What a 13F cannot tell you
Everyone quotes 13F filings. What is actually missing from them?
A 13F shows long US equity positions, 45 days late. It does not show shorts, bonds, cash, currencies, commodities or anything held outside America. A manager who looks wildly bullish in a filing may be hedged to neutrality by positions the form has no box for.
What a 13F shows, and what it hides
- Long US equities
- US-listed ETFs
- Options (at notional value)
- Short positions
- Bonds and credit
- Cash
- Currencies
- Commodities and futures
- Anything listed outside the US
- Private holdings
- What they did in the 45 days since
The document everyone quotes covers one corner of a portfolio. A manager who looks wildly bullish in a filing may be hedged to neutrality by positions the form has no box for. This is why copying a 13F reliably underperforms the person you are copying.
| Funds we track | Positions | Companies | Disclosed equity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 144 | 58,616 | 7,324 | $4,504bn |
Live from our database. 1 rows shown.
- The figures above are the scale of what we DO hold: our full 13F coverage for the latest usable quarter.
- The point of the page is everything that is not in that number.
- SHORTS ARE INVISIBLE. A fund can hold a huge long position and be net short the same name through instruments the 13F does not cover.
- BONDS, CASH, CURRENCIES AND COMMODITIES are all absent. For a macro fund, the 13F may be a rounding error on the real book.
- FOREIGN HOLDINGS are absent. A global manager's US equity sleeve can be a small fraction of what they run.
- IT IS UP TO 45 DAYS OLD on the day it is published, and the manager is under no obligation to still hold any of it.
- OPTIONS ARE REPORTED AT NOTIONAL VALUE, which overstates the money at risk, sometimes by an enormous multiple.
- This is why copying a 13F is a reliable way to underperform the person you are copying: you inherit the position without the thesis, the hedge, or the exit.
Free to quote, chart or republish with attribution. Cite as: SteadyShares, What a 13F cannot tell you, https://steadyshares.com/research/what-a-13f-cannot-tell-you. If you are a journalist and want the underlying query or a different cut of the data, ask and we will run it.
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Educational information, not financial advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. A late regulatory filing is a paperwork failure and nothing more: we make no allegation of wrongdoing against any person named on this page.