저자: 미상 · 외국인
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결론: 리루(Li Lu)의 히말라야캐피털이 2026년 1분기 13F에서 은행주(BofA)를 대폭 줄이고 자산경량형 독점기업과 중국 관련 저평가주로 재배치했다는 분석. 1) 포지션 변화: BofA 71.26% 매도(약 740만주, 평균단가 $32.48), 약 3.557억 달러 유동성 확보 후 S&P Global, Moody's, H&R Block, MSCI, Tencent Music 신규 매수. 2) 은행 리스크 논리: 은행은 레버리지와 금리 스프레드 의존도가 높고, 부동산·신용 부실과 만기보유 채권의 미실현 손실 위험이 있다는 주장. 3) 금융 톨부스 기업: S&P·Moody's는 신용평가 시장 95% 이상 점유(NRSRO 규제 장벽), MSCI는 추적오차 비용으로 가격결정력 보유. 무위험 수수료 모델이라는 평가. 4) 음(-)의 자기자본 해석: MSCI(-26.5억 달러), H&R Block(-2,400만 달러)은 대규모 자사주 매입의 회계적 결과이며 파산 신호가 아니라는 주장. MSCI는 Q1 2026에 약 4.14억 달러 자사주 매입. 5) 중국 관련 포지션: PDD(비중 14.71%, 공정가치 대비 45.1% 할인, 현금 약 440억 달러), Tencent Music(48% 급락 시 매수, 총마진 44% 이상, 순현금 약 50억 달러), East West Bancorp(9.26%, 51% 할인, ROE 약 16%)를 지정학적 공포에 의한 과매도로 해석. 6) 핵심 보유: Alphabet 약 45%(ROIC 30.9%, 순현금 810억 달러), Berkshire Hathaway 13.44%, OXY 약 3%(부채 감축), CROX 41% 증액(GAAP 상각에 따른 일시적 ROIC 음수), Apple 0.88%로 축소. 상위 10개 종목 비중 95.59%로 극단적 집중. 7) 예측 발언: 개별 자산의 1~3개월 가격 방향에 대한 명시적 예측은 없음. 장기 가치 관점과 중국 리스크 할인 해소 가능성만 언급. 8) 주의: 영상 말미에 투자 조언이 아니라는 면책 문구 있음.
다듬은 글
You know, when earthquake strikes, it uh it always feels incredibly sudden to the people living right there on the surface. Oh, absolutely. Like everything is totally fine one second and then the next the ground is just fracturing beneath you. But the geologists, I mean, they'll tell you that the tectonic plates were grinding together for years, you know.
Right, building up all that pressure before the break. Exactly. The tension builds up invisibly. And if you know how to read the fault lines, well, the eventual rupture isn't a surprise at all. It's just inevitable. And you know, in the financial markets we obviously don't have seismographs. We wish we did.
Yeah, right. But we do have 13F filings. And when one of the most uh notoriously patient investors in the whole world suddenly starts moving hundreds of millions of dollars away from traditional economic centers. have to pay attention to that data. You certainly do. So, welcome to today's deep dive.
Today, we are looking at the Q1 2026 US 13F filing for Himalaya Capital Management. It's a really fascinating filing to unpack. It is. And for those of you who um might not know the name, the chairman of Himalaya Capital is Li Lu. A legend in his own right. Totally. To put his pedigree into perspective for you, just consider this.
Charlie Munger, you know, one of the premier investing minds in history, chose exactly one outside manager to handle his personal capital. Just one. Yep. And that was Li Lu. I mean, since 1998, Himalaya has compounded capital at around 30% annually. Which is just a staggering multi-decade track record.
I mean, achieving that requires a profound level of discipline. Oh, yeah. You have to be completely willing to ignore the daily noise of the market. So, our mission for this deep dive isn't just to uh rattle off a list of stock tickers that Himalaya bought or sold. Right. Anyone can just read a list.
Exactly. We are going to decode a highly coordinated tactical reallocation inside a $3.2 billion US portfolio. We're basically going to explore how a master of value investing is actively restructuring his capital right now to dodge macroeconomic danger. It's a brilliant look at how, you know, theoretical risk management translates into real-world portfolio architecture in 2026.
It really is. And hey, before we completely unpack this, if you're the kind of listener who wants to go even further down the rabbit hole, um you can access more advanced researches, applications, and our latest published personal intelligent multi-agent deep value intelligence by exploring and joining the deep values.ai community.
