SEC Form 13F is a quarterly report that large institutional investment managers file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosing their equity holdings. Every hedge fund, mutual fund company, pension fund, and other institutional manager that exercises investment discretion over $100 million or more in qualifying securities must report its holdings each quarter. These filings are publicly available through the SEC's EDGAR database.
13F filings are one of the most widely used public data sources for tracking institutional ownership. Because they reveal the specific equity positions held by the largest money managers in the United States, the data provides a factual snapshot of institutional positioning across the market. Researchers, analysts, and investors use 13F data to understand ownership concentration, observe quarter-over-quarter changes, and study patterns in institutional capital allocation.
This guide explains who must file, what the filing contains, the timing and delay involved, the significant limitations of the data, and how to find 13F filings on EDGAR.
Who Must File Form 13F
Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as added by the 1975 amendments, requires institutional investment managers with investment discretion over $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities to file quarterly holdings reports with the SEC. The rule is implemented through SEC Rule 13f-1.
What Qualifies as an Institutional Investment Manager
The SEC defines an "institutional investment manager" broadly. It includes any entity that exercises investment discretion over an account holding Section 13(f) securities. In practice, this encompasses:
- Hedge funds — both the management company and individual fund entities
- Mutual fund companies — the investment adviser, not the individual mutual fund (which files separately on Form N-PORT)
- Pension funds — public employee retirement systems, corporate pension plans, and their external managers
- Insurance companies — to the extent they manage equity portfolios
- Bank trust departments — banks that manage equity portfolios on behalf of clients
- Endowments and foundations — university endowments, charitable foundations, and similar entities with managed equity portfolios
- Registered investment advisers — RIAs managing $100 million or more in qualifying securities
The requirement attaches to the entity exercising investment discretion. If a pension fund delegates management to three external advisers, each adviser files its own 13F (assuming each meets the threshold), and the pension fund itself may also file if it retains discretion over some assets.
The $100 Million Threshold
The filing threshold is $100 million in aggregate fair market value of Section 13(f) securities. This threshold has not been adjusted since the rule was adopted in 1975. In inflation-adjusted terms, $100 million in 1975 would be approximately $600 million today. Far more managers meet the threshold now than Congress originally intended — as of 2023, approximately 5,000 institutional managers filed 13F reports each quarter.
The SEC proposed raising the 13F reporting threshold to $3.5 billion in 2020, which would have eliminated reporting for approximately 90% of filers. The proposal drew significant public opposition and was not adopted. The threshold remains at $100 million.
When the Obligation Begins and Ends
A manager must file its first 13F within 45 days after the end of the first calendar quarter in which it meets the $100 million threshold. The obligation continues for every subsequent quarter in which the manager meets the threshold. If holdings drop below $100 million for a sustained period, the manager may cease filing, though many continue voluntarily.
What Form 13F Contains
Form 13F-HR (the "HR" stands for "holdings report") consists of a cover page and an information table listing the manager's holdings.
The Information Table
The information table is the core of the filing. Each row represents a single holding and includes the following fields:
| Field | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Issuer name | The name of the company whose securities are held |
| Title of class | The type of security (e.g., "COM" for common stock, "CL A" for Class A shares) |
| CUSIP | The nine-character identifier for the specific security (assigned by CUSIP Global Services) |
| Market value | The total market value of the position in thousands of dollars, as of the last day of the calendar quarter |
| Share count | The number of shares or principal amount held |
| Investment discretion | Whether the manager has sole, shared, or no investment discretion over the position |
| Voting authority | The number of shares over which the manager has sole voting authority, shared voting authority, or no voting authority |
| Put/Call indicator | If the position is in options, indicates whether they are puts or calls (blank for common stock) |
What Securities Are Covered
Form 13F only covers securities that appear on the SEC's official list of Section 13(f) securities. The SEC publishes this list quarterly, and it includes:
- Exchange-listed equity securities — common stocks, preferred stocks, and ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) listed on national securities exchanges
- Certain equity options and warrants — options on stocks and equity-based warrants
- Shares of closed-end investment companies — publicly traded closed-end funds
The list does not include every tradeable security. Notably absent are fixed-income securities, money market instruments, shares of open-end mutual funds, futures, and securities listed exclusively on foreign exchanges with no US listing.
What 13F Does NOT Include
Understanding what is excluded from 13F is as important as understanding what is included:
- Short positions — 13F only reports long positions. If a fund holds 5 million shares long and is short 2 million shares of the same issuer, only the 5 million share long position appears
- Cash and fixed income — bonds, treasuries, cash equivalents, and money market holdings are not reported
- Foreign-only securities — stocks listed exclusively on non-US exchanges do not appear, even if the manager holds significant positions
- Private investments — venture capital stakes, private equity holdings, and other non-public investments are excluded
- Futures and swaps — derivative positions other than listed options and warrants are not reported
- No cost basis — the filing shows market value as of quarter-end but not what the manager paid for the shares
- No entry or exit dates — the filing shows a snapshot of holdings on the last day of the quarter, not when positions were established or unwound
When Form 13F Is Filed
The Quarterly Schedule
Form 13F must be filed within 45 calendar days after the end of each calendar quarter. The reporting dates and typical filing deadlines are:
| Quarter End | Filing Deadline |
|---|---|
| March 31 | May 15 |
| June 30 | August 14 |
| September 30 | November 14 |
| December 31 | February 14 |
If the deadline falls on a weekend or federal holiday, the filing is due on the next business day.
