# 13F

Also written Form 13F.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/13f · next to Insider, 13F & Congressional Trade Trackers*

**Definition:** A quarterly filing listing an institutional manager's long positions in US-listed securities as they stood on the last day of the quarter, filed up to 45 days later. It is a snapshot, not a portfolio: short positions are excluded and never netted against longs, cash and most non-US holdings sit outside it, and anything bought and sold inside the quarter never appears at all.

## 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](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/insider-13f-trackers) can shorten it —
[when a trade shows up in the public record](https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/when-trades-become-public) 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](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/whalewisdom) goes back to 2001, [13F-Info](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/13f-info) and
[Dataroma](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/dataroma) are free views over named managers, [HedgeFollow](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/hedgefollow)
and [StockCircle](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockcircle) rank and follow them, and [SEC EDGAR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/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](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/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](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/get-sec-filings-as-data) covers the raw route.

## Where you will meet this

- [WhaleWisdom](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/whalewisdom.md)
- [13F.info](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/13f-info.md)
- [Dataroma](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/dataroma.md)
- [HedgeFollow](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/hedgefollow.md)
- [Stockcircle](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/stockcircle.md)
- [SEC EDGAR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-edgar.md)
- [2iQ Insider Transactions Data](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/2iq-insider-data.md)
- [BamSEC](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/bamsec.md)
- [Capitol Trades](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/capitol-trades.md)
- [ChartExchange](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/chartexchange.md)
- [Equibles](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/equibles.md)
- [Financial Modeling Prep](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep.md)

## FAQ

### Does a 13F tell me what a fund owns today?

No. It tells you what the manager held at one instant — the last trading day of a quarter that closed up to 45 days before the filing appeared. A position taken on the first day of that quarter is already more than four months old by the time you read it, and one opened and closed within the quarter is not in the document at all.

### Why does a manager keep filing after dropping below $100 million?

Because the obligation is set for four filings once it is triggered. A manager that exceeds the threshold at any month end in a calendar year files for that year's fourth quarter and for each of the first three quarters of the following year, whether or not the holdings stay above the line. That is why a shrinking fund can appear in the record for another year.

## Sources

1. [Frequently Asked Questions About Form 13F](https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13ffaq) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, read 2026-09-21
2. [17 CFR 240.13f-1 — Reporting by institutional investment managers](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-240/section-240.13f-1) — Office of the Federal Register, read 2026-09-21

*Last updated 2026-09-21. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*