GetCoattail Research — Toast sells the point-of-sale and payments platform behind tens of thousands of restaurants, and in October it has climbed AltIndex's meme-stock list on a sharp jump in Reddit mentions — while the week's headlines have been insider sales. The filings describe a register with one dominant name: only two of our 83 superinvestors hold the stock, and one of them is 99.9% of the position, in a quarter when the full market added shares far faster than the tracked cohort did and the insider record again contains not one open-market purchase.
Start with the narrative. AltIndex's meme-stock list, updated on the afternoon of October 10, ranked Toast twelfth by Reddit mentions over the prior 24 hours, with 29 mentions — up 190% — and a bullish sentiment flag. The news flow around the name in early October has been insider-sale items: several outlets carried the October 2 sales by president Stephen Fredette (9,368 shares, described in the reports as covering tax withholding on vested awards) and by chief revenue officer Jonathan Vassil (7,623 shares, described as executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan), among others. The analyst backdrop, as aggregated by StockAnalysis and checked October 11, is a Buy consensus from 30 analysts with an average price target of $38.92; Goldman Sachs maintained a Buy rating with a $37 target on October 7. Our own price file, which ends October 2, puts the last close at $29.79 — 23.7% below the 252-session closing high of $39.02 set on November 5, 2025, and 33.4% above the 252-session closing low of $22.33 set on May 13, 2026.
Now the filings. For Toast — the thirty-seventh Filing Tape audit — the tape is concentrated at the top, broad in the middle, and one-directional at the insider window: one tracked manager is effectively the whole superinvestor register, the full market added 78,506,783 reported shares in the June quarter, one member of Congress bought, and insiders have recorded no purchase at all.
Lens 1: the superinvestors — two holders, 14,144,983 shares, one of them 99.9%
We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 2 held Toast long — no option rows — totalling 14,144,983 shares worth $393,513,427. The direction count is one increased and one new: no decreases and no unchanged rows.
The register is, in practice, one position. ValueAct Capital holds 14,134,038 shares worth $393,208,937, a 6.98% portfolio weight, increased 9.6% in the quarter — 99.9% of the tracked cohort's Toast shares. The second holder, Richard Pzena's Pzena Investment Management, opened a new position of 10,945 shares worth $304,490, a 0.0% portfolio weight — a register entry, not a position of consequence next to ValueAct's. The cohort total moved from 13,635,738 shares at March 31 to 14,144,983 at June 30, a change of +3.73%, a difference of +509,245 shares — but the register underneath changed membership: at March 31 the two rows were ValueAct (12,895,438 shares) and Connor Haley's Alta Fox Capital Management (740,300 shares), and Alta Fox appears in the collection's exit lists for this name in the second quarter, while Pzena arrived. So the quarter's story is not two holders adding; it is the dominant holder adding 9.6%, one holder leaving, and one holder arriving with 10,945 shares. The price rose from $26.51 at March 31 to $27.82 at June 30, a change of +4.9%, and the cohort's reported value implies $27.82 per share, matching the June 30 close exactly.
Lens 2: institutions — 774 filers, shares up 19.80%
Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the June quarter was broad accumulation. At June 30, 2026, 774 institutions reported positions, up 20 from 754 at March 31 (+2.65%), and 765 reported long positions. Reported shares rose 19.80%, from 396,527,045 to 475,033,828 shares — 78,506,783 more shares than the prior quarter. Reported aggregate value rose 23.67% to $13,664,980,037; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $28.77, sits 3.4% above the June 30 close of $27.82. Set the two 13F lenses side by side and they disagree about intensity: the full market's share count grew 19.80% while the tracked cohort's grew 3.73% — and the cohort's growth is one manager's increase, partly offset by an exit. The broad register did the accumulating this quarter; the famous names mostly watched.
