David Tepper Bought When Wall Street Fled, Now He’s Loading up on Puts

David Tepper is a self-made billionaire who started out as an equity analyst at Equibank's treasury department. He was recruited by Goldman Sachs as a credit analyst to help build their high-yield debt division in New York City. He became the head trader within six months.

He snapped up discounted bonds at bargain-basement prices during the October 1987 crash and helped Goldman Sachs survive the turmoil. He left Goldman Sachs in 1992 and launched his own hedge fund the next year, Appaloosa Management. He made contrarian bets on bank stocks in 2009, which made Appaloosa $7 billion and Tepper personally $4 billion.

Tepper's philosophy is going contrarian when the rest of the market panics and sells. This has made him billions and has worked several times. Alongside investing in the market, he also has a multi-billion-dollar sports empire.

Tepper and his colleague Jack Walton opened Appaloosa Management with just $57 million. The fund was up 72% within six months. Appaloosa kept on buying distressed assets through the 1990s and early 2000s, and it was worth over $13 billion in 2010.

• Appaloosa's total 13F holdings: $8.38 billion. This is lower vs. the $13 billion figure in 2010 due to Tepper returning outside capital and running Appaloosa as his personal fund.
• 3-year annualized return (top 20 holdings, weighted): 17.95%.
• Q1 2025 performance: 8.75%.
• Number of holdings: 35.

• Tepper has been cycling in and out of Apple dozens of times.
• His recent moves have been more bearish. He also dumped many other Chinese tech stocks and has instead loaded up on META and GOOG.
• He likely believes Apple is maturing and may underperform vs. other big-cap tech stocks.
• David Tepper is betting $277.66 million against AAPL stock.

• David Tepper is betting massively against SPYX. This index tracks the S&P 500 minus companies with proven coal, oil, or gas reserves.
• This fund is overweight on large-cap tech, consumer, and healthcare.
• SPYX has moved almost in lock-step with the SPY since its inception.
• Tepper has bought 4.5 million put-option contracts worth around $2.5 billion in Q1 2025. This is 30% of his portfolio.

Tepper has been trimming his holdings in tech companies like BABA, PDD, AMZN, JD, MSFT, LYFT, and ORCL. He likely believes that the tech rally is overdone.

He has previously warned about speculation and bullish cycles. The current put position will let him hedge a multiple-compression scenario without dumping his long-term tech longs.

Going bearish on the SPYX may also be due to the current administration being more friendly to fossil fuel companies.

David Tepper likely believes that mega-cap tech stocks may be due for a downturn. Energy and utility stocks are trading at relatively cheaper prices as the Federal Reserve continues to be restrictive. As such, he has kept holding some tech stocks and has also expanded his holdings in GOOG and META. But he's hedging his bullish bets with the SPYX put, just in case.