Family Offices Increase Stock Holdings, Reduce Alternative Assets
CNBC and Addepar's family office portfolio tracking shows that a single family office's stock allocation rose to 37% in Q2, up from 34% in Q1, marking the largest increase in years. The allocation to alternative assets fell from 49% to 46%, also the largest decline in recent years. The data covers hundreds of family offices managing assets ranging from $200 million to over $10 billion, totaling approximately $1.4 trillion.
The increase in stock allocation is achieved by allowing the proportion of stocks to rise with market value, rather than selling to rebalance. Addepar CEO Eric Poirier interprets this as a sign of greater comfort with public stocks, noting that the AI theme is largely expressed in the public market rather than the private market. The five most commonly held stocks in Q2 were Microsoft (held by 77% of family offices), Amazon and Alphabet (each 76%), Apple (70%), and Nvidia (69%). Real estate and private markets were also reduced, partly related to the markdown of asset valuations in private credit funds.
Single transaction and position surveys align. David Tepper's Appaloosa increased its position in Micron to approximately $428.1 million, making it the largest holding, with the stock rising about 50% since 2026; Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne established a new position in Bloom Energy, which has risen over 100% this year. Family offices like Leon Cooperman's increased stock purchases in year-end filings. An earlier Goldman Sachs survey indicated that the average allocation to public stocks among 245 global family offices has shifted from 31% in 2023, while private equity fell from 26% to 21%.
UBS's 2026 Global Family Office Report covers 307 clients with an average net worth of $2.7 billion: the proportion planning to adjust strategic allocations over the next twelve months rose to 60%, the highest in this series; 65% of the U.S. sample plans to allocate to AI, 39% to defense and security infrastructure, and 35% to infrastructure. Meanwhile, 71% of U.S. respondents believe the AI sector is in a bubble, and 52% expect a decline in confidence in the dollar. Strategic allocations to developed market stocks are expected to rise from about 26% to 29%.
The size of funds determines price impact. Global family offices manage assets that have expanded from approximately $31 trillion in 2019 to about $55 trillion. In the Q1 tracking, stocks accounted for 34%, with about 80% of U.S. family office stock positions in U.S. equities. Among alternatives, direct investments in private companies remain around 16%, while private equity funds and real estate are yielding. This coincides with the concentration of large private companies going public and the pricing of AI trades among the seven major U.S. tech stocks.
In terms of market mechanisms, the stocks being bought are the most liquid tech giants, while those being sold or not added are private credit, some real estate, and poorly performing private equity. The event-driven aspect is that the public market has turned AI trading into a tradable theme, while private exit cycles have lengthened. Funds are flowing from locked assets to stocks that can be priced at the end of the day. Beneficiaries include the list of holdings from Microsoft to Nvidia, as well as custodial and data platforms that provide access to public stocks; those under pressure are medium-sized private equity funds and private credit net values that rely on family offices for support. The increase in positions can come from active accumulation or from the expansion of unliquidated book values, which have not yet been separated in the tracking data.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The main narrative for family offices over the past decade has been "escaping the public market." The number of family offices participating in the private market under Preqin's criteria has increased more than fivefold since 2016, with direct investments, private credit, and infrastructure being written as the new foundation of generational wealth. The 3 percentage point jump in stock allocation in Q2 2026 is the first time this narrative has been countered by public stocks in high-frequency holding data. They haven't suddenly become traders; rather, AI has repriced the largest growth premiums on stocks like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet, while private equity funds cannot offer equivalent exits.
The capital path is very specific. Appaloosa's increase in Micron and Duquesne's purchase of Bloom Energy are visible through 13F filings, reflecting a focus on computing power and energy; at the portfolio level, they have stopped rebalancing, allowing the market capitalization of the seven giants to raise the stock weight to 37%. The UBS survey shows that 71% see a bubble, while 65% still want to allocate to AI, indicating a split between perception and action: verbally warning against bubbles while not reducing core holdings in accounts. Private equity has dropped from 26% to 21% in the Goldman sample, and direct investment has fallen from a peak of 13% in 2021 to 8% in 2025, with fund channels surpassing direct investment, showing that they are also shifting from "picking companies" back to "handing over to managers" within private equity, while allocating risk budgets to the stock market.
Comparisons need to be specific. After 2013, the Yale model pushed endowment funds into alternatives, and family offices followed suit; the peak of direct investment in 2021 corresponded with zero interest rates and SPACs. Currently, it resembles the return of wealthy families to core U.S. stock assets after 2009, but the core assets have shifted from industrial blue chips to AI platforms. The difference between UBS and CNBC tracking is that the survey indicates a desire to diversify currencies and reduce confidence in the dollar, while holdings show that 80% of stocks are still in U.S. equities. The industry position is that this is a "rebalancing year after alternative over-allocation," not a retreat from private equity, but a temporary yielding of private equity to priceable AI stocks.
Structural judgments belong to the transfer of pricing power. The mechanism is that when the same theme is quoted daily in the public market and valued quarterly in the private market, patient capital will first buy tickets that can immediately express their views. The advantage of family offices is originally the lock-up period, but once the lock-up period turns into an exit discount, the advantage flips to a cost. Thus, the world's largest pool of private capital, by increasing stock weight, hands pricing power back to the five companies they already hold in the index.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
Not reducing holdings is the most expensive accumulation.
Where the theme is listed, money will concentrate there.
Calling it a bubble and accumulating can be written in the same survey.