RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #9

Thirty-One of 83: Five Managers Opened New Meta Positions. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

October 8, 2026

GetCoattail Research — Meta just posted 28% revenue growth and an earnings miss in the same quarter, and the market is arguing about a $130 billion-plus spending plan. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. In the second quarter — a quarter when the share price fell — the concentrated money added 27.1% more shares and five managers opened new positions. And in the entire parsed insider record, no Meta insider has ever bought a share on the open market.

Start with the narrative, because it is a live argument. Meta reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 29: revenue of $60.80 billion, up 28% year over year and ahead of the $60.29 billion consensus, with advertising revenue of $59.36 billion, up 27%. The other side of the print was cost: diluted EPS of $6.18 missed a consensus of roughly $7.19 to $7.22 and fell from $7.14 a year earlier, the operating margin narrowed to 31% from 43%, and total costs and expenses rose 55% to $42.03 billion, including a $2.40 billion legal charge and $1.18 billion of severance. Capital expenditure reached about $31.1 billion in the quarter, and full-year 2026 capex guidance stands at $130 billion to $145 billion. In September the stock rallied — up 27% in the month, according to Yahoo Finance — after the September 8 launch of the Muse AI agent, which drew 5 million downloads by September 30. The shares closed at $728.08 on October 2, 2026 in our price file, up 10.3% year to date and below the 252-session closing high of $777.59 (September 24, 2026). Analyst consensus targets average roughly $788 to $792. Meta was the eleventh most-searched ticker on Benzinga Pro for October; its third-quarter report is expected on October 28, 2026.

Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the portfolios, trades and disclosures of the investors with the most information about any company: superinvestors, institutions as a whole, insiders, members of Congress, and 5% holders. For Meta — the ninth Filing Tape audit, after IREN, CoreWeave, Micron, NVIDIA, Tesla, AMD, Apple and Amazon — the sponsorship is broad and it grew into a falling price. The insider lens, again, points the other way.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — thirty-one long holders, five of them new

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, thirty-one held Meta in long common-stock positions — every one of the 31 reported rows is a long position, with no option rows in the count. Across the whole collection, only four tickers have more long holders: Microsoft at 37, Alphabet's Class A at 36, Amazon at 35 and Alphabet's Class C at 34. Within this audit series, Meta's 31 is second only to Amazon's 35. The cohort's combined long position rose on a like-for-like pipeline basis from 20,701,109 shares at March 31 to 26,315,988 shares at June 30 — up 27.1% — in a quarter when the share price itself fell 1.5%, from a $572.13 close to $563.29 in our price file. The pipeline and EDGAR-collection second-quarter totals agree exactly, at 26,315,988 shares, worth $14,823,865,063.

The largest holder, Dodge & Cox Funds, holds 6,489,255 shares and increased 29.4% — 24.7% of the cohort's Meta stock. First Eagle holds 3,217,353 shares (up 0.8%). The quarter's story is the new money: five managers opened new positions totalling 5,970,380 shares — Pershing Square with 3,196,062 shares (9.25% of its portfolio), Viking Global with 1,867,619, Maverick Capital with 764,041, CAS Investment Partners with 136,246 and Miller Value Partners with 6,412. Appaloosa increased 54.6% to 675,000 shares. The direction count is not one-way, though: of the 31 long holders, 13 decreased, 9 increased, 5 were new and 4 were unchanged — Jensen cut 67.9%, Polen 30.9%, Ruane Cunniff 23.3% and Fundsmith 20.4%, and Tiger Global trimmed 8.5% to 2,823,180 shares. The top three holders together account for 49.0% of the cohort. The cohort added shares in aggregate because the new and increased positions outweighed the trims, not because the trims were absent.

Meta through six filing lenses

Lens 2: institutions — 5,031 filers, shares up 17.45%

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the register matches the superinvestor picture. At June 30, 2026, 5,031 institutions reported positions in Meta, up from 4,983 at March 31 — a 1.0% rise — and 5,016 of them reported long positions. Reported share counts rose 17.45%, from 1,434,933,057 to 1,685,360,726 shares. The register churned underneath: 2,056 filers entered and 2,008 left. The dataset's reported aggregate value rose 15.0% to $1,008,796,603,754; the aggregate includes option rows, so we treat filer and share counts as the reliable series and the dollar figure as reported (see methodology). One plausible reading is that part of this breadth is mechanical — Meta sits in nearly every index basket. But here the concentrated cohort moved the same way as the broad register, and it moved more: its share count rose 27.1% while the full register's rose 17.45%.

Lens 3: the 5% register — passive, and shrinking at the margin

Four SC 13D/G filings cover Meta, and all four are 13G or 13G/A — the passive form. There is not one 13D, the filing an investor uses when it wants something from management. The largest reporter is Vanguard Capital Management at 7.49% (163,839,861 shares, as of March 31, 2026) — an index complex, filing passively. The other sized reporters are FMR LLC and Abigail P. Johnson, filing jointly: 96,176,347.85 shares, 4.4%, as of June 30, 2026 — down from the 134,555,687.03 shares and 6.1% in their previous report (as of December 29, 2023), so the register's second name has been reducing its reported stake. A separate Vanguard Group amendment reported 0 shares and 0.0% as of March 13, 2026; we record it without interpreting the internal reorganisation it appears to reflect. No activist has filed: the register is an index complex and a mutual-fund complex, both passive.

Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the entire parsed record

In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, Meta insiders filed 34 reports covering 109 sale transactions totalling $105,268,930.58 — 155,435 shares sold by ten insiders, 102 of the 109 transactions by officers. Open-market purchases in the same window: zero.

Widen the window and the purchase side does not just stay empty — it has never been anything else. Over the full year through October 2, 2026, the record shows 167 filings covering 297 sale transactions totalling $259,896,781.92 by eleven sellers, and zero open-market purchases. Across the entire parsed Form 4 record (391 filings), purchases total exactly zero transactions, against 1,577 sale transactions totalling $1,409,923,662.85 by eleven sellers. Some selling is mechanical — vesting and tax withholding generate filings regardless of anyone's view — and we assign no motives. But the purchase side has no mechanical explanation: in a year when the stock traded from a $525.72 closing low (March 27, 2026) to a $777.59 closing high, no Meta insider bought a single share at market price, and none appears in the parsed record at any earlier date either. Our site's separate 90-day insider aggregate agrees on the two headline facts — zero buys, ten sellers — while its sale count and value (98 sales, $101,819,633.75, compiled as of October 8, 2026) differ from the full-parse figures; we headline the full-parse record and note the difference in the methodology.

Lens 5: Congress — four members, four buys against four sells

Across the Senate and House transaction record we maintain (as of October 3, 2026), four members of Congress have traded Meta: four purchases and four sales, with the most recent purchase on June 17, 2026, and both parties represented. All eight transactions are in the House record; the Senate aggregate carries no Meta record at all. The counts are small and exactly balanced, and congressional disclosures report ranges rather than exact values, so we record direction only.

Lens 6: short interest — 1.23% of shares out, off its lows

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 30,990,107 Meta shares were sold short: 1.23% of the 2,521,000,000 shares in our fundamentals file (a weighted-average basic share count as of December 31, 2025 — see methodology), with days-to-cover of 1.57. That is a small borrow for a stock of Meta's size.

Short interest in Meta Platforms, June 2022 to September 2026

The latest reading sits 25.4% below the series peak of 41,523,267 shares on November 15, 2022. The recent path is two-sided: the borrow rose to 37,847,633 shares on July 15, 2026, fell at two consecutive settlements to 28,048,106 on August 14, and has since risen at two consecutive settlements to 30,990,107 — and it is 17.9% above its year-ago level of 26,292,755 shares. The borrow is neither at its lows nor large: at 1.23% of the share count, it is not a crowded short either.

The gap, stated plainly

Meta's filing record splits along a familiar line in this series, with one twist. The concentrated money did not just hold the stock through a quarter of margin headlines — it added: 31 of 83 tracked managers long, cohort shares up 27.1% in a quarter when the price fell 1.5%, five new positions totalling 5,970,380 shares, and a full register of 5,031 filers with shares up 17.45%. The 5% register stayed passive, though its second name, the FMR complex, has reduced its reported stake from 6.1% to 4.4%. The short borrow, at 1.23% of the share count, says few are betting heavily against the story. Congress is exactly balanced at four buys and four sells. And the insider lens is the one lens that does not move with the story: 1,577 sales totalling $1,409,923,662.85 in the parsed record — $105,268,930.58 of it in the last 90 days — and not one open-market purchase, ever, in that record. The institutions are buying the advertising-and-AI story in size. The people inside the company, on the record, only sell.

What would change the picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description, in the order the data will arrive:

Until one of those prints, the filing record describes a stock the concentrated money demonstrably bought into weakness — five new tracked positions and a 27.1% larger cohort stake in a down quarter — trimmed by a minority of its tracked holders even as it added shares in aggregate, held passively at the 5% level by an index complex and a shrinking mutual-fund stake, and never, on the record, bought by the people who work there.

Related reading: Thirty-Five of 83: The Superinvestors Own Amazon. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #8; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1; 80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors. Meta's own page: Meta Platforms (META) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

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

MORE RESEARCH

Six of 83: The Superinvestors Hold Little Tesla — and Cut a Third of It in Q2
Six of the 83 superinvestors we track hold Tesla — one name is 84.8% of the cohort — and the cohort cut its aggregate share count 33.2% in the second quarter while all institutions added 27.9%, insiders filed one report in 90 days with zero purchases in a year, and short interest sits at 1.74% of shares outstanding.
80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors
Four of five congressional stock buys land in a stock the superinvestors hold — 688 shared names. But ticker by ticker, how often Congress buys a stock has almost nothing to do with how many managers hold it (ρ = 0.099), and the shared names did not pay better.