Two of 147: One Holder Is 97.7% of the Superinvestors' Realty Income Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #155. Realty Income sat on Zacks' most-searched list into October 22, 2026 — the monthly-dividend REIT, weeks before its November 2 results. The June filings show just 2 tracked holders, one of them 97.7% of the cohort, a full market that added 181.2 million shares, and an insider record with 4 sales and no purchase in it.

The Hype

The attention is an income story under rate pressure. Realty Income has been one of the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com lately; over the past month its shares returned −0.3% against +0.7% for the Zacks S&P 500 composite, while the REIT and Equity Trust — Retail industry lost 1.3%. Zacks, October 21, 2026 On October 13 the company declared its 676th consecutive monthly common-stock dividend, ad-hoc-news, October 19, 2026 $0.2715 a share, payable November 13 to holders of record October 30. The Lincolnian Online, October 14, 2026 Six days later, on October 19, Barclays cut its price target on the stock from $65 to $61 and Wells Fargo cut its own from $64 to $59. ad-hoc-news, October 19, 2026 Third-quarter results are scheduled for November 2, 2026. Our price file, which ends October 2, tells the path in: the stock rose 1.3% in Q2, from $61.18 on March 31 to $61.96 on June 30, then fell to $54.13 by October 2 — 1.1% above the 252-day low close of $53.53 (October 1) and 19.9% below the 252-day high close of $67.56 (March 2). The filings answer who held it while it slid.

The Tape

For Realty Income, the one hundred and fifty-fifth Filing Tape audit, the tape shows 2 tracked managers who both trimmed, a full market that added 39 filers and 181.2 million shares, an insider record with no purchase in it, a congressional lens split one buy against one sale across the two chambers, a 5% register of three passive prints, and a borrow 13.6% below its November 2025 peak.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: 2 holders, and both of them cut. The collection holds 147 managers (144 at June 30; 3 early filers at September 30, one of them holding this name). The June 30, 2026 common-stock register is 2 distinct managers holding 4,017,106 shares worth $248,899,887, long only, with no option rows. CenterSquare Investment Management holds 3,924,386 shares, 97.7% of the cohort, at a 2.08% weight, labelled DECREASED at −0.9%; Christopher Davis – Davis Advisors holds 92,720 shares, 2.3%, labelled DECREASED at −2.3%. There are no new, increased or unchanged June holders, and no tracked manager exited the name in the quarter. Every continuing holder's label verifies by two pairing methods (methodology): the 2 continuing holders held 4,056,791 shares at March 31 and 4,017,106 at June 30, a verified change of −1.0%. One September 30 early filer also holds the name — Sarasin & Partners, 34,100 shares, labelled INCREASED at +26.3% against its verified June position of 27,000 shares; Sarasin held no March row, so the March register is fully explained by the two June holders. The June register implies $61.96, the June 30 close exactly; the September early filer implies $54.30, the September 30 close exactly. At 0.54% of reported institutional shares, this cohort is a sample, not the register. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026, published up to 45 days later.

Lens 2 — institutions: 39 more filers, 181.2 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 1,467 institutions reported positions on the name's single common-stock CUSIP, up 39 from 1,428 at March 31 (+2.73%); 1,456 are long. Reported shares rose 32.47% to 739,366,708 (+181,231,087 shares), while reported value rose 34.70% to $45,295,057,517, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (methodology). Flow counts agree (1,207 entered, 1,168 exited, net +39), and the single-CUSIP aggregate matches the by-ticker total on every field. The aggregate implies $61.26 against the $61.96 close, a gap of −1.13%. Institutions added nearly a third more shares while the benchmarked 2 trimmed 1.0%.

