The Masters Tournament last week had some of the world’s wealthiest people watching closely. But this year, their attention was split between the golf swings and the market swings.
Trump paused the tariffs, and one of the biggest single-day rallies on Wall Street ensued. But the thing about euphoria is that it’s often short-lived – just ask anyone who’s ever walked off a festival stage... or impulse-bought a jet ski. Sure enough, stocks fizzled again after that, and spontaneous buys seemed less appealing.
Meanwhile, a very specific cohort was just as concerned with landing in the green – but more literally. We’re talking about the veteran golfers in this year’s Masters Tournament, held as usual at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
You might not be as interested in the sport as you are in the members of this particular golf club. It’s an exclusive club packed with billionaires, including legacy investors like Berkshire Hathaway ($BRK.B) chief Warren Buffett and Stanley Druckenmiller. What can their own plays tell us?
Druckenmiller had an average annual return of 30% over three decades at Duquesne Capital Management, without a single losing year. When he closed the fund in 2010, he said golf was the ‘real reason’ for his retirement. Lucky for us, he still manages Duquesne Family Office and we can see what he added to his portfolio last quarter.
He landed a birdie with his biggest position: pharmaceutical firm Natera ($NTRA), which managed a 15% gain in a volatile week. But some of his biggest Q4 buys, like Skechers ($SKX) and United Airlines ($UAL), have seen big declines from the prices he acquired them at.
Buffett’s US$1.2b bet on Constellation Brands ($STZ) last quarter might also look like a bogey now, but out of the world’s ten richest people, he’s the only one who managed to increase his net worth during last week’s market downturn. His top holding? Still US$75b worth of Apple ($AAPL) despite some major trimming last year. Now exempt from an additional 125% tariff on Chinese imports, Apple makes up 28% of Berkshire’s portfolio.
Finally, we’ve got to check in on Ray Dalio’s portfolio. He’s not an Augusta member, but he did start out as a golf caddy, long before he founded Bridgewater Associates. Also more relatable are his investment choices. His biggest position is in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF ($SPY) (never mind that it’s a US$4.82b position, most of it added last quarter).
Dalio is also quite partial to big tech, although his second biggest buy and best performer from Q4 was telecom giant AT&T ($T): shares are up 24% from Bridgewater’s average buy price. But much like the wider market, he’s stuck in a sand trap with PayPal ($PYPL) and Adobe ($ADBE) – two large additions that have gone down over 20% since acquired.
Even masters of the stock market universe are taking portfolio hits amid tariff turmoil. Whether it's golf or investing, the real pros know: playing the long game means knowing when to swing hard, and when to just keep walking the course.
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