The 45-Day Delay
The 45-day filing window means that 13F data is inherently stale by the time it becomes public. A filing for the quarter ending March 31 might not appear on EDGAR until mid-May — at which point the positions reported reflect holdings that are at least 45 days old. In practice, a significant number of managers file close to the deadline rather than immediately after the quarter ends.
This delay is a fundamental characteristic of 13F data. During those 45 days, a manager may have substantially changed its portfolio. Positions shown on the 13F may have been increased, reduced, or eliminated entirely by the time the filing is publicly available.
Amendments
Managers may file amendments (Form 13F-HR/A) to correct errors or update previously filed holdings reports. Amendments replace the original information table for that quarter. When reviewing 13F data, it is important to check whether an amendment has been filed that supersedes the original report.
Limitations of 13F Data
13F data is widely used, but it has significant limitations that must be understood for the data to be interpreted correctly.
The Staleness Problem
The 45-day filing delay means every 13F is a backward-looking snapshot. A fund's current portfolio may look substantially different from what the most recent 13F shows. This is particularly acute for hedge funds and other active managers that turn over portfolios rapidly. Agarwal, Jiang, Tang, and Yang (2013) examined the effects of the reporting delay, finding that it materially affects the ability to replicate institutional strategies using public data alone.
Long-Only Bias
13F reports only long positions. A fund that is long $500 million and short $300 million in the same sector will appear on 13F as having $500 million in long positions, with no indication of the offsetting short book. For managers that use long-short strategies, the 13F presents an incomplete picture of their overall positioning.
No Cost Basis or Timing
The filing shows market value and share count as of quarter-end, but does not reveal when the manager entered the position or at what price. A position first appearing on a 13F may have been acquired on the first day of the quarter or the last. There is no way to determine from the filing alone whether the position was built gradually or acquired in a single block trade.
Confidential Treatment Requests
Section 13(f) allows managers to request confidential treatment of specific holdings. If the SEC grants the request, those positions are omitted from the publicly filed 13F and disclosed later — sometimes one or two quarters after the original filing period. Managers typically request confidential treatment when actively building or unwinding a position. The omitted positions eventually appear in a delayed amendment, but by that point the data is even more stale than a standard 13F.
The $100 Million Threshold
Managers below the $100 million threshold are not required to file. This means that the 13F universe does not capture smaller hedge funds, family offices below the threshold, and other sub-threshold managers. The data is skewed toward larger institutions.
Aggregation Across Sub-Advisers
Large institutional managers may aggregate holdings across multiple sub-accounts or strategies in a single 13F filing. The filing shows the total position but does not break it down by individual fund. Two different funds managed by the same adviser — one increasing a position while the other decreasing it — would appear as a single net number.
How to Find 13F Filings on EDGAR
The SEC's EDGAR database is the authoritative source for 13F filings. There are several ways to locate them.
Searching by Fund Name
To find 13F filings for a specific institutional manager:
- Go to the EDGAR company search page
- Enter the manager's name in the "Company name" field (e.g., "Berkshire Hathaway" or "Bridgewater Associates")
- Set the form type filter to "13F-HR"
- Review the results — each filing shows the date filed and the reporting period
Searching by Company (Issuer)
13F filings are indexed to the filer (the institutional manager), not to the companies held in the portfolio. To find which institutions hold a specific company, you need tools that aggregate across all 13F filings — EDGAR's basic search does not provide this view directly. The EDGAR full-text search system can help locate filings mentioning a specific company name or CUSIP.
Reading the Filing
When you open a 13F-HR filing on EDGAR, you will see:
- Cover page — identifies the filing manager, the reporting period, and whether this is an original filing or an amendment
- Summary page — shows the total number of holdings and total market value
- Information table — the full list of holdings, available as both an HTML table and a downloadable XML file
The XML format (the infotable.xml attachment) is the machine-readable version and is what data providers and researchers typically use for systematic analysis.
For the quarter ending December 31, 2022, Berkshire Hathaway's 13F-HR filing disclosed approximately 45 distinct equity positions with a total reported market value of approximately $300 billion. The filing illustrates the structure of a typical 13F: each row shows an issuer, CUSIP, share count, market value, and the type of investment discretion and voting authority. This example is referenced here to illustrate the filing format, not as commentary on any investment strategy.
How Akivus Uses This Data
Akivus processes 13F filings filed with the SEC through the Thesma API platform, which extracts and structures the holdings data from each filing. This data surfaces across multiple Akivus products to provide context on institutional ownership alongside other filing types.
Akivus Reports include an institutional holdings section for each company in the Russell 3000, showing which 13F filers hold positions and how those positions changed quarter over quarter — new positions established, existing positions increased or reduced, and positions eliminated. This data is presented alongside Form 4 insider activity, providing two complementary views of a company's ownership: what insiders are doing with their personal holdings (Form 4) and what large institutional managers hold in their portfolios (13F).
Akivus Briefs — free company summary pages available at /companies/[ticker] — surface recent institutional ownership data to give a quick snapshot of how major holders are positioned. The weekly Akivus Newsletter may highlight notable institutional activity patterns observed across the quarter's filings. In each case, Akivus presents the factual filing data with context — describing what the filings contain and how positions have changed, not suggesting what actions to take based on the data.