13F

How it works

Form 13F is a quarterly holdings report filed with the SEC by institutional investment managers. The trigger is size, measured against a specific list: a manager exercising investment discretion over $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities, valued at fair market value on the last trading day of any month, becomes a filer.

Two details of that trigger get misread constantly. The threshold is measured against Section 13(f) securities rather than against assets under management, and the Official List of those securities is published by the SEC — mostly US exchange-traded stocks, closed-end funds and ETFs, with open-end mutual fund shares excluded. And once the threshold is crossed, the obligation is four filings, not one: the fourth quarter of that year, due by 14 February, plus each of the first three quarters of the following year. Falling back under $100 million does not end the series.

The deadline is 45 days after quarter end, and it is where the data's reputation comes from. Most managers file on the last permitted day. A holding established on the first day of a quarter is therefore up to 135 days old when it becomes public, and the SEC grants no extensions. The clock is in the rule, so no vendor in this category can shorten it — when a trade shows up in the public record walks every deadline in the disclosure system beside this one.

What it never shows

Short positions are outside the form entirely. They are not reported, and — the part that matters — longs are never netted against them. A manager running a market-neutral book files the long half and nothing else, and reads as directional when it is not.

Intra-quarter round trips are invisible. A position opened in April and closed in May appears nowhere in the June 30 snapshot. Turnover computed between two 13Fs is the change in the endpoints, not the trading that happened between them.

Small positions may be omitted. A holding can be left out when it is both under 10,000 shares and under $200,000 in value. Both conditions, not either.

It is filed at the firm level. A manager running several strategies appears as one book, so offsetting positions in different funds cancel on paper.

A position can be withheld. Confidential treatment requests exist, for personal holdings and for commercial information under specific exemptions, and since February 2023 they are filed electronically on EDGAR. A stake accumulated under one of those appears late or not at all, which means the absence of a name is not evidence.

Cash, bonds, most non-US listings and most derivative exposure are not on the list. What is left is a long-only slice of one asset class.

Why it matters here

Every product in this category is a normalisation layer over the same free document. WhaleWisdom goes back to 2001, 13F-Info and Dataroma are free views over named managers, HedgeFollow and StockCircle rank and follow them, and SEC EDGAR is the filing itself with no key. What separates them is history depth, cross-fund querying and whether CUSIPs, share classes and issuer names have been reconciled between filings — not freshness, which is fixed for all of them.

So the question to ask a 13F product is never "how fast" but "how far back, and reconciled how". And if the plan is to test whether these holdings predict anything, the series has to be point-in-time: using a restated or currently-indexed view of past holdings means backtesting on information nobody had. How to get SEC filings as data covers the raw route.