Lens 3 — insiders: 4 sales, and no purchase in the parsed record. The parsed Form 4 record holds 77 filings, beginning with filings dated January 3, 2025, and running through September 10, 2026 (the collection's window end is October 2, 2026; no filing in the record is dated after September 10). The last 90 days (a filing-date window, per the aggregate's own definition) hold no open-market purchase, against 1 sale-coded row across 3,475 shares worth $209,021.95, by 1 seller, and it is not an officer row. The last year holds no purchase either, against 3 sale-coded rows across 14,150 shares worth $873,554.20, by 2 sellers, 1 of them an officer row. The full parsed record holds no purchase at all: 0 purchase rows, against 4 sale-coded rows across 25,150 shares worth $1,538,284.20, 1 of them an officer row, by 3 sellers — 1 sale row, in 37 filings dated before October 3, 2025, sits outside the last year's filing window, so the full record runs wider than the one-year window (77 filings against 40). The claim is bounded by the record's span: the parsed record for this name begins in January 2025, and within that record the purchase column is blank.

Lens 4 — Congress: one purchase in the Senate file, one sale in the House file. The combined aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries 1 member with 1 purchase and 1 sale, the last purchase dated July 23, 2026, from the Democratic side. The two chambers split it: the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries 1 member with 1 purchase and 0 sales, last purchase July 23, 2026; the House aggregate carries 0 purchases and 1 sale (its member count prints as 0; methodology). The House member file attributes the House side to McCormick, Richard Dean (R): 0 purchases, 1 sale, last dated July 30, 2026, in the $1,001–$15,000 amount band. The Senate purchaser's name does not appear in the member file we hold, which covers House filings only, so this audit does not name them. That is the whole congressional lens: one small purchase and one small sale, in different chambers, a week apart.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: three passive prints, all Vanguard names. Our full parse holds 3 SC 13D/G filings, all in the SC 13G family (2 SC 13G and 1 SC 13G/A amendment); there is no SC 13D. Each filing carries one reporter row. The register maximum is Vanguard Portfolio Management, 81,345,118 shares and 8.72%, as of March 31, 2026, filed April 29, 2026. The latest filing is Vanguard Capital Management, 69,885,864 shares and 7.49%, as of March 31, 2026, filed April 30, 2026 — a separate reporter printing on the same event date. The register also holds The Vanguard Group at 0 shares and 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 27, 2026, reported as printed, without attributing a reason (methodology).

Lens 6 — short interest: a November 2025 peak, a choppy summer. The latest FINRA settlement, September 15, 2026, records 40,805,348 shares sold short at 6.71 days to cover, 4.31% of the share count in our fundamentals file (a measured count, methodology). It is down 0.48% from the prior settlement, down 6.2% from the June 30, 2026 settlement (43,482,417 shares) and up 5.2% from the year-ago settlement (38,783,894 shares). The series maximum is 47,209,585 shares at November 28, 2025, and the latest reading sits 13.6% below it; the minimum is the series' first settlement, 9,303,903 shares at January 15, 2021. The summer's path: 43,482,417 (June 30), 40,024,135 (July 15), 45,281,460 (July 31), 37,785,390 (August 14), 41,002,872 (August 31), 40,805,348 (September 15).

The Gap

The narrative arriving this month is a defensive income name holding its payout under pressure: a 676th consecutive monthly dividend, a most-searched ticker heading into November 2 results, and two target cuts as the stock trades 1.1% above its 252-day low close. The June tape — the most recent complete holdings picture, taken at the end of a 1.3% quarterly rise — shows the benchmarked money barely present. Two of 147 tracked managers hold the name; one is 97.7% of the cohort; both trimmed, for a verified −1.0%. Over the same quarter the full register added 39 filers and 181.2 million shares (+32.47%). Insiders have sold 4 times in the parsed record and never bought in it — $1,538,284.20 across 77 filings back to January 2025. Congress shows one $1,001–$15,000 sale in the House file and one purchase in the Senate file; the 5% register holds three passive Vanguard prints, one of them zero; and the borrow, after peaking in November 2025, sits 13.6% below that peak at 40,805,348 shares — 4.31% of the share count, at 6.71 days to cover — in a stock whose tracked fundamental holders amount to two names. One plausible reading is that the October story is being carried by income demand and the broad register that built positions during the slide, while the tracked cohort never built a position to speak of, insiders kept a one-way record, and short sellers stayed large but stopped growing.

