{"id":4929,"date":"2026-05-25T15:17:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=4929"},"modified":"2026-05-25T15:17:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:17:56","slug":"why-46-of-bill-gates-fund-is-now-concentrated-in-just-2-stocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=4929","title":{"rendered":"Why 46% of Bill Gates\u2019 fund is now concentrated in just 2 stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bill Gates built one of the world\u2019s most valuable software companies, and yet the trust that funds his foundation no longer owns a single Microsoft share.<\/p>\n

That sounds dramatic, but the more revealing detail is what remains inside the Gates Foundation Trust: a public equity portfolio of roughly $33 billion, with about 46% now sitting in just two stocks: Berkshire Hathaway and Waste Management.<\/p>\n

It is an odd-looking pair at first glance, as one is Warren Buffett\u2019s conglomerate, while the other collects rubbish.<\/p>\n

But, together they say a lot about how Gates\u2019 philanthropic machine is being run.<\/p>\n

Exit that was not a vote of no confidence<\/h2>\n

The Microsoft sale is the headline, but it should not be read as a break with the company Gates founded.<\/p>\n

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust sold its remaining 7.7 million Microsoft shares in the first quarter of 2026, completing a phased exit from a position that, a year earlier, had still been worth billions.<\/p>\n

The latest 13F filing shows Microsoft at zero, after a full sell-down of the remaining stake.<\/p>\n

That is striking because Microsoft has long been the emotional centre of the Gates story. But this was a trust-level portfolio decision, not a personal repudiation.<\/p>\n

Gates himself still owns about 103 million Microsoft shares, worth roughly $43 billion, according to market data cited by The Motley Fool.<\/p>\n

The better way to understand the move is as a liquidity and risk-management decision.<\/p>\n

As one market commentary put it, the trust was behaving \u201clike a portfolio manager, not a founder\u201d.<\/p>\n

That distinction matters as the foundation is no longer being run as a permanent institution that can simply sit on concentrated positions forever.<\/p>\n

Gates said last year that the foundation expects to spend more than $200 billion between now and 2045, when it plans to wind down.<\/p>\n

Buffett\u2019s gift that keeps on giving<\/h2>\n

The largest remaining holding is Berkshire Hathaway<\/a>, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the portfolio at current prices.<\/p>\n

Warren Buffett has been donating Berkshire shares to the Gates Foundation for years, and the foundation says its endowment has been funded by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Buffett.<\/p>\n

Bill Gates is the trustee of the foundation trust, while Cascade Asset Management manages the endowment.<\/p>\n

Buffett\u2019s giving also comes with a practical consequence.<\/p>\n

The foundation has been required to spend the value of its annual gift, plus an additional amount tied to its remaining assets.<\/p>\n

In plain English, Berkshire keeps flowing in, while the foundation must keep money flowing out, and that creates a natural churn inside the portfolio.<\/p>\n

Berkshire also fits the trust\u2019s current job as it is diversified, cash-generative and built around businesses that are not dependent on one technology cycle.<\/p>\n

Under new chief executive Greg Abel, Berkshire produced solid first-quarter results, and its shares have recently traded at about 1.4 times book value, near the lower end of their recent range.<\/p>\n

Why a trash company is the quiet compounder<\/h2>\n

The second major holding is WM.<\/p>\n

It is less glamorous than Microsoft, but accounts for about 18% of the trust\u2019s public equity portfolio, and it has been held for decades with relatively little turnover.<\/p>\n

The investment case is simple as WM owns or operates the largest landfill network in the US and Canada, with 262 landfill sites, according to its annual report.<\/p>\n

That infrastructure is difficult to replicate as permits are hard to obtain, local opposition is common, and smaller haulers often need access to large disposal networks.<\/p>\n

That gives WM scale, pricing power and a business model that tends to hold up even when the economy slows.<\/p>\n

Motley Fool analyst Adam Levy<\/a> described it as \u201ca boring business with a seemingly insurmountable competitive moat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Why 46% of Bill Gates\u2019 fund is now concentrated in just 2 stocks<\/a> appeared first on Invezz<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Gates built one of the world\u2019s most valuable software companies, and yet the trust that funds his foundation no longer owns a single Microsoft share.That sounds dramatic, but the more revealing detail is what remains inside the Gates Foundation Trust: a public equity portfolio of roughly $33 billion, with about 46% now sitting in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}