Creative Planning's $147.4B 13F: How an RIA Builds Allocation

Creative Planning, the Peter Mallouk-led registered investment advisor headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, filed its 2026Q1 13F on May 12, 2026 (accession 0001540235-26-000003). The disclosed book totals $147.42 billion across 4,753 reported positions — up from $139.71B in 2025Q4 (+5.5% QoQ) and $130.88B in 2025Q3 (+12.6% over two quarters). The growth is part organic (the firm continues to acquire smaller RIAs) and part beta tailwind from the underlying equity allocation.

The interesting feature of the filing is not the dollar number. It is the structure: Creative Planning runs a public-facing asset-allocation playbook visible on the SEC tape. Where a hedge fund's 13F shows positions selected for alpha, an RIA's 13F shows the asset-allocation menu being served to its underlying client base. Read correctly, the filing is a free advertisement for what the industry's largest-by-AUM independent RIA thinks a balanced portfolio looks like.

The Top of the Book Is Almost Entirely ETFs

Eight of the top 10 positions are exchange-traded funds:

iShares Core S&P 500 (IVV) at $15.69B (11.4%) is the single largest position and the US-large-cap core. Vanguard Total Bond Market (BND) at $8.94B (6.5%) is the broad investment-grade fixed-income core. Vanguard Developed Markets (VEA) at $7.72B (5.6%) plus SPDR Portfolio Developed World ex-US (SPDW) at $6.11B (4.4%) cover developed-international equities. SPDR Portfolio S&P 400 Mid-Cap (SPMD) at $5.72B (4.2%) and iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets (IEMG) at $5.42B (3.9%) round out the structural building blocks.

The asset-allocation read is direct: roughly 28% of the book is in equity ETFs covering US large-cap, US mid-cap, developed international, and emerging markets, with another 8.4% in bond ETFs (BND + BSV at $2.93B). That's a multi-asset, indexed, globally-diversified base. Single stock positions like AAPL at $3.08B (2.1%) sit on top of that base as discretionary overweights at the client-portfolio layer, not as macro thesis bets.

Concentration Tells the Allocation Story

The top 10 holdings account for 44.9% of the disclosed book. That's higher than a pure stock-picking hedge fund (which would typically run 40-60%+ concentration) but very different in composition. The high concentration is in the asset-class wrappers, not in individual issuers. The remaining 55.1% across 4,743 positions is the long tail of individual stocks held in separately-managed accounts (SMAs) for clients who want direct equity ownership.

This shape — concentrated at the ETF top, fragmented at the SMA tail — is the structural signature of a multi-thousand-client RIA whose discretionary asset allocation flows through a small number of low-cost ETFs while client-specific stock holdings sit in custodied accounts. It is a different business than an active manager picking 30-40 stocks for a single fund.

The AUM Trajectory and the Underlying Engine

Creative Planning's reported book grew from approximately $130.88B (2025Q3) to $147.42B (2026Q1) — a $16.5B / +12.6% expansion across two quarters. Decomposing that growth:

• Equity beta: ~50-60% of the gain is plausibly attributable to S&P 500 returns over the period applied to the existing equity allocation.
• Net new assets: the remainder reflects continued organic client onboarding plus integration of acquired RIAs. Creative Planning has been one of the most active RIA consolidators of the past five years, and 13F filings reflect aggregated discretionary AUM across the merged entities.

For context against industry-tracked peers, see the institutional signals feed for comparable RIA and wealth-manager filings.

What the Filing Reveals About Industry Trends

Three readable implications from the data:

• Cost-conscious allocation is real. IVV (expense ratio ~3 bp), BND (~3 bp), VEA (~5 bp), SPDW (~3 bp), SPMD (~4 bp) — the lineup is the lowest-cost broad-market exposure available. The book carries effectively zero embedded asset-management fees beyond what Creative Planning charges its clients. An RIA running on a high-fee active mutual fund chassis would look completely different at this scale.
• International + emerging market exposure is structural, not tactical. VEA + SPDW + IEMG combined to roughly $19.2B, or 13.0% of the book. A 13% non-US allocation is consistent with academic optimal-portfolio frameworks (Vanguard's published research recommends 20-40% international) but on the conservative side for a US-domiciled client base. The number is unlikely to move materially quarter-to-quarter — it is built into the model portfolio, not adjusted for short-term sentiment.
• Direct equity ownership is a service feature. The 4,753 reported positions across the long tail of individual stocks are the SMA layer — clients who want direct ownership for tax-loss harvesting, ESG screens, or legacy holdings. That long tail is what differentiates an RIA model from a robo-advisor or pure ETF wrap account. AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, GOOGL all appear at sub-2% weight each in the 13F — they are aggregated SMA positions, not house bets.

What to Watch From Here

Three concrete monitoring anchors:

• Next 13F deadline (45 days after Q2 close = mid-August 2026). Watch BND weight specifically: a shift from 6.5% toward 5% would signal duration shortening in the model portfolio (consistent with a flatter Fed cut path); a move toward 8% would signal duration extension (Fed-cutting bias). Either is a real read on the firm's macro framework, not just market beta.
• IEMG / emerging-markets weight changes. A move from 3.9% to 5%+ would signal active conviction shift toward EM. The current weight is roughly index-aligned, so a deviation matters.
• Any new single-name position crossing $1B (currently AAPL at $3.08B is the largest individual stock). A new single-name above $1B at firm-level disclosure would be either (a) an acquired RIA's pre-existing concentrated position rolling into the consolidated filing, or (b) a deliberate house position. The accession number on the next 13F will tell which.

For the full Creative Planning holdings detail and quarter-over-quarter trajectory, see the filer profile page. The model-portfolio read on this filing is more useful than the headline number — the firm is publishing, quarter after quarter, what it thinks a balanced multi-asset portfolio should look like at $147B of assets.