Value-fund investors still hold Amazon, but some managers are favoring “hard assets,” a new screen finds

Value investors have long associated their portfolios with bargain-priced companies, often with a tilt toward businesses that own physical assets or throw off cash. But a new look at popular value funds suggests that the category is not immune to tech’s gravity, and that managers may be taking different routes to express a value thesis.

The analysis, published by Yahoo Finance, examines the largest holdings across some widely followed value funds and compares the broader category mix. It highlights how, in Morningstar’s Large Value category, the average fund now allocates about 18% of its portfolio to technology stocks that the screen describes as looking expensive by traditional value standards.

Within that framework, the article’s central point is that Amazon remains a notable holding for at least some value-fund managers, even though Amazon is a mega-cap technology company rather than a classic “hard assets” bet. The implication is not that value investing has abandoned its criteria, but that managers are mixing strategies, sometimes holding expensive-seeming tech for different reasons such as scale, cash flow potential, or competitive position.

At the same time, Yahoo’s headline points to a counter-trend: some managers featured in the piece appear to be buying hard assets instead of leaning further into technology. The article frames this as something investors might not expect if they assume value categories automatically track the cheapest corners of the market.

Amazon’s role in that picture matters because it sits at the intersection of retail, cloud computing, advertising, and entertainment distribution, with multiple business lines that can influence how investors judge its value characteristics. Amazon describes itself across retail operations, AWS cloud services, advertising, and other segments on its newsroom and business updates platform.

In sector terms, the story lands amid a broader debate in markets about what counts as “value” when technology firms can still deliver strong cash generation and durable demand. Screens that flag “expensive” valuations can diverge sharply from screens that focus on profitability and long-term earnings power, producing portfolios that look inconsistent with older definitions of value.

The limits here are important. The Yahoo post, as provided in this briefing, does not include the specific fund names, the identity of the “three managers” referenced in the headline, or the exact weights attributed to Amazon and the hard-asset alternatives. Without those details, it is not possible to verify which funds hold Amazon as one of their top positions, or to quantify how much the “hard assets” tilt differs manager by manager.

Going forward, investors and analysts will likely watch whether the 18% technology allocation within Morningstar’s Large Value category continues rising or stabilizes, and whether Amazon’s presence among top holdings persists even as valuation-driven screens flag parts of tech. Additional disclosure from the funds themselves, or deeper coverage that spells out manager-by-manager trades and holdings, would be needed to move from a category-level observation to a more precise read on strategy and conviction.