What Would Change the Picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. These filings would change it:

• 1. The 2026Q3 13F season (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The baseline is 2 June holders with 4,017,106 shares, the continuing cohort verified at −1.0%. Whether CenterSquare and Davis stabilise or cut again, whether Sarasin's September increase repeats, and whether any of the other 145 tracked managers opens a position would change this lens.
• 2. A first insider open-market purchase — the first in the parsed record — or further sales. The record through the October 2 window end holds 0 purchases against 4 sale-coded rows. A single purchase filed after October 2 would break a pattern that currently has no exception in the record; more sales would extend it.
• 3. A further congressional transaction, in either chamber. Every congressional collection we hold carries exactly one purchase (Senate side, July 23, 2026) and one sale (House side, July 30, 2026). Any further transaction in either chamber would change this lens.
• 4. A first SC 13D, or a 13G print above 8.72%. The register holds no activist filing at all; its maximum is a passive 8.72% print dated March 31, 2026. A 13D from any reporter, or a passive print above 8.72%, would change this lens.
• 5. Short interest above 47,209,585 shares, or below 43,482,417 shares. Above the November 28, 2025 series maximum would set a new series high; below the June 30, 2026 settlement would extend the summer's net decline past its starting point.

Methodology and data notes

• As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later; Form 4 windows run through October 2, 2026 (the last Realty Income filing in the parsed record is dated September 10, 2026); Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through April 30, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Nine limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster expanded before the recent audits — from 85 managers (83 filing) to 149 (147 filing) — so "of 147" counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' "of 83" figures. Second, this name's common stock carries a single CUSIP (756109104), and the full-market by-CUSIP row matches the by-ticker aggregate on every field — holders, long holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value — so no CUSIP blending question arises. Third, the tracked register's change labels are verified, not taken on trust: both continuing holders were verified by two pairing methods — accession-prefix matching and accession identity plus CUSIP-overlap — with every label recomputing exactly (Davis paired to accession 0001036325-26-000016, CUSIP overlap 110, unique; CenterSquare to 0001725296-26-000003, overlap 76, unique), and the September 30 early filer's label is a third-quarter change verified at accession level against its own June row (Sarasin 27,000 shares in accession 0001510481-26-000003, recomputing to +26.3%). The registers then reconcile exactly once the early filer is included: the first-quarter register holds 4,056,791 shares, equal to the verified continuing holders' 4,056,791 with no remainder — Sarasin held no first-quarter row; the June 30 register holds 4,044,106 shares, equal to the June cohort's 4,017,106 plus the early filer's June row of 27,000, with no remainder and no exits. The early filer implies $54.30, the September 30 close exactly; the June cohort implies $61.96 against the June 30 close of $61.96 (0.00%). Fourth, the full-market aggregate implies $61.26 against the June 30 close of $61.96 (−1.13%): the aggregate is a reported sum that includes option rows, so its implied price need not equal the close; this audit uses filer counts and share counts as this lens's primary measures and reports the value as reported only. Fifth, the insider lens rests on a single aggregate bucket — this issuer's filings sit under one symbol spelling, "O", with no case split — cross-checked against a row-level scan of all 77 parsed filings for the issuer (CIK 726728): filing counts, transaction counts, share counts, officer-row counts and values reproduce exactly in every window, with a value difference of $0.00 in all three windows and no accession appearing under more than one symbol spelling. On that record, every insider implied-price check passes: the 90-day implied sale price of $60.15 sits inside the filing-window close range ($53.53–$65.75), the one-year figure ($61.74) inside its range ($53.53–$67.56), and the full-record figure ($61.16) inside the full price range ($46.22–$74.93); there are no purchase rows, so no purchase-side check applies. The site's 90-day insider aggregate (dated October 22, 2026) prints the same 1 