We’ll also look at its garbage pile at the bottom. These folks don’t even pretend to be stock pickers. They buy and let it stick till it falls off on its own.
The Swiss National Bank, which filed its disclosure of US stock holdings today with the SEC, has figured out the best money racket of all times. It works because currency speculators are eagerly gobbling up Swiss francs. In January 2015, the SNB started to print Swiss francs ostensibly to depress the value of the CHF, a tiny currency with huge global demand. It then began selling those francs for dollars, euros, and other currencies to buy securities denominated in those currencies. This monetary racket only works as long as there is endless global demand for the tiny currency.....MORE
The SNB doesn’t disclose its holdings of securities. But in the US, it has to disclose its holdings of US-traded stocks via a quarterly 13F filing with the SEC. So we know what US-traded stocks it owns, but this is just a slice of the securities it owns globally.
In its 13F filing today, the SNB revealed that it held 2,520 US-traded stocks and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of foreign companies at the end of the third quarter, of about 3,500 stocks traded in the US. The value of these holdings rose 1.5% during the third quarter to a record of $94.1 billion.
Its portfolio is loaded up with the FANGMAN stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Netflix – with Apple and Microsoft as its largest positions. It also holds a number of ADRs, including ADRs of Chinese companies, such was Weibo, Alibaba (16th largest holding), Baozun, ZTO Express Cayman, and Huazhu Group.
These are the top 20 holdings by dollar value as of the end of the quarter. The SNB holds Alphabet’s Class A and Class B shares, in 5th and 7th position. At $2.47 billion combined, they’re the SNB’s third largest position, ahead of Amazon:....
*****The garbage pile at the bottom.
The good folks at the SNB don’t even pretend to be stock pickers. They apparently go by the motto: Just buy and let it stick till it falls off on its own. So when markets surge, that’s great. But there are also a bunch of collapsed shares in its portfolio. At the garbage pile at the bottom we find:
Mammoth Energy Services [TUSK], an oil and gas driller based in Oklahoma City, is in 2520th position in terms of dollar value. The 13F lists 24,900 shares with a value of $62,000 at the end of the third quarter. At today’s price of $1.38, those shares are down another 44%, to $34,400. The shares had their IPO in October 2016 at $15, then rose to $41 by June last year, before collapsing 97%. One of those IPO miracles, and the SNB bought into it lock, stock, and barrel.....
