D E Shaw & Co Inc Rotates From AI High-Flyers Into Banks, Health Care

The biggest buys table makes one thing clear: they are not backing away from AI or the consumer; they’re changing which pieces they own. Broadcom up 127.0% to $2.02B and massive increases in Alphabet, Intel, ASML and Seagate show a pivot from single marquee GPUs toward the broader infrastructure stack that actually moves bits and data.

On the macro side, they are building a bona fide financials book. JPMorgan is up 724.8% to $1.02B, Citigroup up 420.1% to $603.7M, American Express up 4253.2% to $599.6M, and SoFi up 10.3% to $678.4M, turning finance from a token 2.06% to 6.41% of the top-50. This is a classic late-cycle expression: own the best-capitalized banks and fee machines rather than index financials.

Health care is the other big swing. Boston Scientific is doubled (up 116.1% to $1.53B) despite being down 39.7% vs their cost, while MMM, Eli Lilly and Abbott are all meaningfully increased, taking health care from 5.21% to 9.6%. They’re averaging down and sizing up in medical devices and pharma, signaling a belief that the drawdown is cyclical, not structural.

Consumer cyclicals see selective aggression. Target explodes +851.2% to $957.6M, Home Depot climbs 49.6% to $1.24B, and Las Vegas Sands is up 71.5% to $460.0M, combining a US middle-class spend theme with travel and gaming leverage. Tesla, technically in Industrials but economically a consumer and tech hybrid, is up 87.5% to $1.62B — they want EV optionality without chasing frothier AI multiples.

The sell tape looks more like profit-taking and funding rotation than a macro de-risk. The single most important move is the -86.3% cut in SPY, freeing roughly $3.06B and shrinking "Unclassified" exposure from 8.39% to 1.07%. That’s a conscious choice to stop owning the market and double down on stock selection.

Within tech, they are monetizing the most crowded AI momentum names. Nvidia is trimmed -36.9% (still a hefty $2.56B, up 100.7% vs their cost), AMD is cut -46.0%, and Texas Instruments -42.7%; Western Digital, SanDisk and Palantir all see 40–60% share reductions after spectacular gains, with SanDisk and Bloom Energy showing four-digit and high-triple-digit gains versus cost. They are telling you they prefer Broadcom, Intel, ASML, CrowdStrike, and Google at this stage of the cycle.

The pain trades are where conviction is falling, not rising. Bloom Energy is slashed -52.2%, cutting Energy exposure from 2.82% to 1.26%; this is a clear step away from speculative clean-tech machinery in favor of more proven cash flows. AT&T is down -24.9%, Freeport-McMoRan is cut -29.0%, and trims in Costco, Booking, Ross Stores and Targa Resources indicate they’re willing to fund higher-conviction cyclicals and financials from mature, fully valued franchises.

The sector bar chart shows evolution, not revolution. Technology remains the core at 51.35%, barely down from 52.03%, but under the hood the profile is very different: less Nvidia/AMD/WDC/PLTR, more Broadcom, Alphabet (via both GOOGL and GOOG), Intel, ASML, Seagate, CrowdStrike, and SAP. They are essentially rotating from the AI billboard names into the supply chain and cybersecurity plumbing that will monetize AI over a longer arc.

The real shift is the build-out of non-tech growth pillars. Finance jumps from 2.06% to 6.41% as JPMorgan, Citigroup, American Express, and SoFi are scaled; Health care nearly doubles from 5.21% to 9.6% as Boston Scientific, Insmed, MMM, Lilly and Abbott are all expanded. Consumer Discretionary inches up from 13.15% to 14.11% via Target, Home Depot, Las Vegas Sands and Sherwin-Williams, signaling a controlled but real bet on discretionary demand.

Meanwhile, risk capital is drained from more speculative or less differentiated segments. Energy falls from 2.82% to 1.26% almost entirely via the Bloom Energy cut; Utilities (really midstream like Targa and Cheniere) edge down; Basic Materials (Freeport) dips; Telecommunications (AT&T) shrinks from 2.06% to 1.44%. The disappearance of SPY as an 8%+ sleeve and the rise of Real Estate-labeled payment networks (Visa, Mastercard) from 1.85% to 2.78% underscore the story: less index, more fee-based, oligopolistic franchises.

Put together, this is a manager leaning into dispersion. They are still running a tech-heavy book, but they’ve deliberately shifted from a "buy everything AI" posture to a barbelled structure of durable growth and cycle-sensitive cash flows. On one end: Broadcom, Alphabet, Intel, ASML, CrowdStrike, and high-ROIC semis/storage plays; on the other: JPMorgan, Citi, AmEx, Target, Home Depot, Las Vegas Sands, and the health care complex.

The aggressive Boston Scientific, MMM and Abbott adds at losses show a willingness to be early in health care normalization. The huge step-up in banks and card networks — while SPY gets liquidated — says they want to pick their own winners in a world of higher-for-longer rates and regulatory churn.

Trims in Bloom Energy, Palantir, Western Digital, AMD and Nvidia look less like a call that AI or clean tech is "over" and more like a recognition that the easy multiple expansion is behind them. D E Shaw is rotating into names with more diversified earnings engines and less binary outcomes. If volatility stays elevated and leadership broadens beyond a handful of mega-cap AI stories, this portfolio is positioned to monetize stock-level alpha rather than ride the index.