well you might have seen recently that Michael Barry is back in the news and that is because he has just released his latest 13 F filing giving us a peak behind the curtain as to what he's doing with his own stock portfolio and while Michael bar definitely can chop and change a lot from quarter to quarter making it difficult to take away any strong themes in what he's thinking well in this 13f things were a little bit different with two prominent themes emerging so what on Earth is going on with the big short investors portfolio well having a look to the changes in his portfolio there was as usual a lot of chopping and changing he sold out of 14 stocks including Google Amazon Oracle and more he added to 11 positions and then of note he bought five new stocks entirely and that's where the first big story emerges because one of these stocks is in fact sprot physical gold trust in q1 he bought over 440,000 shares representing 7.37% of his us portfolio and this is super interesting because as the name suggests this is an investment in physical gold specifically Sprout is a closed end fund that holds Assets in physical gold bullion but with gold prices at practically all-time highs and the price of Sprout's gold funds similarly touching all-time highs during q1 which is when Barry bought it on face value it seems odd that bar would be so Keen to get in he is after all a value-minded investor but gold as we know is an interesting commodity gold is a commodity that investors flock to in anticipation of economic uncertainty and particularly in anticipation of inflation both factors of which we know Michael bar is acutely aware of in fact Bar's investment in sprot physical gold trust does align with his now longstanding concern about economic instability and Market volatility it's no secret that bar has been quite wary of economic conditions over the past few years as was evidenced back in his tweeting era and I can't imagine his stance has changed at all over the past year or so gold has historically been a safe haven asset during times of economic uncertainty providing a hedge against potential Market downturns as we can see here the price of gold spiked back in the Great Depression skyrocketed back in the 70s for a reason we'll discuss in a second it also spiked up coming out of the tech bubble and particularly after the 2008 Global financial crisis and more recently it also spiked around the time of Co historically it has been viewed as that safe haven against economic storms and while that is mostly psychologically driven the trend certainly still exists and Michael Barry is seemingly jumping in hoping the uptrend we've seen in Gold since October last year continues with all that's happening in the world from tariffs and elections to Wars supply chain disruptions and inflation and that leads us to the other reason Beyond economic downturns that investors like to flood into gold and it's a similar argument to what the crypto folks argue that it's a hedge against the debasement of a currency and it's a hedge against inflation now I don't have to tell you guys that over the last few years we've seen some enormous sums of money printed and we've seen that lead to some quite high levels of inflation it's no Zimbabwe but 9% for the United States was pretty bad and the thinking of investors during these times is to convert their hard-earned cash into something like gold or as it's been argued more recently cryptocurrency because it's a more finite resource and the value can't be eroded in the same way that a currency like the US dollar can be so that's why you saw a lot of chatter about crypto and gold while the Federal Reserve was printing a lot of money a few years back and when inflation was really hot but here's the thing inflation has cooled considerably since then and the Federal Reserve is no longer printing more USD in fact since mid 2022 they've been lowering the money supply so why is Barry buying gold now well it's a Surefire sign that he does not believe inflation has been controlled just like his tweets hinted at a few years ago this move is most certainly an indication that bar believes we are likely to see inflation pick back up causing more investors to flock to Gold causing the already high price to rise again that's the thesis so that's the takeaway from Bar's purchase of sprout physical gold trust but beyond that we also have another big theme from is 13 F hone in on but before we do we need to talk about Internet safety have you ever tried Googling your name or email address I tried to never Google my own name but someone prompted me to do it the other day so I did and it's kind of concerning just just how much data came up it certainly doesn't feel great knowing that sometimes your personal details can leak out for data brakers to pounce on and sell data Breakers sell your information to scammers spammers and anyone else who may want to Target you your full name your email your home addresses your health records your relatives sometimes without you knowing it's all out there and that's why I've been using Aura the sponsor of today's video Aura shows me which data Brokers are selling my information and automatically submits optout requests for me cleaning up my information not only helps reduce the amount of spam that I get but it protects me from the hackers who could use this information to help them access my bank accounts my sensitive information or my personal nightmare fuel someone hacking my YouTube channel I don't know if you saw this but AT&T revealed that over 73 million customer records both existing and former customers were released on the dark web they recommended those affected use strong passwords monitor account activity and consider credit phrases or fraud alerts from credit bureaus well luckily Aura does this all for me and best of all I don't have to download several different apps just because the company couldn't keep my data secure if my info was compromised in the AT&T data breach I can breathe easy because Aura is always on always doing the hard work of keeping my info safe it's definitely worthwhile if you value your privacy you can go to aura.com neww money to start your twoe free trial it's also linked Below in the description and thanks to Aura for sponsoring this video now moving on to Michael Bar's second big theme coming out of of his 13f filing it is his continued purchasing of the Chinese Tech Giants in Q3 of last year Barry bought into both Ali baraba and JD which are both large Chinese e-commerce sites but what surprised investors is that he significantly increased these positions in the following quarter and has now significantly increased the BET once again in fact he added 80% to his JD position and 66% to his Alibaba stake in q1 so in a portfolio that is known for being totally overhauled on a regular basis these two Chinese Tech Giants have now stayed at the top for three straight quarters and in fact Barry has even opened a position in buo this quarter which seems to suggest he's really doubling down on China although it is worth mentioning that his bu bet is considerably small or less than half the size of his Alibaba and JD positions so what's the story here well these three