Which is a fantastic resource. Definitely. And also, to track total market temperature for yourself as we go through this, welcome to search and download the iOS app Buffet Indicator from the Apple App Store. Yeah, having that broader market context is super helpful when we start analyzing these specific portfolio moves.
So, let's jump in. To really understand what Li Lu is doing right now, you kind of have to understand how his philosophy evolved over time. Right. If you look at early value investing like Benjamin Graham's style, it was very much the cigar butt approach. The classic cigar butt. Yeah, you look on the street for a discarded cigar that has just like one last free puff left in it.
You buy a cheap, distressed, usually pretty ugly assets just to liquidate them for a quick profit. And early in his career, Li Lu actually did a bit of that, you know, in post-Soviet East Asian markets. Right. But working alongside Charlie Munger, well, that shifted his entire paradigm toward what we call wide moat compounders.
So, forget the cigar butt entirely. You just want to buy a phenomenal world-class business at a fair price and, you know, just hold it for decades. Exactly. A business with a massive structural advantage that fiercely protects its profit margins from competition. Which brings us to the biggest shock in this Q1 2026 filing.
Himalaya Capital slashed its holding in Bank of America by 71.26%. Massive cut. They sold over 7.4 million shares. And I have to admit, I was surprised here. I mean, value investors traditionally love large banks. They do, yeah. And Himalaya bought this at an average price of $32.48. It's a cornerstone American institution.
Why liquidate a cornerstone position like that, especially when it's uh trading at a pretty reasonable valuation near its book value? Well, it all comes down to structural vulnerability. Commercial banking in our current macroeconomic environment is an exceptionally capital-heavy enterprise. Let's define that for the listener really quick.
When you say capital-heavy in this context, what are the actual mechanics making it so dangerous? So, to generate a return, a bank like Bank of America requires tremendous leverage. Right. They have to borrow short-term money, which, you know, are your deposits, and then they lend that money out long-term.
So, they're totally reliant on interest rate spreads. Exactly. But more importantly, they carry direct, highly concentrated exposure to the broader economy. Yeah, things go south. Right. If commercial real estate values drop, or if credit defaults spike because consumers are getting squeezed by inflation, those loan losses eat directly into the bank's equity.
They're structurally tied right to that economic fault line we talked about. Precisely. And furthermore, they face this really insidious threat from rising interest rates regarding their hold-to-maturity bond portfolios. Oh, let's break that down because a lot of people hear hold-to-maturity and they assume, well, the money's totally safe because the bank is just going to wait for the bond to pay out.
And in theory, yes, that's true. But think about it like this. If a bank buys a 10-year Treasury yielding 2% and suddenly the market rate jumps to 5%, which is basically what happened. Exactly. The actual market value of that old 2% bond drops significantly. Now, accounting rules do allow banks to hide those unrealized losses, but only if they actually intend to hold the bond to maturity.
But the depositors have a say in that, right? That's the catch. If depositors start pulling their money out to chase higher yields elsewhere, the bank is forced to sell those bonds early. At a steep loss. Exactly, to cover the withdrawals. That dynamic wiped out several regional banks a few years ago.
And while BofA is heavily capitalized, the drag on its profitability is still there. Wow. So, by selling 71% of this position, Li Lu locked in a 53% gain on his $32.48 cost basis. a great trade. Yeah. But, the real story here seems to be that he fundamentally eliminated a huge chunk of systemic macro risk from the portfolio.
He just took his chips off the table. He recognized the structural stress, read the fault line, and walked away before a potential break. So, this sale frees up roughly $355.7 million in liquidity. And here is where the filing gets incredibly interesting to me. Himalaya didn't just, you know, retreat to cash and hide it under the mattress.
No, they redeployed it. Right. They redeployed that 355 million. So, the obvious question is into what? Well, they moved the capital out of the heavy leveraged world of commercial banking and straight into asset-light monopolies. Specifically, they bought into five new franchises, right? S&P Global, Moody's, H&R Block, MSCI, and Tencent Music.
That's the group. I really love looking at this specific group of companies because, to use an analogy, these aren't businesses in the traditional heavy industry sense. No, not at all. They are essentially financial toll booths. If you think of the global economy as a highway, a commercial bank takes on the risk of buying the trucks, financing the cargo, and just hoping the driver doesn't crash.
Right. But, these five companies, they just built a toll booth right across the highway. They take zero risk on the journey itself. They merely collect a fee every single time someone drives past. That's the perfect framework for this. So, let's examine the moats protecting these toll booths, starting with S&P Global and Moody's.
