Tiger-cub hedge fund Coatue slashes big Tesla bet, doubles down on chip stocks

Coatue Management's Philippe Laffont trimmed his big Tesla holding in the third quarter, while ramping up his exposure to semiconductor stocks. The so-called Tiger Cub reduced his stake in Elon Musk's EV company by 16% to $940 million bet at the end of September, according to a regulatory filing. Tesla was still Coatue's biggest holding at the time of filing. The stock has shed 27% in the fourth quarter partly because Musk has been selling billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to fund his acquisition of Twitter. The hedge fund significantly added to its Nvidia holding, making it the fifth-largest bet at the end of the third quarter, the filing showed. After a rough first half of the year, the chipmaker roared back in the fourth quarter with shares rising 34%. Nvidia is set to report third-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Coatue also built new stakes in a slew of other semiconductor names, including AMD , Applied Materials , ASML Holding , Lam Research and NXP Semiconductors . The semiconductor industry has taken a hit this year amid heightened tensions between U.S. and China. Earlier this year, Washington curbed China's access to American technology, which added uncertainty to the industry already grappling with the boom-and-bust of semiconductor demand. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) is down more than 30% this year. Coatue kept its big Moderna holding unchanged in the third quarter. The pharmaceutical company — a pandemic winner for its development of a Covid vaccine — staged a big comeback in the current quarter, up 51% so far, after being under pressure all year. The hedge fund's other top holdings included Rivian , Uber, PayPal , Amazon and Disney at the end of the third quarter.