companies are obviously massive companies integral to China's broader economy they're massive Market leaders the companies have amazing competitive positions their products and services are relied on by the masses but the thing is none of these businesses have been doing very well over the last year or two because China's broader economy has been really struggling the stock prices tell you a lot bu do is down 2/3 from their 2021 highs Alibaba is down roughly 70% and JD is much the same down 67% and this has to do with China's broader economy it's been well reported that China's economy went through an extremely sluggish recovery after Co and that's partly because unlike the Western World China opted not to do wild scale stimulus involving printing a lot of money beyond that they've also had big problems in their property sector with property valuations falling and real estate developers going bankrupt and this has fallen onto Chinese citizens who have had to weather the storm by simply tightening the belt and that's shown in the data too this report by McKenzie and Company shows that Chinese citizens are locking their money away in 2023 China finished with Urban unemployment of 5.1% the same as pre pandemic levels inflation was 0.2% consumers saw a rise in their average disposable incomes by 6% but as McKenzie notes consumers preferred to suak their cash away in the bank rather than spend it pushing the savings rate higher the savings rate in China hit 31.7% in 2023 this is propelling the country's total pool of savings to record highs so Chinese consumers are stuck in a rat and the data shows that they have not been spending now this obviously has a flowing effect to businesses as they produce less revenue and less profit and naturally it has really hit their share prices but I don't think anyone is saying this is the end of China right and this is where Bar's thesis comes in there's no doubt these big Chinese Tech businesses are some of the best businesses in the world you have world famous investors like the late Charlie Munga monish P guy spear Howard marks Ray Doo all singing their praises so the overarching thinking is one of proactiveness China will likely return to being a a Powerhouse economy these Chinese businesses are uniquely positioned to capture an incredibly large amount of business thanks to the size of their Market which is over a billion people and also the fact that they more or less block Western competitors access to that market so is it worth establishing a long-term minded position in these businesses now at share prices that have been crunched 60 to 70% and simply wait out the economic storm that's the thesis of many investors right now and it seems to be the thesis of Michael bar as well particularly when you consider two main positions of ad.com and Alibaba which are predominantly e-commerce businesses whose revenues depend greatly on the spending behaviors of the broader population and it's a take which might already be on the right track that report that McKenzie put out a month ago notes that Chinese retail sales in the first two months of 2024 show a healthy year-on-year increase of 5.5% with Goods contributing a 4.6% rise Food Service sales L by 12.5% air passenger numbers soed by 44.4% and even the Auto industry is bouncing back with Auto Sales growing 177% with specifically EVS Rising 37% spending is starting to increase and in all three of Bar's China bets you can see the share prices really ticking up in the past month or so so they are the main two themes of Michael bur's portfolio the bet on gold and also the bet on Chinese Tech however I guess you could make an argument that there is a sneaky third theme as well and that is his cash pile while the 13f doesn't actually tell you anything about cash it does show you the total portfolio value for B this time around it sat at $103 million $488,000 however if you look at prior quarters you can see that that number changes a lot and for someone like Michael Barry this is not because his portfolio returns are extremely volatile it's simply because he's putting money in and pulling money out of the market as he sees fit as you can see while his portfolio value is 103 million now going back a few years at some points that had up to 165 million invested then in the very next quarter he had just 3 million invested I assure you he did not suffer a catastrophic 98.2% loss in one quarter he just pulled his money out of the market so with that said how much money does he actually manage well if we open up his form ADV we can actually see that bar manages around $238 million at least that was the size of his fund at the 17th of January this year so that represents a potential cash position of 56% and that high cash level is consistent with most quarters going back in the last few years what does this tell us well it shows us that bite him chopping and changing large chunks of his portfolio and us being alerted that he's just added to 11 stocks and he's bought into another five in reality he isn't finding that many significant opportunities in the market right now remember back when he bet against the housing market in the mid 2000s he had one massive bet because he saw that as such a big opportunity that he needed to go all in on it he must have been pretty confident this thing was going to blow up we had a giant bet for us and and I was extremely confident in the outcome we made 725 million I think on the funds in 2007 and in the first 6 months of 2008 there was about 730 million in withdrawals perhaps I had made the trade too big for the fund and my my confidence in the trade had uh ticked off some people and when you understand that he is willing to bet heavily when the time comes it kind of makes sense that even these 789 million positions at the top end of his portfolio are not really all that significant JD is the top stock in his us portfolio right now worth $99.86 million but compared to an estimated fund size of 238 million it's only 4% so who knows heck maybe he's just sinking all his money into us treasuries at 52% so you really do have to be careful when you read these 13 F fings to try and step back to put together the bigger picture for example we mustn't forget that 13A filings again are just an SEC filing meaning that it only shows us what's in their us portfolio tell is nothing about Bar's potential International Investments so when you zoom out there are definitely limitations to looking at these filings don't get me wrong love looking into them they're extremely helpful but you have to be careful that you understand the full picture while we spoke at length about Ali barabara and JD and B after looking at the complete picture putting all of these Investments together only represents a small percentage of Bar's total assets under management but with that said guys thanks very much for watching hope you still found the video useful if you did please leave a like And subscribe if you would like to learn how to go through the full value investing strategy you can definitely check out new man education down in the description but apart from that guys thanks very much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video [Music] [Music]