Okay. These two operate as a literal duopoly. They control over 95% of the global credit rating market. 95%. That is effectively total control. How does a company even achieve that level of market dominance without regulators stepping in and breaking them up? Because the regulators actually entrenched the monopoly.
Wait, really? Yeah. It revolves around something called the NRSRO designation, which stands for nationally recognized statistical rating organization. That sounds like a very heavy bureaucratic shield. It's the ultimate shield. Institutional investors, pension funds, and banks are often legally or mandate bound to only hold investment-grade debt.
Okay. And who decides if corporate debt is actually investment-grade? An NRSRO. Exactly. If a corporation wants to issue bonds to raise capital, they have no choice. They must pay S&P or Moody's a substantial fee to rate that debt. So, they don't lend the corporation any money themselves. They take on zero default risk.
Zero. They just collect a fee for grading the paper. Because of this, Moody's generates a return on invested capital of over 22% and free cash flow margins of 33%. That is incredible. And then we look at MSCI, which provides passive index benchmarks. Right. Their moat is built on something a little different.
It's called tracking error risk. Walk us through how tracking error protects them. Okay, so let's say a giant asset manager builds a global ETF based on an MSCI index. Like an emerging markets fund or something. Exactly. Now, if MSCI decides to just raise its licensing fees, the asset manager might get angry, right?
They might try to switch to a cheaper index provider like FTSE. Sure, to save money. But to switch indices, the asset manager would have to buy and sell thousands of underlying stocks to perfectly match the new index weightings. Oh, wow. That sounds messy. It is. That creates huge transaction costs, capital gains taxes for their investors, and a period where the fund's performance detaches from its benchmark.
That's the tracking error. So, it's incredibly risky and expensive to switch. Precisely. So, the asset manager just swallows the fee increase. It creates unshakeable pricing power for MSCI. Okay, Okay, I have to push back here for a second because I am looking at the financial data from our sources and there is a glaring contradiction.
Okay, what are you seeing? So, S&P Global, Moody's, MSCI the business models sound flawless, but looking at the balance sheets, MSCI has negative book equity. Uh, yes. Negative $2.65 billion and H&R Block, another one of these new buys, also has negative book equity to the tune of $24 million. Usually, when liabilities exceed assets and equity goes negative, we are talking about insolvency, covenant defaults, imminent bankruptcy.
How is a negative equity company a safe place for Li Lu to park hundreds of millions of dollars? I love that you flagged that because negative equity in this specific context is not a red flag for bankruptcy at all. No. No, it is actually a quantitative artifact of hyper-efficient capital allocation.
Wait, how does negative equity equal success? That feels counterintuitive. It all comes back to being asset light. Remember, these businesses require almost zero capital expenditure to grow. Right. They don't build factories or buy physical inventory. Exactly. H&R Block generates $838 million in annual operating cash flow just from tax prep software and services.
That is a ton of cash. So, what does management do with a mountain of cash they can't effectively reinvest into the business? They aggressively buy back their own stock. Oh, so they're shrinking the share count. Yes. And when a company buys back its own stock at a high premium to its historical book value, accounting rules dictate that the purchase reduces the equity line on the balance sheet.
I see. Do it aggressively enough for long enough and total equity mathematically turns negative. But the company is perfectly healthy because the cash flow is basically a geyser. Wow. MSCI spent over $414 million just in Q1 2026 alone buying back shares. It's not insolvency, it's hyper-efficient capital return to the remaining shareholders.
That is such a fascinating mechanic. The accounting rules actually make these cash printing machines look technically insolvent on paper. Exactly. Which probably scares off superficial investors who are just running basic screener algorithms, right? Absolutely. It requires a real fundamental understanding of cash dynamics to see the actual value there.
So, we've discussed these unassailable asset-light American monopolies that clearly represent the safety side of the reallocation, but if those toll booths are the safe sunny side of the street, there's another side of this portfolio running directly into a geopolitical storm. I mean, Li Lu remains heavily invested in China-centric platforms and trade finance.
Yes. Is profoundly contrary and safety net. Let's detail these holdings. You have PDD holdings sitting at a massive 14.71% weight. You have the new buy we briefly mentioned, Tencent Music or TME. Yep. And you have East West Bancorp sitting at a 9.26% weight. So, why is a conservative value investor running toward assets that the broader market is currently terrified of?
Because geopolitical fear creates a massive mispricing of fundamental economic assets. Interesting. Let's examine PDD holdings. This is the company behind the consumer to manufacturer or C2M model. How does C2M give them an edge over traditional e-commerce like Amazon? Well, instead of the factory selling to a distributor who then sells to a retailer who then sells to you, PDD's platform connects you directly to the factory floor.
