- Renaissance Technologies boosted its Tesla stake from 1,400 shares to 3.4 million last quarter.
- The stock purchases lifted the value of RenTech's stake from under $400,000 to over $400 million.
Renaissance Technologies boosted the size of its Tesla bet by more than 1,000-fold last quarter, making Elon Musk's automaker one of its largest holdings.
The quantitative fund owned 1,400 Tesla shares worth less than $400,000 at the end of September. It ramped up its wager to 3.4 million shares valued at $419 million by December 31, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed on Monday.
Tesla stock plunged by 55% in the fourth quarter of last year, as investors feared surging interest rates and a looming recession would hammer demand for electric vehicles.
However, it has rallied 80% since the start of January, reflecting growing hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this year, and the US economy will escape a severe recession.
Assuming RenTech hasn't touched its Tesla stake in the past six weeks, it was valued at $663 million as of Monday's close.
RenTech, one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in history, was founded by Jim Simons, a former NSA codebreaker and MIT math professor. It leans on algorithms to decide many of its trades, leading to significant changes to its stock portfolio every quarter.
Simons' fund counted Tesla as its number-two holding as recently as March last year, when it owned a $1.2 billion stake in the carmaker. It slashed the position to almost nothing over the next six months. But it appears to have warmed to the stock again, and counted it among its 20 biggest positions at the end of December.
RenTech made other striking changes to its portfolio last quarter. For example, it nearly quadrupled its Amazon stake to 11.3 million shares, giving it a $953 million stake in the e-commerce titan at the end of the period.
It also bolstered its Apple position by more than five-fold to 7.1 million shares, worth $922 million as of December 30.
Amazon and Apple were its second- and third-largest holdings at the end of the quarter, while pharmaceutical giant Novo-Nordisk remained its top position.
The overall value of RenTech's portfolio rose by 3.4% to $73.1 billion last quarter. However, it's worth noting that these types of regulatory filings only provide a snapshot of a fund's holdings on a specific data. They also exclude shares sold short, private investments, and overseas bets.