The most crowded trades in institutional investing
Which companies are held by the largest number of major funds at once?
Microsoft is held by more of the 105 funds we track than any other company. The most crowded names are almost entirely mega-cap technology, which means the 'diversified' institutional portfolio is a good deal less diversified than it looks.
We could not reach the database to compute this study just now. The figures below are therefore missing, rather than zero. We would rather show you an honest gap than a confident blank.
- Count of distinct funds reporting a common-stock position in each company, in the Q1 2026 filings.
- Options lines excluded. Only companies held by 10 or more funds are shown.
- Crowding is not a prediction. Crowded trades can stay crowded for years, and the most crowded names are crowded partly because they are the largest companies on earth.
- A quantitative fund holding 5,000 names will appear here alongside a concentrated stock-picker holding 20. Being 'held' by Citadel means something very different from being held by Berkshire.
Free to quote, chart or republish with attribution. Cite as: SteadyShares, The most crowded trades in institutional investing, https://steadyshares.com/research/most-crowded-trades. If you are a journalist and want the underlying query or a different cut of the data, ask and we will run it.
Read next
Educational information, not financial advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. A late regulatory filing is a paperwork failure and nothing more: we make no allegation of wrongdoing against any person named on this page.
