RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #64

Seven of 83: The Superinvestors Cut Eli Lilly 21.8% in Q2. Its Insiders Have Not Bought in a Year.

October 13, 2026

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #64. Eli Lilly is the market's defining growth story: second-quarter revenue up 48%, guidance raised to as much as $87 billion, and analyst targets lifted three times in two weeks. The filings describe the positioning underneath: seven tracked superinvestors who all trimmed or stood still in the second quarter, cutting the cohort's stake 21.8% while the price rose 30.4%; a full market that added 310 filers and 88,217,686 shares in the same quarter; an insider record with zero purchases in a year against 309 sales; and a founding endowment whose reported stake has stepped down six filings in a row.

Start with the narrative. The business story is scale: Lilly reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of about $23 billion, up 48% from a year earlier, with its tirzepatide medicines doing the work — Mounjaro at $9.9 billion, up 91%, and Zepbound at $4.9 billion — and it raised full-year revenue guidance to $85 billion to $87 billion, against the $65,179,000,000 of revenue our fundamentals file records for fiscal 2025. The price ran with it for most of the year: on our daily-close file the stock rose from $919.77 at March 31 to $1,199.43 at June 30, a gain of 30.4% in the second quarter alone, and reached a 252-session closing high of $1,280.34 on August 19 before easing to $1,142.85 by October 2, down 10.7% from that high and up 49.8% from the $763.00 close of September 30, 2025. The commentary followed the price up: JPMorgan raised its target to $1,500 on September 28, Morgan Stanley to $1,430 on October 7 and Cantor Fitzgerald to $1,440 on October 9, as reported by MarketBeat and 24/7 Wall St. Lilly appeared on Zacks' most-searched list on October 9, and MarketBeat's pharmaceutical screener for October 10 put it first among five names by dollar trading volume. Two other items sat alongside the enthusiasm: the stock changed hands at about 30.94 times forward earnings on October 6, below its five-year average of 45.59, a gap bulls and bears each read their own way; and news reports said the Lilly Endowment, the company's largest shareholder, had filed to sell 300,000 shares worth about $347 million. The next scheduled test is the third-quarter report, listed on the company's investor calendar for October 29.

Now the filings. For LLY — the sixty-fourth Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a tracked cohort moving in one direction only, a broad register moving the other way, a passive 5% register whose largest name is a founding endowment in a slow step-down, an insider record whose purchase line has been empty for a year, a congressional record that exists in only one chamber, and a borrow that peaked in July and has since eased by about a quarter.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — seven holders, five cuts, two holds, no adds

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 7 held LLY long totalling 1,185,174 shares worth $1,421,532,846, with no option rows in the register. The direction count on the collection's own labels, across the long rows, is five decreased and two unchanged — no new position, no increase, and the collection's exit list holds no LLY row either. The cohort total moved from 1,514,705 long shares at March 31 to 1,185,174 at June 30, a change of -21.76%, a difference of -329,531 shares, in a quarter when the price rose 30.4%.

Every row can be followed across the quarter, because the pipeline's March file carries the same seven holders and each collection label agrees with the share continuity. The largest holder is Polen Capital Management with 666,912 shares worth $799,914,391, a 6.89% portfolio weight — 56.3% of the tracked cohort's LLY shares — flagged decreased, and the March file carries the position at 914,557 shares, so the label's -27.1% and the continuity agree. Mairs & Power Funds holds 322,129 shares worth $386,371,186, a 3.54% portfolio weight, decreased 1.3% from 326,306 shares. Jensen Investment Management holds 153,735 shares worth $184,394,371, a 4.47% portfolio weight, decreased 33.4% from 230,671 shares — the deepest percentage cut in the register. Dodge & Cox Funds holds 41,258 shares worth $49,486,083, decreased 1.8% from 42,012 shares. The three remaining rows are small: Bill Nygren's Oakmark Funds with 431 shares worth $516,954, decreased 4.2% from 450 shares; Torray Funds with 398 shares worth $477,373, unchanged; and David Katz's Matrix Asset Advisors with 311 shares worth $372,488, unchanged. The cohort's implied price, $1,199.43 per share, sits exactly on the June 30 close of $1,199.43. This register's second quarter, in full: seven holders, five of them selling into a 30.4% price rise, two standing still, and none adding a share on net.

