RESEARCH — THE FILING TAPE #5

Six of 83: The Superinvestors Hold Little Tesla — and Cut a Third of It in Q2

October 8, 2026

GetCoattail Research — Tesla just beat its delivery consensus, trades near the top of every most-searched list in America, and carries a SpaceX merger rumour on top of a $1.5 trillion market value. We ran it through every filing lens we maintain. The crowds are there. The concentrated money, on the record, mostly is not — and what was there shrank by a third last quarter.

Start with the narrative. On October 2, 2026, Tesla reported third-quarter production of 464,391 vehicles and deliveries of 486,532 — 5.3% above the company-compiled consensus of 461,974, though 2.1% below the 497,099 delivered a year earlier, when buyers rushed to beat an expiring federal tax credit. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 GWh. The stock rose 4.65% on the day to close at $370.59, and retail discussion has since added a second story: chatter about a potential merger with SpaceX, which Baird analysts said could dominate the near-term narrative. Tesla was the fourth most-searched ticker on MarketWatch's list this week — behind only NVIDIA, SpaceX's tracking ticker and Micron — and the second most-searched name on Benzinga Pro for October, behind only the SPY index fund. At the October 6 price of $380.68 in our fundamentals file, the company is worth about $1.50 trillion. Fiscal 2025 revenue was $94.83 billion; net income was $3.79 billion.

Now the filings. GetCoattail tracks the portfolios, trades and disclosures of the investors with the most information about any given company: concentrated superinvestors, institutions as a whole, corporate insiders, members of Congress, and 5% holders. For Tesla — the fifth Filing Tape audit, after IREN, CoreWeave, Micron and NVIDIA — the pattern is close to NVIDIA's mirror image: where NVIDIA had the broadest superinvestor sponsorship in this series, Tesla has close to the least, and the one truly large position on its register belongs to the man who runs the company.

Lens 1: the superinvestors — six names, one real position, a third fewer shares

We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, six held Tesla. Only one holds it in real size: Duan Yongping's H&H International, with 3,380,400 shares worth $1,421,796,240 — 7.44% of its portfolio, and 84.8% of everything the tracked cohort owns in Tesla. Behind H&H, the register thins out fast: Viking Global Investors holds 547,816 shares (0.66% of its portfolio), Greenlea Lane Capital holds 47,390 shares (5.47% of a small portfolio), and Polen Capital, Torray Funds and Matrix Asset Advisors hold 8,974, 1,250 and 494 shares respectively.

The direction matters more than the count. On the pipeline basis we use to compare quarters consistently — the same CUSIP in both quarters' filings — the cohort held 5,968,814 Tesla shares at March 31, 2026 and 3,986,324 at June 30: 33.2% fewer shares, in a quarter when the price rose 13.1%, from a $371.75 close to $420.60 in our price file. Almost the entire decline is one manager: Viking reported 2,493,561 shares in its first-quarter filing and 547,816 in its second-quarter filing — a cut of 78.0%. (Our EDGAR collection labels Viking's second-quarter row "NEW"; its own first-quarter filing shows the position was already there, so we follow the filings — see methodology.) H&H trimmed 0.8%, Greenlea Lane cut 13.4%, Polen added 21.8% to a small position, Torray was unchanged, and Matrix's 494 shares were the only genuinely new entry. Six holders, three reducing — a cohort whose Tesla exposure is now, in practice, one investor's position.

TSLA 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 record through Oct 3, 2026. 13D/G: filings through Jun 17, 2026. Short interest: FINRA biweekly settlement data through Sep 15, 2026. Source: SEC EDGAR; FINRA; GetCoattail collections.

Lens 2: institutions — the opposite direction

Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the picture reverses. At June 30, 2026, 4,287 institutions reported Tesla positions, up from 4,129 at March 31 — a 3.8% increase, in a register that added 2,141 filers and lost 1,983 in the quarter. Reported share counts rose 27.9%, from 1,298,818,082 to 1,661,480,013 shares, and 4,256 filers reported long positions. The dataset's reported aggregate value rose 34.1% to $822,338,604,673; the aggregate includes option rows, so we treat filer and share counts as the reliable series and the dollar figure as reported (see methodology). The broad market added Tesla shares at a clip the concentrated cohort was moving in exactly the opposite direction from — the difference between owning an index weight and choosing a position.

Lens 3: the 5% register — the founder is the register

Five SC 13D/G filings cover Tesla, and all five are 13G — the passive form. There is not one 13D. But Tesla's register has a feature no previous audit in this series has had: the largest reporter is the chief executive himself. Elon Musk reported 717,323,438 shares (20.3%) as of September 30, 2025 and 717,112,739 shares (20.3%) as of April 21, 2026 — and then, in the most recent filing on June 17, 2026, 699,580,882 shares, or 19.9%, as of June 16, 2026: the founder's reported stake below 20% for the first time in this filing set. The only other sized reporter is Vanguard Capital Management at 5.61% (210,796,512 shares, as of March 31, 2026). No outside activist has filed. On this register, the register is the story — and in the latest print it moved down, not up.

