Pat Dorsey

Smart Money Profile

Pat Dorsey

Dorsey Asset Management

Pat Dorsey — Dorsey Asset Management
Dorsey
Primary Fund
$1.3B
13F Portfolio Value
Moats · Quality
Investment Style

Profile & Investment Philosophy

Pat Dorsey continues to run an ultra-concentrated portfolio of high-moat businesses. In Q1 2026, ASML Holding became his top position, followed by AerCap and Sunbelt Rentals. Dorsey's exit from Alphabet reflects a strict adherence to his "moat" framework, favoring businesses with structural advantages that are not yet fully priced for their long-term compounding potential.

Track Record

Pat Dorsey ran equity research at Morningstar for a decade, where he was the chief architect of the firm's economic-moat rating framework — arguably the most widely cited structural-quality methodology in retail investing. He left Morningstar in 2011 and founded Dorsey Asset Management in 2014, applying the moat framework as a concentrated long-only manager running ten to fifteen positions for institutional clients. The firm is small by hedge fund standards and intentionally so: capacity is the enemy of concentration. Dorsey publishes selectively, writes one of the better books on competitive advantage in print, and has built a reputation as one of the cleanest pure-play moat investors operating today. Benchmark: MSCI ACWI or S&P 500, depending on vehicle.

Signature Trades

Domino's Pizza — operational-moat compounder
Dorsey has long pointed to Domino's as an underappreciated moat story — a logistics-and-technology business dressed up as a pizza chain, with route density, franchisee economics and an in-house ordering platform that competitors cannot easily replicate. The thesis is that the moat is not the food; it is the unit-level cash conversion and the digital order flow. Domino's became a textbook case in his published writing on how moats compound when reinvested at high returns on capital.
Mastercard — payment-network compounder
Dorsey was an early and vocal proponent of the card-network moat thesis, treating Mastercard and Visa as essentially regulated monopolies on global card transactions. The two-sided network, the cost-per-transaction economics and the resistance to disruption — even from fintech challengers — fit the moat framework cleanly. The trade is illustrative of his preference for businesses where the competitive position is structural rather than dependent on management execution.
Morningstar moat framework — the underlying philosophy
Dorsey's most influential contribution may not be a single trade but the codified moat taxonomy itself: intangible assets, switching costs, network effects, cost advantages and efficient scale. The framework became the analytical backbone for an entire generation of quality-focused investors and is the lens through which every Dorsey position is screened. The discipline is unusual in concentrated investing: a name only qualifies if it falls cleanly into one of the five moat categories with quantified evidence.

Current Strategy (2026)

Dorsey's 2026 13F shows a major reshuffle: ASML leads at 14.8%, AerCap at 12.3%, United Rentals at 11.4% (new) and AppLovin at 10.0% (new). Four of the top ten are entirely new positions — an unusually high turnover for a moat investor who typically holds positions for years. The unifying theme is asset-heavy businesses with structural cost advantages: ASML owns lithography monopoly, AerCap is the global aircraft-leasing duopolist, United Rentals dominates equipment rental with route density, and AppLovin runs the mobile-ad tech stack. The shift suggests Dorsey is finding more moat opportunities in industrial-cyclical and infrastructure names than in classic consumer-staples territory. The book remains highly concentrated — top four positions over 48% — which is the Dorsey signature.

BMI

BMI Counter-Take

Dorsey is the manager we recommend to investors who want to learn how to think, not just what to buy. The current reshuffle is interesting precisely because it breaks his usual pattern: four new top-ten names in one filing window is uncharacteristic, and it suggests either a tactical view that current valuations in industrials and infrastructure offer better moat-adjusted entry points, or a genuine evolution in what he counts as a moat. Either way, the four-position 48% concentration tells you everything about his risk tolerance: he believes the analysis or he does not own the name. Worth following — and worth reading his book before copying any single position.

Current Portfolio

LATEST 13F 2026-03-31

Latest SEC Form 13F filing. Total portfolio value: $1.26 B. Holdings: 11 positions.

SecuritySharesΔ vs PrevValue ($)Portfolio %
Asml Hldg NV140,295-27.1%$185 M14.8 %
Aercap Holdings NV1.12 M-7.5%$154 M12.3 %
Sunbelt Rentals Holdings Inc.2.20 M★ NEW$144 M11.4 %
Applovin Corp.316,952★ NEW$126 M10.0 %
Danaher Corp. Del580,240-29.9%$110 M8.76 %
Royalty Pharma PLC2.28 M+0.8%$109 M8.70 %
S&P Global Inc.222,683★ NEW$94.7 M7.54 %
Live Nation Entertainment In607,609+0.8%$92.7 M7.38 %
Meta Platforms Inc.161,683+0.8%$92.5 M7.37 %
Uber Technologies Inc.1.09 M★ NEW$78.4 M6.24 %

SOURCE: SEC Form 13F (2026-05-15). BMI Smart Money Tracker.

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