Lens 3: the 5% register — eleven filings, and BlackRock's row nearly doubled
Our full parse holds eleven SC 13D/G filings for Toast — two SC 13G originals and nine SC 13G/A amendments, eight reporting persons on a row basis, the most recent filed July 30, 2026, and no SC 13D originals at all. The largest current chain belongs to BlackRock: 24,642,345 shares (5.0%) as of March 31, 2025, then 26,014,515 shares (5.1%) as of December 31, 2025, then 26,126,285 shares (4.98%) as of March 31, 2026, then 47,877,343 shares (9.3%) as of June 30, 2026 — the register's latest filing, submitted July 30, 2026, and its maximum percentage. Technology Investment Dining Group printed 32,728,056 shares (6.35%) as of September 30, 2025, then 22,376,653 shares (4.34%) as of March 31, 2026. Capital International Investors printed 30,741,881 shares (5.9%) as of March 31, 2026. The older rows include FMR LLC and Abigail P. Johnson jointly reporting 30,595,784.07 shares (6.5%) as of December 31, 2024 in a single filing — one row, counted once — Stephen Fredette at 30,618,437 shares (5.9%) as of the same date, and T. Rowe Price Associates at 19,963,523 shares (4.2%). The Vanguard Group's only row in this register is 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026. We report rows as filed and never sum them: the aggregation's total across these rows would add different dates together and present a history as if it were a register total.
Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the parsed record, $121,019,847.57 of sales
The parsed Form 4 record holds 169 filings through October 2, 2026. Across it, open-market purchases total zero transactions — zero shares, $0, no buyers at all. Against that stand 141 sales totalling 3,175,008 shares and $121,019,847.57, by eleven sellers, 127 of them recorded as officer sales. The last year holds the same shape: zero purchases against 56 sales of 844,566 shares for $28,042,508.77 by eight sellers, 54 of them recorded as officer sales. The last 90 days hold 26 sales of 536,001 shares for $18,587,024.54 by six sellers across 19 filings — every one of the 26 recorded as an officer sale, and still no purchases. Our site's insider aggregate, compiled as of October 11 over its own 90-day window, reads the same direction — zero purchases, 20 sales, $17,104,363.56, four sellers, no last-buy date — and differs from the full parse's 90-day figures (26 sales, $18,587,024.54 through October 2) because the windows and aggregation differ; we headline the full parse and print both in the methodology rather than implying they are one number. The October headlines about executive sales sit on top of this record; the record itself is older and wider than any one seller — eleven sellers, no buyers, across the whole coverage. We assign no motives to any of it; the record's shape is the fact.
Lens 5: Congress — one House purchase, no Senate record
Across the congressional record we maintain (combined record as of October 3, 2026), Toast shows one member, one purchase transaction and no sales, with the most recent purchase dated July 8, 2026 and the member's party recorded as R. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries the same record — one member, one purchase, no sales — so the combined record's only content is the House record. The Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no Toast row. Congressional disclosures report value ranges rather than exact amounts, so this lens records direction and counts only — and here, unusually for this series, the direction is a purchase: the only buying anywhere in this audit's insider-adjacent lenses comes from the congressional register, not from the company's own insiders.
Lens 6: short interest — 31,632,064 shares, down 28.5% from a record set at quarter-end
FINRA's files carry the borrow across 120 settlements, from September 30, 2021. As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent settlement — 31,632,064 Toast shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 4.34, up 10.35% from the prior settlement. Against the fundamentals file's 582,000,000 shares outstanding, that is 5.44% of the share count. The striking print is where the series peaked: its maximum is 44,226,608 shares at the June 30, 2026 settlement — the borrow set its record on the same date the 13F lenses snapshot, and has since fallen 28.5% to the latest reading. Year over year the latest reading is down only 3.8% from 32,881,043 shares on September 15, 2025, so the shape is a spike into quarter-end followed by a step down, not a long decline. The first reading in the series, 2,589,778 shares on September 30, 2021, is also its minimum.
The recent settlements run 40,780,362 on July 15, then 34,304,036, 31,347,780, 28,664,413 and 31,632,064 — a borrow stepping down from its quarter-end record through the summer before an uptick in the latest print. Set beside Lens 2, the quarter's geometry is two-sided: reported institutional shares rose 19.80% in the June quarter while the borrow climbed to its record on the quarter's final settlement date, then receded.
