David Tepper Boosted China Holdings Before Latest Rally

By Yiqin Shen, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

Billionaire investor David Tepper ramped up his stake in China-related stocks and ETFs last quarter, just before the development of DeepSeek reignited a rally in the country’s shares.

The president and founder of Appaloosa Management LP, who made waves in September with a call to buy “everything” related to China, increased the firm’s holding of e-commerce company JD.com by roughly 43% in the fourth quarter, according to the latest 13F filing.

The money manager also boosted his stake in Alibaba, another e-commerce giant, by 18%. The stock remains the hedge fund’s largest holding, accounting for about 16% of its $6.4 billion portfolio.

The moves came amid a volatile stretch for Chinese stocks, when investors showed signs of wavering commitment after Beijing rolled out a stimulus blitz in late September. The government’s efforts sparked a frenetic rally into early October, but the momentum faded in the following months amid disappointment over the scale of fiscal stimulus, a weak economic outlook and a property crisis. Alibaba fell 20% in the fourth quarter, while JD.com declined 13%.

Tepper also added exposure to the KraneShares CSI China Internet exchange-traded fund (ticker KWEB) and to the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (ticker FXI), as well as to KE Holdings Inc. and Baidu Inc., the filing showed. Chinese stocks and ETFs giving exposure to the country’s shares made up about 37% of his portfolio as of the end of December, in terms of market value, little changed from the previous quarter.

China’s market has been on a stronger footing to start the year, with some of China’s equity benchmarks outperforming US and European peers. That’s in part because of China’s growing clout in the artificial-intelligence space, on the back of the success of DeepSeek’s AI model.

As a result, investors have been re-evaluating the nation’s beaten-down shares, although they’re also assessing the impact of US President Donald Trump’s move to slap 10% tariffs on China. On Friday, the Hang Seng Tech Index entered a bull market while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index is less than 5% from overtaking its October peak.

Alibaba, which is building its own AI model, has climbed nearly 30% since the start of the year. The company may be able to manage the US-China trade war’s impact on revenue better than its Chinese rivals because its overseas operations are more geographically diverse, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Full 13F breakdown below (link).