George Soros's fund: reflexivity, big macro bets and a portfolio of 258 positions
The investor who 'broke the Bank of England' explained why prices and beliefs feed each other. Five quarters of the Soros Fund Management filings, with a lot of options.
Who he is and why people copy him
George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930, and became one of the most famous investors in history through the Quantum Fund, which he founded in 1973. In September 1992 the fund took a very large position against the British pound, which Britain had to let fall out of the European exchange-rate system, and made a profit reported at more than a billion dollars. Since 2011 the firm has been a family office managing Soros's own money and that of his foundations, and it files a Form 13F like other large managers.
Druckenmiller, who ran the Quantum Fund at that time, is the subject of another article in this series.
The ideas behind the portfolio
Soros wrote his philosophy in The Alchemy of Finance (1987) and called it reflexivity. Standard theory assumes that prices reflect fundamentals. Soros argued that the beliefs of investors also change the fundamentals: a rising price makes it easier to borrow and to raise capital, which improves the business, which supports the price, and the loop continues until it breaks. The result is boom and bust, not balance.
The practical rule is to look for the moment when a self-reinforcing trend has gone further than reality can support, and to bet on the reversal, or to ride the trend while it is still working. He also said that the most important thing is how much you make when right and how much you lose when wrong, and that he was always ready to admit a mistake and change.
What a Form 13F does and does not show
The filing lists US-listed shares and options. A macro investor like Soros does most of his trading in currencies, bonds and futures, none of which appear. The options in the list are valued at the shares they cover, so a put on the S&P 500 fund can look like a large position when it is a hedge, and a large reported value does not mean a large bet.
The report is up to 45 days old when published, and a large and active firm can change a position several times within a quarter.
The portfolio over the last five quarters
From June 2025 to June 2026 the reported portfolio went from $7.97 billion to $8.14 billion, and the number of positions grew from 188 to 258. This is the most diversified of the portfolios in this series: the effective number of positions rose from 61.9 to 78.6, and the ten largest are 26.6% of the book.
In June 2025 the top was dominated by hedges: puts on the S&P 500 fund (4.2%), on iShares funds (4.0%) and on the Select Sector funds (2.7%), together with Smurfit Westrock (4.1%) and calls on First Solar (3.4%). A year later the largest are all ordinary shares: Amazon (3.5%), Alphabet (3.4%), TSMC (3.1%), Global Payments (2.7%), Nvidia (2.6%) and Lumentum (2.5%).
Ten largest positions at the end of the latest quarter (2026-06-30) and the same names at the start of the period (2025-06-30), as a share of the US-listed stocks in the report (258 positions, $8.1 billion in total).
| Position | 2026-06-30 | 2025-06-30 |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 3.5% | 1.1% |
| Alphabet | 3.4% | 0.1% |
| TSMC | 3.1% | 0.4% |
| Global Pmts | 2.7% | 2.3% |
| Nvidia | 2.6% | 1.1% |
| Lumentum | 2.5% | 0.2% |
| Electronic Arts | 2.4% | — |
| Bill | 2.2% | — |
| Pg&e | 2.2% | 2.1% |
| Rivian Automotive | 1.9% | 2.3% |
| Ten largest together | 26.6% | 31.1% |
What changed quarter by quarter
In the quarter to September 2025 Amazon grew by 5.9 percentage points to 7.0% and Alphabet by 2.2, while puts on iShares and Select Sector funds and calls on the Invesco QQQ fund were closed. In the quarter to December the book added new puts on a SPDR fund (4.8%), on the Select Sector funds (1.9%) and on CoreWeave (1.4%). In the quarter to March 2026 puts on the S&P 500 fund grew by 7.3 points to 8.5% of the reported book, and Confluent (2.8%) and Spotify (2.6%) were closed.
In the quarter to June 2026 those S&P 500 puts were cut by 7.8 points and the SPDR Series puts (2.4%) were closed, Alphabet grew by 1.5 points, and Super Micro Computer (1.4%), American Electric Power (1.3%) and Nebius (1.1%) were opened, with a put on Nvidia (1.0%). The pattern is a hedge on the S&P 500 fund that was raised in the first quarter of 2026 and cut in the second, around a core of large technology shares.
Changes between consecutive filings. A share is measured as a part of the reported stock portfolio; it can move because of price changes too, so read it together with the text.
| Quarter end | Positions | Opened | Closed | Biggest rise in share | Biggest fall in share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09-30 | 188 → 176 | Invesco ETFs (2.2%), Ford Mtr (2.0%), Vaneck ETF Trust (put) (1.4%) | iShares Trust ETFs (put) (4.0%), Invesco Qqq Tr (call) (2.8%), Select Sector SPDR ETFs (put) (2.7%) | Amazon (+5.9 pp) | First Solar (call) (−3.1 pp) |
| 2025-12-31 | 176 → 233 | SPDR Series Trust (put) (4.8%), Jazz Investments I (2.0%), Select Sector SPDR ETFs (put) (1.9%) | iShares Trust ETFs (call) (3.2%), Ford Mtr (2.0%), Kraneshares Trust (call) (1.4%) | Confluent (+1.5 pp) | Smurfit Westrock (−3.6 pp) |
| 2026-03-31 | 233 → 252 | Linde (1.4%), TSMC (put) (1.4%), H2o America (0.8%) | Confluent (2.8%), Spotify USA (2.6%), Dayforce (1.2%) | SPDR S&P 500 ETF (put) (+7.3 pp) | SPDR Series Trust (put) (−2.4 pp) |
| 2026-06-30 | 252 → 258 | Super Micro Computer (1.4%), American Elec Pwr (1.3%), Nebius (1.1%) | SPDR Series Trust (put) (2.4%), Jazz Investments I (1.7%), Sealed Air (1.3%) | Alphabet (+1.5 pp) | SPDR S&P 500 ETF (put) (−7.8 pp) |
What to take away, and what to doubt
Soros shows two things in the same filing. The reflexivity idea says that the crowd and the fundamentals affect each other, and the book shows a manager who hedges the market when it seems stretched and removes the hedge when the moment passes. The very broad list of 258 names shows that a famous macro investor can also be a diversified stock owner.
As before, we see only a part: no currencies, no bonds, and the options only as shares covered. The most celebrated trade, in 1992, was a macro bet that no stock filing could show. Reflexivity is also hard to test: it is easier to recognise after a boom has ended than to use in advance.
Where it meets our bots
Reflexivity is the logic behind trend-following: if prices rise, they attract more buyers and rise further, until they do not. Our trend bots, the S&P 500 trend bot, the Nasdaq trend bot and the dual momentum bot, follow the loop mechanically. They do not guess where it ends: they leave when the price falls below its long-term average.
All accounts are virtual and public. The guides below explain each rule and its weak points.
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The 200-day moving average strategy on the S&P 500
The golden cross: 50-day and 200-day moving averages
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