Skye Global cut its largest long position nearly in half in the first quarter, a big move for the concentrated hedge fund headed by Jamie Sterne.
Sterne traditionally runs a portfolio where one or two stocks account for the bulk of assets. So it was striking when Sterne reported in his first-quarter 13F that he’d sold more than five million shares of Amazon, or 45 percent of the total position.
The sale left Skye with 6.254 million shares, so Amazon still accounts for 31.6 percent of the total U.S. stock portfolio. At year-end, it made up about 52 percent of the hedge fund’s U.S. assets. Skye has surged and sagged in large part with the movement in Amazon’s stock.
Through April, Skye was down about 8 percent for the year. The rest of its portfolio has historically been much more diversified, with no one stock responsible for more than 7 percent of assets.
This said, Skye recently has been building back its position in cloud and software giant Microsoft. In first-quarter 2025, the hedge fund boosted its stake by 50 percent. It has increased its position by about two-thirds in the past two quarters.
Microsoft is now Skye’s second-largest long position, with just over 1 million shares accounting for more than 10 percent of assets. For perspective, that represents less than half the position Skye held in the stock a year or two ago.
In the first quarter, the firm also more than doubled its investment in chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, now its fourth-largest long position. GE Aerospace was the third-largest long after Skye cut its stake by more than 10 percent.
Altogether, Skye held 52 different U.S. stocks at the end of the first quarter, but most were puny positions playing a nearly inconsequential role in the overall portfolio.
Sterne, an Institutional Investor Hedge Fund Rising Star in 2018, favors what he likes to call “best in breed” companies. Skye seeks to make long-term investments in what Sterne believes are structurally superior businesses with untapped pricing power and limited exposure to macroeconomic and political risks.
From 2017 to 2020, Skye posted gains of 77, 35, 53.7, and 68.6 percent, respectively. The firm was managing about $6 billion at year-end 2021, according to a regulatory filing. That was quadruple the $1.5 billion it managed at the end of February 2020, per earlier filings. The capital shriveled to $3.1 billion as of year-end 2022 after the fund declined by 47.4 percent that year — a humbling experience for Skye, which since its mid-2016 inception had been the hottest new hedge fund launch in recent memory.
It rebounded by 64 percent in 2023 and gained a further 30 percent in 2024. Assets grew to $5.1 billion by year-end 2024.
Sterne previously worked as an equity analyst at Dan Loeb’s Third Point, with a focus on the consumer, industrial, and health care sectors. He began his career as an equity research analyst at Maverick Capital, led by Tiger Cub Lee Ainslie III. That makes Sterne a Tiger Grandcub.