The gap, stated plainly
The registers describe a company the retail conversation found again in October, months after its institutions had moved. The tracked superinvestors held 14,144,983 shares at June 30 — two holders, of which ValueAct's 14,134,038 shares are 99.9%, after Alta Fox exited and Pzena arrived with 10,945 shares — having grown 3.73% in a quarter when the price rose 4.9%. The full market moved far faster: 774 filers, up 20, holding 475,033,828 reported shares, up 78,506,783. The 5% register printed eleven filings: BlackRock's row rose to 9.3%, Technology Investment Dining Group's eased from 6.35% to 4.34%, and Vanguard's only row is zero. Insiders, across 169 parsed filings, have recorded no open-market purchase at all — zero — against $121,019,847.57 of sales by eleven sellers, $18,587,024.54 of it in the last 90 days. Congress registers a single House purchase dated July 8, 2026 and nothing in the Senate. And the borrow, at 31,632,064 shares, is 28.5% below a record it set on June 30 itself. One plausible reading is that the registers run on different clocks and different mandates: the broad market spent the June quarter accumulating a stock its tracked-fund register barely changed, its own insiders have only ever sold in the parsed record, short sellers crowded in to a record at quarter-end and then stepped back, and the one purchase in the insider-adjacent lenses came from a member of Congress. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right.
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 14,144,983 shares at June 30 across two holders, 99.9% of it one manager's. Whether ValueAct's 14,134,038-share position grows, holds or disappears is the whole lens; whether Pzena's 10,945-share entry becomes a position is the rest of it.
- 2. A first insider purchase in the parsed record. The record holds zero open-market purchases across 169 filings, against 141 sales. Any P-code print — one buyer, any size — would break the record's single direction; continued sales would extend a run already at $121,019,847.57.
- 3. Whether the full market keeps outpacing the cohort. The broad register added 78,506,783 reported shares in the June quarter against the cohort's net +509,245. A second such quarter would widen the split; a cohort-led quarter would close it.
- 4. Whether the borrow returns to its record. Short interest peaked at 44,226,608 shares on the June 30, 2026 settlement and fell 28.5% by September 15. A return toward that peak would change this lens's direction; a fall back toward the year-ago 32,881,043 area and below would extend the step-down.
- 5. A second congressional print. The congressional register holds one House purchase and no Senate record. A follow-on purchase, a first sale, or a first Senate row would each give this lens a second data point.
Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock held by two of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 14,144,983 shares, 99.9% of it ValueAct's, after a 3.73% one-quarter increase in which one holder exited and one arrived — whose full market added 78,506,783 reported shares in the same quarter, whose insiders have bought nothing in the parsed record against $121,019,847.57 of sales, whose congressional register holds a single House purchase, and whose borrow has fallen 28.5% from a record set on the quarter-end date itself while retail attention returned.
Related reading: Two of 83: Third Point Opened a New Block Position. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #36; Four of 83: Berkshire Hathaway Exited Constellation Brands in Q2, and the Cohort Cut 16.5% — Filing Tape #35; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. Toast's own page: Toast, Inc. (TOST) 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; Toast identified by CUSIP 888787108. Two distinct managers hold long positions totalling 14,144,983 shares; both reported rows are long (no put or call rows); directions are one increased and one new, with no decreased or unchanged rows, and the collection's exit lists contain one row for this CUSIP (Alta Fox Capital Management, 740,300 shares, prior reported value $19,625,353). Quarter-to-quarter cohort totals (13,635,738 shares at March 31 across two filing rows — ValueAct Capital 12,895,438 and Alta Fox 740,300; 14,144,983 shares at June 30 across two filing rows; change +3.73%) are from the site pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis in both quarters, and the pipeline's second-quarter total matches the EDGAR collection's long total exactly (difference of 0 shares and $0), so no collection difference needs reporting for this name. ValueAct's share of the cohort is 99.9% = 14,134,038 / 14,144,983.
- 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; 765 of the 774 reported long positions), and its figures match the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row for 888787108 exactly on holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value. The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (698 and 678, a net of +20 that matches the change in holder count) have no counterpart in the by-CUSIP aggregation, which does not publish them, so this audit does not rely on them. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($13,664,980,037 over 475,033,828 shares) implies ≈$28.77 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $27.82 in our price file, a gap of +3.4%. 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 (169 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 0 across the parsed record (0 shares, $0, no buyers, no officer purchases). Sale transactions total 141 across the record (3,175,008 shares, $121,019,847.57, eleven sellers), 127 of them recorded as officer sales. In the year through October 2, 2026: zero purchases and 56 sales (844,566 shares, $28,042,508.77, eight sellers, 54 of them recorded as officer sales). In the 90 days through October 2, 2026: zero purchases and 26 sales (536,001 shares, $18,587,024.54, six sellers, all 26 recorded as officer sales) across 19 filings. The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 11, 2026, 90-day window) reads zero purchases, 20 sales and $17,104,363.56 with four sellers and an empty last-buy field; its window ends nine days later than the full parse's and its aggregation differs, so its counts are not expected to equal the parse's 90-day figures, and both are printed here rather than blended. "No purchases" in this audit is scoped to this parsed record, whose 169 filings are the coverage stated here.
