According to Yahoo! Finance, the third quarter of 2020 saw the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS Ohio) wash its hands of a significant amount of Tesla Inc. and Apple Inc. stock, and increase its holdings in the General Motors Company and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.- ADR instead.
State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio cut back on Apple and Tesla stock in the third quarter, and bought more shares of GM and Alibaba. https://t.co/eUzwqYBQup
— Barron's (@barronsonline) December 26, 2020
STRS Ohio is one of the largest public pension funds in the U.S., with $80.9 billion USD ($104.1 billion CAD) worth of assets in its managed investment portfolio.
During Q3 2020, the fund sold 41,987 shares of Tesla and 864,478 shares of Apple, after accounting for the 5:1 Tesla stock split and 4:1 Apple stock split back in August.
The pension fund then nabbed 750,442 shares of General Motors, and 46,700 American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. STRS Ohio’s total holdings in the two companies now stand at 2.8 million shares in GM, and 205,434 ADRs for Alibaba.
The decision may come as a surprise to many, as Tesla’s year-to-date (YTD) performance sits at a stellar +669.05% and Apple’s is at +75.75%, whereas GM and Alibaba are only up 11.24% and 1.01% respectively.
Could this simply be the massive pension fund hedging its bets? Even after offloading a substantial chunk of stock, STRS Ohio still holds 316,583 shares in Tesla, and 9.8 million shares in Apple.
