Where Smart Money Converges: The Q4 2025 Institutional Consensus Report

Every quarter, thousands of institutional investors reveal their portfolios through mandatory SEC 13F filings. These filings — covering hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and other large investors managing over $100 million — create a unique window into Wall Street's collective thinking.

With 8,541 filings now available for Q4 2025 (covering positions as of December 31, 2025), we've analyzed where institutions are building new positions — securities they didn't hold in Q3 2025 but initiated in Q4. The results reveal clear consensus themes and surprising conviction bets.

The Consensus Scoreboard: Most Popular New Buys

When thousands of independent investors independently decide to buy the same stock, that's not coincidence — it's consensus. Here are the securities that attracted the most new institutional buyers this quarter:

Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon dominate the consensus — each attracting over 4,000 new institutional buyers. This isn't surprising: these mega-caps are portfolio staples. What's more interesting is where consensus emerges in non-obvious names.

Johnson & Johnson drew 3,142 new buyers — notably strong for a company that recently completed its Kenvue separation. Walmart at 2,982 reflects institutional confidence in its e-commerce transformation. And IBM at 2,452 signals a quiet renaissance driven by its enterprise AI pivot.

Follow the Money: Largest New Capital Flows

Buyer count tells one story; dollar volume tells another. A stock can attract few new buyers but massive capital if large allocators are initiating big positions:

Microsoft leads decisively with $263.5 billion in new institutional capital — more than Apple ($219.9B) and Amazon ($169.8B) combined. The standout signal: NVIDIA attracted only 445 new buyers (most institutions already owned it) but pulled in $80.7 billion in new capital, indicating that late entrants are coming in with enormous conviction.

Eli Lilly at $79.5B from 3,034 new buyers stands out as the top healthcare play — GLP-1 drug momentum continues to attract institutional capital at scale. Taiwan Semiconductor ($49.0B from 1,945 buyers) rounds out the semiconductor supply chain theme alongside Broadcom ($32.0B) and NVIDIA.

Sector Breakdown: Where Is the Money Going?

Zooming out from individual stocks to sectors reveals the macro allocation shifts driving institutional portfolios:

Technology dominates at $1.3 trillion — nearly double the second-place Financial Services sector at $666.7B. This isn't just AI hype: it spans cloud infrastructure (MSFT, AMZN), semiconductors (NVDA, TSM, AVGO), and enterprise software (IBM).

The most notable finding: Healthcare at $508.8B has pulled ahead of Consumer Cyclical in new capital flows, driven primarily by Eli Lilly's GLP-1 franchise and biotech activity. Consumer Defensive ($178.2B) and Utilities ($107.4B) reflect a risk-hedging undercurrent beneath the growth story.

The NVIDIA Paradox

NVIDIA's data point deserves its own section. Only 445 institutions newly bought NVDA this quarter — placing it well outside the top 50 by buyer count. Yet it attracted $80.7B in new capital, making it the #4 stock by dollar volume. This creates a fascinating asymmetry:

• Low new buyer count = Most institutions already own it (saturation)
• High capital flow = Late entrants are making outsized bets

This pattern often precedes a stock's transition from "growth discovery" to "core holding" status — where ownership is near-universal but position sizing continues to grow.

The Conviction Signal: Concentrated Bets

The most revealing data isn't in consensus — it's where specific large managers diverge from the crowd with concentrated conviction bets:

Brookfield Asset Management attracted $65.9B in new institutional capital from only 240 new buyers — indicating a small number of very large allocators are making concentrated bets on alternative asset management. Thomson Reuters at $41.8B from only 157 buyers has even higher per-buyer conviction ($266M average per new buyer).

Alphabet at $38.4B from 520 new buyers shows that while most institutions already hold Google, the new entrants are coming in with significant size — an average of $74M per new position.

What's Still Missing

While 8,484 filers have reported, several of the most closely-watched institutional investors have yet to file their Q4 2025 13F. The deadline was February 14, and late filers have 10 additional business days. Still pending:

• Berkshire Hathaway — Warren Buffett's portfolio changes always move markets
• Bridgewater Associates — World's largest hedge fund
• Citadel Advisors — Ken Griffin's multi-strategy giant
• Millennium Management — Israel Englander's platform
• Two Sigma Investments — Quantitative powerhouse
• Pershing Square — Bill Ackman's concentrated portfolio

We'll publish follow-up analysis as these filings become available. Read our filing season preview for context on what to watch.

Methodology

This analysis compares Q4 2025 holdings (report dates October–December 2025) against Q3 2025 holdings for the same filers. A "new buy" is defined as a filer holding a security in Q4 that they did not hold in Q3. For filers with multiple filings in a quarter, we use the latest filing (by filing date, with tie-breakers). ETFs are excluded from the individual stock rankings but included in sector totals where applicable. All data sourced from SEC EDGAR 13F-HR filings processed by 13F Insight.