- 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G aggregation and parsed filings (11 filings matching CUSIP 888787108 and issuer CIK 1650164, eight reporting persons on a row basis: 2 SC 13G originals and 9 SC 13G/A amendments, no SC 13D filings), filings through July 30, 2026. BlackRock's rows (24,642,345 shares at 5.0% as of March 31, 2025; 26,014,515 shares at 5.1% as of December 31, 2025; 26,126,285 shares at 4.98% as of March 31, 2026; 47,877,343 shares at 9.3% as of June 30, 2026, filed July 30, 2026), Technology Investment Dining Group's rows (32,728,056 shares at 6.35% as of September 30, 2025; 22,376,653 shares at 4.34% as of March 31, 2026), Capital International Investors' row (30,741,881 shares at 5.9% as of March 31, 2026), FMR LLC and Abigail P. Johnson's jointly reported row (30,595,784.07 shares at 6.5% as of December 31, 2024, a single filing counted once), Stephen Fredette's row (30,618,437 shares at 5.9% as of December 31, 2024), T. Rowe Price Associates' row (19,963,523 shares at 4.2% as of December 31, 2024) and The Vanguard Group's row (0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 27, 2026) are reported as filed. No rows are summed, because the aggregation's totalSharesReported field (322,280,606.14 shares) adds 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 — one member, one purchase transaction, no sales, most recent purchase July 8, 2026, party recorded as R. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries the identical record, and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no TOST row. Congressional disclosures report value ranges, so this lens records direction and counts only.
- Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers 120 settlements from September 30, 2021 (2,589,778 shares, also the series minimum) to September 15, 2026. The maximum of the series is 44,226,608 shares on June 30, 2026, so the latest reading of 31,632,064 shares on September 15, 2026 sits 28.5% below the peak ((31,632,064 / 44,226,608) − 1) and 3.8% below the September 15, 2025 reading of 32,881,043; the change from the prior settlement (28,664,413 shares on August 31, 2026) is +10.35%. The latest row's prior-settlement field (28,664,413) matches the prior settlement file's reported figure exactly. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact. The share-count ratio (5.44%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
- Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries Toast's revenue of $6,153,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025, its net income of $342,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025, and its assets of $3,145,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025 — all three fields carry the same fiscal year in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 582,000,000 (as of December 31, 2025, sourced in the file to a weighted-average basic share count) and a file-computed market value of $17,605,500,000. The file's price for the name is $30.25 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $29.79, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
- Prices: our own daily-close file for Toast through October 2, 2026 ($29.79 close, −16.1% year to date on that file; 252-session closing high $39.02 on November 5, 2025; 252-session closing low $22.33 on May 13, 2026; closes of $26.51 at March 31, 2026 and $27.82 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +4.9%; change from June 30 to October 2 of +7.1% ((29.79 / 27.82) − 1)). The drawdown from the 252-session closing high is −23.7%, and the latest close sits +33.4% above the 252-session closing low ((29.79 / 22.33) − 1).
- Market context sources: AltIndex's meme-stock list as updated on the afternoon of October 10, 2026 (Toast twelfth by Reddit mentions over the prior 24 hours, 29 mentions, up 190%, bullish sentiment flag), checked October 11, 2026; the run of October 2026 insider-sale reports covering the October 2, 2026 sales by president Stephen Fredette and chief revenue officer Jonathan Vassil, as carried by multiple financial outlets in the week to October 10, 2026 and checked October 11, 2026, summarised in our own words; and the analyst backdrop aggregated by StockAnalysis (30 analysts, Buy consensus, average price target of $38.92; Goldman Sachs maintaining a Buy rating with a $37 target on October 7, 2026), checked October 11, 2026. Figures we could not confirm against two sources were left out.
- Toast is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: Toast, Inc. (TOST) stock page. Series data: tost_lens_data.csv · tost_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Block · Constellation Brands · 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 11, 2026: first publication.