Form 13F is a filing that all institutional investors who manage over $100 million
in assets must submit to the SEC no later than 45 days after the end of the March,
June, September, and December quarters.
The 13F is essentially a list of holdings that large investors own. It discloses their U.S. equity holdings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and provides insights into what the smart money is doing.
Individual activists or "whales" are also required to file Form 13F. These include
successful investors such as Warren Buffett (see
Berkshire Hathaway),
T Boone Pickens (see
BP Capital),
Carl Icahn, and Eddie Lampert (see
RBS Partners).
By comparing
current holdings with previous quarters, one may infer which stocks are
being bought and sold by the "whales".
SEC Form 13F filings provide investors with an inside look at the holdings of Wall Street's top stock pickers and their asset allocation strategies. Individual investors and other institutional investors, who want to replicate the strategies of rock star hedge fund managers like Daniel Loeb, David Tepper, David Einhorn, Carl Icahn or Seth Klarman, scrutinize 13F filings to generate investment ideas. And the financial press often reports on what these fund managers have been buying and selling. By looking at the top holdings of some managers, investors hope to put together a best-ideas portfolio without paying management fees. But there are a number of problems with that strategy.
13F filers aren't required to file until 45 days after the end of the quarter.
If this falls on a weekend then filings are due the following Monday.
While they can obviously file early, most filers tend to wait until
the last minute to submit their filing. Of course there are always
stragglers that don't file for days or even weeks after that.
Any asset that is considered a 13F asset by the SEC must be reported on Form 13F.
The official list can be found at
http://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13flists.htm.
Basically anything that is traded on an exchange as well as certain equity options
and warrants, shares of closed-end investment companies and certain
convertible debt securities.
The shares of open-end investment companies
(i.e., mutual funds) are not Section 13(f) securities
Please remember that the import process is not perfect. It is entirely automated
and done in real-time. So within an hour of the SEC releasing a filing,
SEc13F.com imports and displays it. The risk with providing real-time
access such as this is that the filing may contain mistakes or the import
process incorrectly parses the filing. If you have doubts about the validity
of certain filings then please check with the actual SEC filing. Links are
provided back to every 13F filing used by the site. And if you find an error, please
report it to us so we may correct it for others.
Sec13F checks with the SEC every hour to see if any new 13F filings have
been posted. As soon as any are found they are automatically processed
and released.
These are to segregate holdings by class. PRN indicates principal amount on convertible debt securities.
If the holdings being reported are put or call options, then the designation
"PUT" or "CALL" is used as appropriate.