Oh, wow. Bypassing the middleman entirely. Bypassing multiple layers of distribution. So, they offer structurally lower prices. And they are expanding this model globally with the Temu app. Right. Everyone knows Temu now. But right now, because of macro fears over global trade regulations and potential tariffs, PDD is trading at a 45.1% discount to its estimated fair value.
So, it's essentially trading at half price. Exactly. And here is the fundamental reality beneath all that fear. They are sitting on over $44 billion in cash and in holdings with very minimal long-term debt. 44 billion? Yes. And their net income growth reached 61% year-over-year. The underlying business is thriving, but the stock price has just been severely punished by macro narratives.
We see a nearly identical pattern with Tencent Music, actually. The sources show Li Lu initiated this position during a 48% share price panic. Right. The broader market was terrified that ByteDance's competing app, Soda Music, was just going to crush them. The classic tech disruption panic. Yeah. But if you look under the hood, TME operates a dominant platform deeply integrated into the WeChat ecosystem.
Which is ubiquitous in China. Exactly. And unlike a platform like Spotify in the West, which has to pay out the vast majority of its revenue in royalties to record labels. Yeah, the labels take everything. Right. But Tencent Music actually manages its own music labels and relies heavily on social entertainment features.
This structural difference gives them a gross margin of over 44%. Which is vastly superior to Western streaming models. Totally. Plus, they possess nearly $5 billion in net cash. Then there is East West Bancorp, EWBC. And I have to bring this up. We just spent the first segment detailing how Li Lu sold out of Bank of America because commercial banking is structurally dangerous right now.
We did. So, why hold on to nearly $300 million of East West Bancorp? Isn't that just jumping back into the fire? It seems like it, but East West is not your generic commercial bank. They aren't heavily exposed to domestic consumer credit cards or speculative commercial real estate. Okay, so what do they do?
They possess a highly specialized economic moat. They serve as the premier financial bridge between US commercial entities and cross-border Chinese markets. Ah, so it's a very specific niche. A highly lucrative niche. Their clients are heavily vetted commercial enterprises doing complex cross-border trade.
Right. This means their deposit base is fundamentally stickier and much more relationship-driven. That insulates them from the kind of retail bank runs that crush generic banks. That makes sense. Their return on equity approaches 16%. Yet despite this high margin efficiency, the geopolitical cloud over US-China relations means the stock trades at a 51% discount to fair value.
That's wild. What does this all mean for you, the listener, as you evaluate your own investments? I think the core lesson here is really about where a margin of safety truly comes from. Right. Most people assume a stock is safe if the underlying company has zero problems and the financial news is universally positive.
But if the news is universally positive, you are paying an enormous premium for that comfort. Oh, absolutely. True safety is created when a stock price drops so low that the market's expectations are essentially at zero. If the market is pricing PDD like it's going to be regulated out of existence tomorrow and the company has 44 billion in cash to weather any storm, well, that heavy discount actually is the safety net.
The absence of bad news is inherently expensive. Overkins for good news is actually a severe risk to your capital. You can't make contrarian bets without a rock-solid foundation, though. Let's look at what keeps this 3.2 billion-dollar portfolio anchored to the floor. The undeniable anchor here is Alphabet.
Oh, yeah. Alphabet Class A and Class C shares combined make up almost 45% of the entire US 13F portfolio. It's massive. That is close to 1.4 billion dollars in a single enterprise. And the capital efficiency metrics are just absurd. We are looking at a return on invested capital, or ROIC, of 30.9%. And we need to connect that return to the cost of capital.
The analysis explicitly highlights an equation for Alphabet. ROIC - WACC = 22.1%. Let's translate that acronym for the listener real quick. WACC is the weighted average cost of capital. Essentially, it's just what it costs Google to fund its operations through debt and equity. Right. So, think about the mechanics of their business.
If their cost of capital is roughly 8 or 9% but they generate a 31% return on every single dollar they invest. That 22.1% spread is just pure compounding wealth creation. Exactly. And how do they achieve 31%? The marginal cost of serving one additional Google search or hosting one more YouTube video is practically zero, yet the digital ad revenue scales infinitely.
