Marathon Asset 13F: Adds Ford, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines Co.

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Marathon Asset Management has filed its 13F for the first quarter of 2013 with the SEC. The full filing can be found on the SEC website at this link. The firm’s long equity holdings were scuttled in the period, with their total market value declining from $3,356,022,526 at the end of 2012 to $1,623,780,420 at the end of 2013’s March.

Marathon Asset

Marathon Asset Management’s Long Equity Holdings Drop

Most of the big drop in the company’s long equity holdings in the first period resulted from its sale of 17.1 million calls in the S&P 500 ETF SPDR ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY). The company’s holding of calls on the ETF made up 72.56 percent of the firm’s long holdings at the end of 2012, so the close of the position resulted in a large drop in the value of the portfolio.

The value of those calls at the end of December was $2,435,211,000. The loss of that money represents most of the decline in the value of the firm’s portfolio. The company did, however, add a number of positions that allowed it to buffer the value of its 13F holdings at the end of March.

The biggest addition that Marathon Asset Management made in the period was approximately $791,409,000 in put options on the same ETF, the S&P 500 ETF SPDR ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY). The firm bought 5.1 million shares in the asset, and it currently makes up more than 48 percent of the firm’s portfolio. At the end of December, put options on the ETF were held by the firm, but only 5.53 percent of the firm’s portfolio was held in that way.

The firm’s biggest new addition in the first three months of 2013 was a 3.1 million share holding in the Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F). the value of that holding is $40,764,999 at the end of March 2013. The company also added positions in Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE:DAL), 2.4 million shares, Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV), 2 million shares, Cheniere Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:LNG)1,905,158 shares and Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE:ANR), 1,883,000 shares.

The major themes available to investors from this 13F filing are that Marathon Asset Management thinks that airlines and natural gas are going to do well in future, though it is hedging its bet with put options on a broad market index. Those have been risky bets in the past, but it appears that Marathon thinks that 2013 could be a good year for those market sectors.

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