Every quarter hedge funds managers tell the regulators or the US Securities and Exchange Commission what they have been trading. The form is known as 13F and is released to the public 45 days after the quarter. This means the managers could have changed their positions but the disclosures allows the public to see what values hedge fund managers saw or did not see.

In Mid August David Randall of Reuters went through the holdings and wrote an article called US Hedge funds shed health-care stocks. The news at the time was the health care bill to change the Affordable Health Care Act was not passed. This is why politics matter, when politicians do not do what they say they will, stock prices are affected one way or another. Jana Partners , Third Point sold large positions of their health care portfolio.

Jana and Third Point also sold energy stocks, and increased their holdings in technology favorites FAANG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.

Jana was holding a large position in Whole Foods (23.3 million shares) and cashed out to Amazon as it was acquired.

Warren Buffett bought more of Synchrony Financial – formerly GE Financial.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, hedge funds by their nature need to do a considerable amount of trading and to make money need to take large positions and hopefully sell higher. If your portfolio is a little less, then you do not need to do a considerable amount of trading, buying and monitoring is good enough. If you own a dividend company, your decision to trade can be is the dividend safe? if yes, then hold. If no, what are the alternatives on your list to consider.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.