Lens 4: insiders — one filing in ninety days, no purchases in a year

In the 90 days through October 2, 2026, Tesla insiders filed exactly one Form 4 report: a single sale transaction of $938,419.17 by one seller. Open-market purchases in the same window: zero.

Widen the window and the purchases do not appear. Over the full year through October 2, 2026, the record shows 17 filings covering 66 sale transactions totalling $87,688,430.14 by four sellers — and zero open-market purchases. The purchases in Tesla's parsed record are real but old and narrow: across all 51 filings there are 26 open-market purchase transactions totalling $1,000,984,274.37, by just two buyers, with 25 of the 26 transactions (and $999,959,042.37 of the value) by officers — every one predating the last twelve months. Our site's separate 90-day insider aggregate matches the full-parse figure exactly: zero buys, one sale, $938,419.17, one seller. Set this beside the previous audit: NVIDIA's insiders sold $967.6 million in ninety days; Tesla's sold less than $1 million — not because they were buying, but because they were barely filing at all. Through a year that carried the stock from a $489.88 closing high (December 16, 2025) to a $298.32 closing low (July 29, 2026) and back to $370.59, nobody inside Tesla has paid market price for a share in at least twelve months.

Lens 5: Congress — one member

Across the Senate and House transaction record we maintain (as of October 3, 2026), one member of Congress has traded Tesla: two purchases and one sale, with the most recent purchase on May 29, 2026. All of it is in the House record, from one party (Democrat); the Senate record shows no Tesla transactions at all. An empty lens is not new in this series — IREN and CoreWeave recorded no congressional trading at all — but among the large, politically visible names audited (NVIDIA had five members, Micron four), one member and three transactions is a strikingly thin record, and with a sample that small, direction is barely a claim. What the lens says is an absence: for one of America's most politically visible companies, the political-money record is nearly empty.

Lens 6: short interest — falling, and small

As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent FINRA settlement date — 68,862,357 Tesla shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 1.72. Against the 3,949,547,394 shares the company most recently reported outstanding, that is 1.74%.

Short interest in TSLA since the 2022 split, September 2022 to September 2026
Chart 2: Shares sold short in TSLA at each FINRA biweekly settlement since the 3-for-1 split settlement, Sep 15, 2022 – Sep 15, 2026 (n = 97 settlements). FINRA figures are as reported at the time and are not split-adjusted, so the series is shown only from the first clean post-split settlement. The series peaked at 107,481,521 shares on Mar 28, 2024. Source: FINRA Equity Short Interest files; GetCoattail collection.

The level is down 20.1% from a year ago (86,213,226 shares at September 15, 2025), down 7.23% from the prior settlement, and 35.9% below the post-split peak of 107,481,521 shares on March 28, 2024. In 2026 the series rose into a June 30 reading of 79,109,257 shares and has since drifted down. For a stock whose valuation is argued about as loudly as any in the market, the borrow is modest and shrinking: the argument, on this record, is not being expressed with short positions either.

The gap, stated plainly

Tesla is the most searched-for story in this series and one of the least held by the cohorts it tracks. The delivery beat is real, and the broad institution count — 4,287 filers holding 27.9% more shares — shows the market's plumbing doing what it does with a $1.5 trillion index constituent. But the concentrated record points the other way at almost every lens: six of 83 tracked superinvestors hold the stock, five in small size, and the cohort cut its share count 33.2% in a rising quarter, led by one holder's 78% cut; insiders filed one report in ninety days and have not bought a share in at least a year; one member of Congress has traded it at all; and the founder's own reported stake slipped from 20.3% to 19.9%. The filings describe a stock the whole market watches, the index owns, and the concentrated holders have been quietly reducing.

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 the market's most-watched stock as broadly indexed, lightly shorted, nearly untouched by Congress and its own insiders — and held, among the concentrated investors we track, by essentially one name.

Related reading: Nineteen of 83: The Superinvestors Own NVIDIA. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #4; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1; 80% Overlap, No Copycat Signal: Congress vs. the Superinvestors. Tesla's own page: Tesla (TSLA) 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

Nineteen of 83: The Superinvestors Own NVIDIA. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.
Nineteen of the 83 superinvestors we track hold NVIDIA — the most in this series — but the cohort cut its aggregate share count 18.9% in the second quarter, insiders sold $967,599,313.46 in 90 days with zero open-market purchases in the entire parsed record, and short interest sits at just 1.22% 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.