LLY 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 records through Oct 3, 2026. 13D/G: filings through Jul 23, 2026. Short interest: FINRA biweekly settlement data through Sep 15, 2026. Source: SEC EDGAR; FINRA; GetCoattail collections.

Lens 2: institutions — 310 more filers, 88.2 million more shares

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register grew while the tracked cohort shrank. At June 30, 2026, 4,631 institutions reported positions, up 310 from 4,321 at March 31 (+7.17%), and 4,618 of them reported long positions. Reported shares rose 12.72%, from 693,706,599 to 781,924,285 shares — 88,217,686 more shares than the prior quarter. Reported aggregate value rose 49.41% to $942,123,799,338; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $1,204.88, sits 0.5% above the June 30 close of $1,199.43. Where the tracked cohort's register is seven names that together cut 329,531 shares, the broad register is more than four and a half thousand filers who, in aggregate, ended the quarter holding about an eighth more shares than they started it with.

Lens 3: the 5% register — ten passive filings, and an endowment stepping down

Our full parse holds exactly 10 SC 13D/G filings for LLY — one SC 13G and nine SC 13G/A, and no SC 13D-family filing at all — ten reporting-person rows across five names as filed, the most recent filed July 23, 2026. The register's maximum is the Lilly Endowment at 96,891,978 shares (10.2%) as of December 31, 2024, filed January 27, 2025, and its chain is the register's story: 96,016,978 shares (10.1%) as of March 31, 2025; 95,492,993 shares (10.1%) as of September 30, 2025; 92,190,516 shares (9.8%) as of December 31, 2025; 91,896,978 shares (9.7%) as of March 31, 2026; and 90,376,978 shares (9.6%) as of June 30, 2026, filed July 23, 2026 — a step down at every reported date, 6,515,000 shares (-6.7%) from the first row to the latest, printed here as filed, with no reason asserted. The Vanguard rows repeat the re-papering pattern this series has recorded at other names: The Vanguard Group at 80,952,595 shares (8.55%) as of September 30, 2025, filed October 30, 2025, then 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026, filed March 26, 2026, with Vanguard Capital Management at 61,295,605 shares (6.48%) as of March 31, 2026 on an original SC 13G filed May 1, 2026. The remaining row is The PNC Financial Services Group at 51,153,837 shares (5.39%) as of December 31, 2024, filed February 7, 2025. That is the whole 5% register in our parsed coverage: a founding endowment reducing in steps, one index complex reporting under two names, one bank holding company, and no activist paper of any kind.

Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in a year

The parsed Form 4 record holds 226 filings through October 2, 2026. The last year holds 126 of them, with no open-market purchase at all against 309 sale transactions totalling 3,277,828 shares by five sellers. The last 90 days hold 19 filings with the same empty purchase line against 3 sales totalling 13,500 shares and $15,958,170, by three sellers, all three recorded as officer sales. Across the whole parsed record, purchases total 9 transactions — 6,987 shares and $4,537,300.77, by eight buyers, four of them recorded as officer purchases — and every one of those nine predates the last year. Sales across the record total 483 transactions totalling 5,038,328 shares, by six sellers, 13 of them recorded as officer sales. One field of the source aggregate is not used as a figure here: its sale-value totals imply $24,070.86 per share for the one-year window and $16,272.34 per share across the full record, against traded prices between roughly $800 and $1,280, so this audit cites sale counts and share counts for those windows and says why, in the methodology. Our site's insider aggregate, compiled as of October 13 on a 90-day window, matches the full parse's 90-day window exactly — 0 purchases, 3 sales, three sellers, $15,958,170. We assign no motives to any of it; the record itself — a purchase line that has been empty for a year, against 309 sales — is the fact.

Lens 5: Congress — a balanced record, in one chamber only

The congressional record we maintain exists for this name, but only on one side of the Capitol. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) carries 3 recorded purchases and 3 recorded sales, two members, one from each party, with the most recent purchase dated June 10, 2026. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries the whole of it — the same 3 buys, 3 sales, two members and June 10 last-buy date. The Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no LLY row at all: in our coverage, no Senate record for this ticker exists to agree or disagree. Each part of that statement is printed as the aggregates carry it; this audit does not reconstruct individual filers beyond what the aggregates state.

