Investor Education

Visualizing BlackRock’s Top Equity Holdings

Published

4 weeks ago

June 20, 2023

Marcus Lu

Graphics/Design:

Rosey Eason

BlackRock Top 25 Equity Holdings 2023

Visualizing BlackRock’s Top 25 Equity Holdings

Founded just 34 years ago in 1988, BlackRock has quickly become the world’s largest asset manager with over $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM).

Given this status, BlackRock’s equity portfolio may provide useful insights to investors. To learn more, we’ve visualized the firm’s top 25 equity holdings as of Q1 2023. At that time, these 25 positions were worth over $1 trillion, and they represented about 30% of BlackRock’s overall equity portfolio.

Top 25 Data

The following table shows the data we used to create this infographic. These figures come from BlackRock’s latest 13F filing, which was released on May 12.

ℹ️ The 13F is a mandatory, quarterly report that is filed by institutional investment managers with over $100 million in AUM.

Rank	Name	Sector	Value of Holdings (USD billions)
1	Apple	Information Technology	$171
2	Microsoft	Information Technology	$155
3	Amazon	Consumer Discretionary	$63
4	Nvidia	Information Technology	$51
5	Google (Class A)	Communications	$44
6	Google (Class C)	Communications	$38
7	Tesla	Consumer Discretionary	$37
8	UnitedHealth Group	Health Care	$35
9	Meta	Communications	$32
10	Berkshire Hathaway (Class B)	Finance	$32
11	Johnson & Johnson	Health Care	$31
12	Exxon Mobil	Energy	$30
13	iShares Core S&P 500 ETF	ETF	$29
14	Visa	Finance	$28
15	JPMorgan Chase & Co	Finance	$25
16	Procter & Gamble Co	Consumer Staples	$24
17	Mastercard	Finance	$24
18	Home Depot	Consumer Discretionary	$23
19	Eli Lilly And Co	Health Care	$23
20	Merck & Co	Health Care	$22
21	AbbVie	Health Care	$22
22	Chevron	Energy	$22
23	PepsiCo	Consumer Staples	$20
24	Coca-Cola Co	Consumer Staples	$19
25	Broadcom	Information Technology	$19

As expected, BlackRock’s top equity holdings include America’s most established tech companies: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

BlackRock also has large positions in Nvidia and Broadcom, which happen to be America’s two largest semiconductor companies. Given Nvidia’s incredible YTD performance (198% as of June 19th), this position has likely grown even bigger.

Altogether, tech stocks make up 39% of this top 25 list. The next biggest sector would be healthcare, at 13% of the total value.

Ownership Stakes

How much of a controlling stake does BlackRock have in these companies? We answer this question in the following table, which again uses Q1 2023 data.

Name	% Ownership	Quarter 1st Owned
Merck & Co	8.24%	Q3 2007
UnitedHealth Group	8.02%	Q4 2008
Berkshire Hathaway (Class B)	7.98%	Q3 2007
PepsiCo	7.96%	Q3 2007
AbbVie	7.86%	Q1 2013
Home Depot	7.60%	Q3 2007
Nvidia	7.44%	Q3 2007
Microsoft	7.22%	Q3 2007
Coca-Cola Co	7.20%	Q3 2007
Broadcom	7.16%	Q3 2009
Google (Class A)	7.09%	Q3 2007
Chevron	7.02%	Q3 2007
Eli Lilly And Co	6.90%	Q3 2007
Mastercard	6.89%	Q3 2007
Procter & Gamble Co	6.86%	Q3 2007
Exxon Mobil	6.83%	Q3 2007
JPMorgan Chase & Co	6.59%	Q3 2007
Visa	6.55%	Q2 2008
Apple	6.54%	Q3 2007
Johnson & Johnson	6.46%	Q3 2007
Google (Class C)	6.13%	Q2 2014
Amazon	5.93%	Q4 2008
Tesla	5.70%	Q3 2010
Meta	5.69%	Q2 2012

Google’s Class C shares (Ticker: GOOG) do not offer voting rights.

When it comes to shareholder voting, BlackRock has historically voted on behalf of its clients to “advance their long-term economic interests.” Given its massive size, some people believe that BlackRock has too much influence on major corporations.

In 2021, it was reported that BlackRock would begin allowing some institutional clients to cast their own votes at shareholder meetings.

Related Topics:equity stocks investments BlackRock AUM tech stocks asset manager

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10-Year Annualized Forecasts for Major Asset Classes

This infographic visualizes 10-year annualized forecasts for both equities and fixed income using data from Vanguard.

Published

1 month ago

June 14, 2023

Marcus Lu

10-Year Annualized Forecasts for Major Asset Classes

While there’s no way of predicting the future, quantitative models can help us come up with a general idea of how different asset classes may perform in the future.

One example is Vanguard’s Capital Markets Model (VCMM), which has produced a set of 10-year annualized return forecasts for both equity and fixed income markets.

Visualized above, these projections were published on May 17, 2023, and are based on the March 31, 2023 running of the VCMM.

Equity Returns

The equity forecasts from this infographic are listed in the following table.

Asset Class	Return Forecast (lower)	Return Forecast (upper)	Median Volatility
U.S. Equities	4.1%	6.1%	17.0%
U.S. Value	4.4%	6.4%	19.6%
U.S. Growth	1.4%	3.4%	18.2%
U.S. Large-Cap	4.1%	6.1%	16.7%
U.S. Small-Cap	4.4%	6.4%	22.3%
U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts	4.4%	6.4%	20.1%
Global Equities ex-U.S. (unhedged)	6.4%	8.4%	18.2%
Global ex-U.S. Developed Markets Equities (unhedged)	6.1%	8.1%	16.6%
Emerging Markets Equities (unhedged)	6.1%	8.1%	25.9%

A key takeaway here is that Vanguard expects international equities to outperform U.S. equities over the next decade.

We believe that the valuation-based expansion in U.S. equities is sowing the seeds for lower returns in the decade.

A valuation-based expansion refers to the increase in a company’s market value, rather than its intrinsic value. In other words, Vanguard doesn’t believe that current U.S. equity valuations are justified, and that this will dampen performance over the next decade.

Cited reasons for international outperformance include more favorable valuations, higher dividend payout ratios, and a potentially weaker U.S. dollar.

Fixed Income Returns

Now turning to fixed income, here are the forecasts used in this infographic.

Asset Class	Return Forecast (lower)	Return Forecast (upper)	Median Volatility
U.S. Aggregate Bonds	3.6%	4.6%	5.5%
U.S. Treasury Bonds	3.3%	4.3%	5.7%
U.S. Intermediate Credit Bonds	4.2%	5.2%	5.2%
U.S. High-Yield Corporate Bonds	5.5%	6.5%	10.1%
U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities	2.7%	3.7%	5.0%
U.S. Cash	3.4%	4.4%	1.4%
Global Bonds ex-U.S. (hedged)	3.6%	4.6%	4.4%
Emerging Markets Sovereign Bonds	5.6%	6.6%	10.9%
U.S. Inflation	2.0%	3.0%	2.3%

Several bond indexes saw record-breaking declines in 2022 thanks to the unprecedented speed of interest rate hikes. Despite this turmoil, Vanguard believes that investors with a longer horizon will actually be better off as a result. The reasoning here is that cash flows can now be reinvested at much higher rates, which over time should offset any declines in an investor’s bond portfolio.

Vanguard also expects U.S. inflation to be contained over the next decade. The firm has confidence in the ability of central banks to keep inflation at their target rates (2% in most developed economies).