David Tepper put his money behind his mouth

Credit to David Tepper.

Whenever someone goes on TV like he did in late September to pump stocks it raises some red flags. We are seeing some very dubious promotions in crypto lately and the stock market has a long history of the same.

He went on CNBC on September 26 and talked about Chinese stimulus and a whole turn in the market.

On what to buy in China, he didn’t discriminate.

“Everything,” he says. “ETFs, I would do futures – everything. Everything.”

That helped to fuel gains in the following week but by year-end that call was underwater. That raised questions about whether Tepper used his pump to dump his positions.

He didn’t.

He filed his 13F today ahead of Friday’s deadline and it shows he didn’t sell any China shares, and in fact was a buyer in Q4 as he added while selling US shares. His position in Alibaba Group is by far his largest holding and is now valued at more than $1 billion.

Other positions he increased (or established) not shown here were:

• ASML
• NRG
• UBER
• EXE
• GLW

Now it’s not exactly a time to take a victory lap for Tepper as you can buy Alibaba for nearly the exact same price where he was touting it in September. China ETFs like FXI, KWEB and MCHI are also at approximately the same levels.

I do like the conviction though and I made a case for buying China in January. It’s had a nice run since then and analysts at Goldman Sachs and Deutche Bank are buying into the theme with some very bullish calls themselves.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.