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The stock split craze continues to be a source of optimism among Wall Street investors.
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Two of Wall Street’s smartest billionaire investors have opened new positions amid this year’s blockbuster stock splits.
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Meanwhile, another billionaire fund manager bought nearly 5 million shares in one of 2025’s most hyped reverse stock splits.
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There’s no doubt that developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have set Wall Street on fire. The multi-trillion-dollar global opportunity presented by artificial intelligence has helped lift major Wall Street indexes to new heights.
But artificial intelligence isn’t the only hot trend encouraging investors to open their wallets. Excitement surrounding stock splits at brand names fueled optimism on Wall Street.
A stock split is an event that allows a public company to embellish its stock price and number of outstanding shares by the same factor. These changes are cosmetic in that they have no impact on the company’s market capitalization or operating results.
Stock splits have become particularly popular in recent years with some of Wall Street’s savviest billionaire fund managers. We know this because institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management are required to file Form 13F with the SEC quarterly. 13F allows investors to track the stocks that Wall Street’s smartest money managers have been buying and selling.
According to the latest round of 13F filings, detailing trading activity in the quarter ended in September, billionaires have piled into two stock splits in 2026.
Of the five high-profile companies to announce and complete stock splits this year, none generated more buzz than the streaming service provider. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX). The content giant executed a 10-for-1 forward stock split in mid-November, which lowered its stock price from around $1,100 to nearly $110 at the time.
Companies that need to lower their stock prices to make them nominally more affordable for retail investors who can’t buy fractional shares through a broker almost always outperform their peers in execution and innovation. That’s what Netflix is, and that’s why billionaires are flocking to it.
Billionaire Ole Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors and Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management added new shares to their respective funds, according to 13Fs end-September quarter data. Halvorsen oversaw the purchase of 5,008,120 shares of Netflix stock, while Coleman purchased 2,019,000 shares.
What makes Netflix unique is its first-mover advantage in the streaming industry. No other streaming provider, including traditional networks, can match Netflix’s depth of original content, including stranger things and squid game. This original content is critical to attracting new subscribers and retaining existing customers. It also gives Netflix a large degree of power over subscription pricing.
However, billionaires may appreciate Netflix’s innovative innovation more than its seemingly sustainable streaming moat. Three years ago, Netflix launched an ad-supported streaming service that costs less than a traditional subscription. According to data from May 2025, 94 million people have signed up since the option was launched. These customers may be lost to competing services.
Netflix also had success in its crackdown on password sharing that began in May 2023. Accounts are required to remain within the household, which brings in new subscribers, as well as existing accounts paying for members outside the household. Netflix’s operating results show that it has encountered little resistance to its efforts to strengthen its subscription pricing power and expand its user base.
Although this happened after the 13F reporting period, billionaires may now be excited about Netflix’s upcoming cash-and-stock acquisition Warner Bros. Discovery Equivalent to $27.75 per share (at time of publication). If the deal receives regulatory approval, Netflix will become the parent company of HBO and HBO Max, as well as Warner Bros.’ studio division. Discovery Global, meanwhile, will be spun off.
While Netflix stock isn’t cheap, billionaires are clearly obsessed with its competitive advantages.
While investors generally gravitate toward companies that undergo forward stock splits, they tend to avoid companies that undergo reverse stock splits. A reverse split is designed to increase a company’s share price with the goal of avoiding delisting from a major stock exchange.
The most hyped reverse split this year is that of an electric vehicle (EV) maker sobriety group (NASDAQ: LCID)completed a 10-for-1 reverse split in early September. The action lifted its stock price from around $2 to nearly $20.
Billionaire Israel Englander of Millennium Management is buying heavily in 2026 despite the type of splits investors have traditionally avoided. Given that Englander often hedges its fund’s common stock positions with calls and puts, Millennium’s 13F showed purchases of 4,981,728 shares of Lucid stock in the third quarter.
On the surface, Lucid Group has been an interesting story stock. The company is expected to lead the luxury EV segment with the Lucid Air, followed by TeslaDecided to abandon the Model S and instead mass-produce the more affordable Model 3 sedan. However, supply chain issues during and after the COVID-19 pandemic continued to cause Lucid to miss its targets.
When Lucid Group became a public company in 2021, its management team predicted that production would reach 90,000 vehicles in 2024. But by the time 2024 rolls around, that ambitious forecast has dropped to just 9,000 electric vehicles. To make matters worse, the showroom debut of Lucid’s Gravity SUV has been delayed from 2024 to 2025. Operational execution has been poor.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Lucid Group is well capitalized. The company’s financial strength has been bolstered by a huge investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The company ended the September quarter with more than $2.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.
But building an electric car company from scratch and mass-producing it is no easy task. Lucid lost more than $2.4 billion in operating activities through the first nine months of 2025, with net losses since inception approaching $14.8 billion. Simply put, the company has yet to prove that it can execute its outlined strategy and generate profits.
Billionaire Israel Englander may regret his decision to invest in Lucid before 2026.
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Sean Williams works at Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool has positions and recommendations on Netflix, Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
2 Stock Split Stocks Billionaires Will Buy in 2026 Originally published by The Motley Fool