: director Raymond John w sold 2,407 shares on September 10 for $89,564.47 at $37.21, inside the window's $31.99–$48.87 price range. Over the last year there are 42 filings, 2 purchases totalling 5,000 shares for $224,785, and 12 sales totalling 151,590 shares for $7,211,475.90 — both purchases by the same non-officer, Teuber William J Jr (2,000 shares at $54.815 in November 2025; 3,000 shares at $38.385 in February 2026). Across the full parsed corpus of 94 filings (filing dates February 25, 2025 – September 15, 2026) there are 3 purchases totalling 98,066 shares for $2,254,293.88 — Teuber's two plus a 93,066-share purchase by Scannell William F in March 2025 at $21.8072 — against 47 sales totalling 13,651,034 shares for $454,421,887.99. No officer has bought a share in any window (aggregate officer-buy transactions are zero in all three windows, and both buyers carry non-officer flags). The sale side is dominated by two names in the full corpus: Chapman Peter Hume sold 10,013,278 shares for $306,347,267.35 across 7 transactions, and de Masi Niccolo sold 2,622,900 shares for $105,900,928.44 across 3 transactions. The parsed-file scan matches the aggregate buckets on every count and value.

Congress. Nothing to report, and the nothing is checked rather than assumed. IonQ has no row in any of the four congressional files within their stated windows — no House or Senate row — as of October 3, 2026. That is a zero-activity-in-window finding, not a claim that no member ever traded the stock outside those windows.

13D/G. The control register is passive-only: 8 filings, all Schedule 13G, no activist 13D, from 4 reporters. The largest stake ever recorded belongs to BlackRock, Inc. at 7.8% (27,763,822 shares, event December 31, 2025, filed January 21, 2026); in event order its stake ran 7.4% (16,005,601 shares, event December 31, 2024) → 6.3% (15,110,462 shares, event March 31, 2025) → 7.8% → 5.3% (19,803,398 shares, event June 30, 2026, filed July 28, 2026). The latest filing is Morgan Stanley's initial 13G at 5.6% (20,830,962 shares, event June 30, 2026, filed August 13, 2026), jointly reported with Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc. at 5.4% on the same stake. The notable exit is a reported zero: The Vanguard Group reported 0 shares, 0.0% (event March 13, 2026). No new activist stake, and no fresh 13G above 5% beyond Morgan Stanley's filing.

Short interest. The bear trade has more than halved from its peak and kept falling. FINRA short interest peaked at 85,889,142 shares at the February 27, 2026 settlement, fell to 44,033,601 by June 30, rebounded in July to 50,158,156 at July 31, then fell for three straight settlements to 40,486,062 at September 15, 2026, down 1.38% from the prior settlement, with 2.19 days to cover and 10.63% of the 381,002,314 shares outstanding (a July 29, 2026 count, so the ratio inherits that staleness). The year-ago comparison points the same way: 44,221,845 shares a year earlier means the latest figure is 8.4% lower year over year. The short book is shrinking into the October price fall, not building into it.

Chart: IONQ short interest — 119 FINRA settlements, October 2021 to September 2026.

Fundamentals context. FY2025 revenue was $130.0 million against a net loss of $510.4 million, with $6,570.4 million in assets. The record is partial only because market capitalisation is missing. The Q2 price move (+84.7%) was far larger than the full market's share add (+16.54%) — the price ran ahead of the share count.

The Gap

The trending story and the filing tape disagree about what kind of attention IonQ is getting. The October headlines are about financing and dilution: a $2 billion raise at $40, an all-stock cybersecurity acquisition, a stock down 28.7% since September 30 on the daily refresh. The filings show a register that had already emptied of tracked holders before any of that happened. Polen — the only tracked manager holding IonQ in Q1 — exited in Q2, a quarter in which the stock rose 84.7% and the broad market added 27.7 million shares. The tracked cohort did not ride the Q2 rally; it left before the October repricing and has not returned in any early Q3 filing.

The insider tape does not fill the gap. The last 90 days contain a single $89,564 sale and no purchases; the last year contains two small non-officer purchases against $7.2 million of sales; and no officer has bought in any window of the parsed corpus. The congressional tape is empty, the control register churned without an activist, and the short book halved from its February peak while the price fell into October. One plausible reading is that the October attention is financing-driven — a raise, an acquisition, a repricing — while the filing record shows a broad but untracked institutional base, no tracked-holder conviction, and a shrinking short book: a tape that argues for watching the next filing cycle rather than for assuming the register has already confirmed, or contradicted, the move. The 45-day 13F lag cuts both ways: the June picture is the latest complete one, and with no early Q3 filer holding IonQ, the Q3 register is still unwritten.

What Would Change the Picture

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

• 1. An insider open-market purchase — especially an officer purchase. Any Form 4 buy code "P" would end the 90-day zero-buy run; an officer buy would end a run that spans the entire parsed corpus.
• 2. Q3 13F season (filings due by November 16, 2026). Watch whether any tracked manager opens a new IonQ position — the register starts from zero, so any entry is a first — and whether Polen returns after its Q2 exit.
• 3. A new 13D or 13G. Any activist 13D, a fresh 13G above 5%, or a new BlackRock filing after its fall to 5.3% would reset the control-register picture.
• 4. Short-interest direction. A rebuild back above the July 31 level of 50,158,156 — or a continued fall well below the September level — would each tell a different story about the bear trade.
• 5. Filings around the Elisity acquisition close. The filings above describe positioning into the current quarter, not a prediction of it; the acquisition's close, and any share issuance it brings, will show up in the next round of filings before it shows up anywhere else.

As-of & Limits

This article describes filings and market data for education. It is not investment advice. Data: SEC EDGAR 13F (as of June 30, 2026, filed within 45 days), Form 4 parsed filings span February 25, 2025 – September 15, 2026 (aggregated as of October 2, 2026), House/Senate disclosures through October 3, 2026, FINRA short interest at September 15, 2026 settlement. 13F covers long positions of $100M+ managers only and is always a lagging picture. Trading costs and taxes are not reflected.

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Revision history: v1.0 — October 24, 2026. Initial publication. Signals and lens aggregates: ionq_lens_data.csv. Short-interest series: ionq_short_interest_series.csv.

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