Lens 6: short interest — 7,519,918 shares, down 26.8% from a July peak

FINRA's files carry the borrow across 137 settlements, from January 15, 2021. As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent settlement — 7,519,918 LLY shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 3.41. That reading fell 4.74% from the prior settlement's 7,894,476 shares on August 31, 2026, after 6,564,742 on August 14, 9,117,184 on July 31 and the series maximum of 10,278,892 shares on July 15, 2026, a fact we verified by taking the maximum across the whole series rather than reading it off the latest row. The latest reading is 26.8% below that peak, and 19.6% below the June 30, 2026 settlement of 9,353,153 shares — the date the 13F lenses snapshot. A year earlier, the September 15, 2025 settlement printed 7,323,001 shares, so the latest reading sits 2.7% above a year ago. The series minimum is 4,286,692 shares on June 15, 2022; the latest reading sits 75.4% above that low, and the series' first settlement, on January 15, 2021, printed 5,763,791 shares. Against the fundamentals file's 941,357,065 shares outstanding, the latest reading is 0.80% of the share count.

Short interest in LLY
Chart 2: Shares sold short in LLY at each FINRA biweekly settlement, Jan 15, 2021 – Sep 15, 2026 (n = 137 settlements). The latest reading, 7,519,918 shares on Sep 15, 2026, is down 26.8% from the series maximum of 10,278,892 shares on Jul 15, 2026, down 4.74% from the prior settlement, and 19.6% below the Jun 30, 2026 settlement. Source: FINRA Equity Short Interest files; GetCoattail collection (lly_short_interest_series.csv).

The borrow is small and shrinking from a recent high. It is a position that peaked in mid-July, just before the stock's August closing high, and has since given back about a quarter of itself.

The gap, stated plainly

The narrative describes the market's growth leader: second-quarter revenue up 48%, guidance raised to $85 billion to $87 billion, three target increases in two weeks, a most-searched listing, and a stock that closed at a 252-session high in August. The filings describe the positioning that preceded it. The tracked superinvestors held 1,185,174 shares at June 30 across seven holders, having cut 21.76% — 329,531 shares — in a quarter when the price rose 30.4%, with no holder increasing, none entering, and the largest holder, Polen, carrying 56.3% of the cohort after cutting 27.1%. The full market moved the other way: 781,924,285 reported shares, up 88,217,686, across 4,631 filers — 310 more than the prior quarter. The 5% register printed 10 filings, all passive: a Lilly Endowment stake stepping down from 10.2% to 9.6% across six reported dates, a Vanguard Group stake at 8.55%, a Vanguard Group row at zero, a Vanguard Capital Management stake at 6.48%, and a PNC stake at 5.39%. Insiders, across 226 parsed filings, recorded zero purchases in the last year against 309 sales, and 9 purchases in the whole parsed record, all of them older than a year. Congress records 3 purchases and 3 sales, all of them in the House record; the Senate record holds no row for this name. And the borrow stands at 7,519,918 shares — 26.8% below a peak set on July 15, 2026, and 0.80% of the share count. One plausible reading is that the registers are describing a name the broad market kept adding to while the concentrated holders and the insiders did not: the full register added about an eighth more shares and 310 filers in the very quarter the price rose 30.4%, the tracked cohort cut by more than a fifth with not one increase among seven holders, the insider tape's purchase line stayed empty for a full year, the founding endowment's reported stake fell at every reported date, and the short side peaked in July and faded — all of the 13F part of it snapshot at June 30, when the stock closed at $1,199.43, before the August closing high and the October target raises the current story rests on. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right, and it cannot — the tracked cohort's whole position is a June 30 snapshot of 1,185,174 shares, taken before the quarter that made the narrative.

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 held by seven of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 1,185,174 shares, cut 21.76% in the quarter its price rose 30.4%, with one holder carrying 56.3% of the stake — whose full market added 88,217,686 reported shares across 310 more filers, whose insiders have recorded no purchase in a year against 309 sales, whose largest 5% holder is a founding endowment stepping down from 10.2% to 9.6%, whose congressional register is 3 House purchases and 3 House sales with no Senate row at all, and whose borrow has fallen 26.8% from a peak set two months before its latest reading — all of it snapshot at June 30, before the August closing high and the October target raises the current story rests on.

Related reading: Two of 83: One Holder Is 99.4% of the Superinvestors' Palo Alto Networks Stake. Its Insiders Have Bought Twice. — Filing Tape #63; Fourteen of 83: Wells Fargo's Superinvestors Stood Still as the Full Market Added 15.0%. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #62; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. LLY's own page: Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

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

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