sale totalling $209,021.95 as the full parse's 90 days ending October 2, 2026 — the two windows end on different dates, and this audit uses the full parse. Sixth, the congressional lens is two transactions deep and split by chamber: the combined and chamber aggregates agree on one purchase and one sale in total; the House aggregate prints a member count of 0 alongside its 1 sale, as collected, while the House member file (politicians_members.json, as of October 3, 2026; window: 2026 House PTR filings, transactions dated on or after April 1, 2026) attributes a sale to one named member in the smallest amount band the file prints; the Senate purchaser is not named in any member file we hold, so this audit does not name them. Seventh, the 5% register's cross-date share total of 151,230,982 is an arithmetic sum of three single-reporter rows across different reporters and as-of dates and is not a current combined stake; the two March 31, 2026 prints (8.72% and 7.49%) come from separate Vanguard reporters and are reported individually, not added. Each filing in this register carries exactly one reporter row, so no joint-reporting duplication arises. Parsed totals match the aggregates exactly. Eighth, the short-interest series holds no step of 2x or more (the largest step is 1.962x, at November 15, 2023), but two settlements step to one-half or less of the prior settlement (0.475x at November 15, 2021, from 29,677,816 to 14,082,847 shares; 0.383x at June 30, 2023, from 34,465,794 to 13,209,898 shares): the series is not continuous at those two settlements, and long-span comparisons across them should be read with that break in mind. No row carries a split flag; two rows carry a FINRA revision flag (June 15, 2021; July 31, 2023). Our price file records a 1.032 split factor dated November 15, 2021 — the same date as the first of the two step-downs — reported here as printed, without attributing a cause. The issuer-name field reads "Realty Income Corporation" at all 137 settlements, on a single market class (NYSE) throughout. The share count behind the short-interest percentage is 946,218,033 shares in our fundamentals file, a measured period-end count (dei/EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding, as of July 30, 2026), so the 4.31% figure rests on a measured denominator. Ninth, our price file records no single-day close move across the thresholds this audit normally treats as split patterns, beyond the 1.032 factor noted above. The company's fundamentals as collected print fiscal 2025 revenue of $5,749,377,000, net income of $1,058,590,000 and assets of $72,795,612,000 (fiscal year ended December 31, 2025); those figures are reported as collected and are not used in any lens above. Every price statement from our own file is mechanical, a date and a close. The October figures in The Hype — the dividend declaration and the target cuts — are events published after our price file ends, and are cited as such, not blended into file-based calculations.
• Market context sources: Zacks most-searched article, October 21, 2026 (Realty Income among the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com; shares returned −0.3% over the past month against +0.7% for the Zacks S&P 500 composite; the REIT and Equity Trust — Retail industry lost 1.3% over the same period). The Lincolnian Online, October 14, 2026 (monthly dividend of $0.2715 a share announced October 13, payable November 13, 2026, to holders of record October 30, 2026; ex-dividend date October 30, 2026). ad-hoc-news, October 19–21, 2026 (the company declared its 676th consecutive common-stock monthly dividend on October 13, 2026, as reported from the company's release; Barclays lowered its target from $65.00 to $61.00 on October 19, 2026; Wells Fargo lowered its target from $64.00 to $59.00 on October 19, 2026; third-quarter 2026 operating results scheduled for November 2, 2026, as announced by the company on October 1, 2026). Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported figures from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
• Realty Income is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Realty Income (O) stock page. Series data: o_lens_data.csv · o_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Texas Instruments · Vicor.

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 22, 2026: first publication.* *Revision history: v1.1 — October 22, 2026: citation repair — the "676th consecutive" dividend wording is now cited to the company release as reported by ad-hoc-news; it was previously bundled under The Lincolnian Online citation, whose report confirms the dividend amount and dates but not the ordinal. No figure changed; conclusions unaffected.