Combine that with the massive growth in Google Cloud and they generate enough free cash flow to sit on 81 billion dollars in net cash. Unbelievable numbers. Then the second major pillar is Berkshire Hathaway sitting at a 13.44% weight. By holding Berkshire, Li Lu is essentially outsourcing a portion of his capital preservation to Warren Buffett's fortress balance sheet.
currently holding around 397 billion dollars in cash. It acts as the ultimate liquidity defense mechanism. We also see Occidental Petroleum OXY at about 3%. The standout metric here is the aggressive debt reduction. They've cut gross debt from 29 billion down to 13.3 billion heavily aided by selling OxyChem to Berkshire.
Yeah. It shows management is actively repairing the balance sheet while sitting on highly profitable oil acreage in the Permian Basin. Then there is the interesting case of Crocs, ticker CROX. Himalaya actually added to this position by 41.22%. But looking at the recent data, Crocs trailing ROIC temporarily dipped to -6.5%.
Why increase the position by over 40% when the core return metric turns negative? This is where understanding accounting mechanics is crucial again. That dip was primarily caused by GAAP accounting rules. Okay, explain that. So GAAP rules required Crocs to take a non-cash write-down, you know, restructuring charges related to their Hey Dude acquisition.
Right, the shoe brand they bought. Exactly. And that hits net income on the financial statements pushing the ROIC negative on paper. But it doesn't affect the actual cash flowing into business from selling shoes. Bingo. If you zoom out, their 10-year average ROIC is a stellar 22%. They convert over 16% of their revenue directly into free cash flow.
Li Lu was just looking past the temporary accounting write-down to see the underlying cash generation. Finally, we see Apple, which is now just a tiny 0.88% legacy position. Himalaya slashed it by 65.2% early in 2025 simply because the valuation got too high relative to the other compounders we've discussed.
Okay. But looking at the whole picture, I have to ask a question that I think many listeners are shouting at their speakers right now. Let's hear it. We have 45% of the portfolio in one stock, Alphabet. Furthermore, 95.59% of the entire portfolio is concentrated in just the top 10 holdings. Yep. Doesn't this completely violate traditional diversification principles?
Finance 101 teaches you to spread your capital widely to mitigate risk. It definitely violates the standard academic rules. However, it perfectly aligns with Himalaya Capital's foundational tenant, which they describe as a seamless web of deserved trust. A seamless web of deserved trust. That's a compelling phrase.
How does that translate to having half your money in one tech stock? Well, it means that real risk management doesn't come from arbitrarily spreading your money across a hundred mediocre ideas that you barely understand. That just dilutes your returns. Exactly. True risk mitigation comes from absolute research diligence.
It comes from understanding a business ecosystem inside and out, evaluating management character over decades, and buying at a deep margin of safety. Right. If you truly understand the structural fault lines of an industry, you don't need to own 50 houses. You just need three or four built on solid bedrock.
Concentration isn't risky if the knowledge base is absolute. That makes perfect sense. As we wrap up today's deep dive, let's connect all of this back to you, the listener. Good idea. The modern playbook, as executed by one of the greatest investors alive, is about recognizing structural fault lines before they fracture.
It's about deliberately migrating your capital away from leverage-dependent risks like commercial banks, and moving toward high-efficiency asset-light toll booths that simply collect cash from the economy's traffic. Simultaneously, it requires the psychological fortitude to step into the fire. Yes. When geopolitical fear drives highly profitable cash-rich companies like PDD or Tencent Music to steep discounts, you have to possess the discipline to buy when everyone else is running away.
And I want to leave you with a final lingering thought. Li Lu is an investor who famously ignores market volatility, focusing purely on holding phenomenal companies for decades. True. Yet in this single quarter, he actively uprooted over a third of a billion dollars away from credit risk, abandoning bank leverage to hide it inside zero lending monopolies and massive cash fortresses.
It's a huge shift. So, if a master of extreme patience is suddenly moving his capital to the absolute highest ground possible, what unseen macroeconomic storm is he quietly preparing for that the rest of the market is completely ignoring? That is the ultimate question. When the tectonic plates shift this deliberately at the highest levels of finance, a break is surely coming.
It gives you a lot to think about. Just as a quick reminder before we sign off, all the analysis we discussed today is based on publicly available filings and sources, and it may be subject to revisions or differing interpretations. Right. All contents from this channel are strictly for information and research purposes and do not constitute investment advice.
Please, always conduct your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. Doing your own homework is the only true risk management. Exactly. If you'd like to access wider topics, including life and investing philosophy, please subscribe to our sister channel, Deep Values. And don't forget to like this video.
Much appreciated. We'll see you next time as we keep our eyes on the fault lines. Mhm.
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