Gates’ foundation sold all of its Microsoft shares. Bill Ackman is loading up on the stock. What is Wall Street missing?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust disclosed on Friday that it sold its final 7.7 million shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) during the first quarter — a roughly $3.2 billion exit that ends a decades-long position in the company Gates co-founded (1).

A very different story had already broken that morning. Hours before the Gates filing hit the SEC, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management used a lengthy X post to announce a brand-new Microsoft position (2). Pershing’s 13F, filed later that evening, showed roughly 5.65 million shares worth around $2.09 billion at quarter-end (3).

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The following morning, Ackman explained he used Pershing’s Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) holdings to pay for it. “To be clear, our sale of $GOOG was not a bet against the company,” he wrote on X. “We are very bullish long term on Alphabet. But at current valuations and in light of our finite capital base, we used $GOOG as a source of funds for $MSFT” (4).

So why is…