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How to Read a 13F Filing, Line by Line · https://wallstpal.com/guides/how-to-read-a-13f/ · saved 2026-10-28

About this page

A plain-English guide. Each guide ends with real examples and an "Explain it like I'm 13" section.

How to read it

Form 4
The form a company insider (officer, director or owner of more than 10%) must file with the SEC within two business days of buying or selling the company's shares.
13F
A quarterly list of U.S. stocks held by an investment manager with more than $100 million, filed within 45 days after each quarter ends.
STOCK Act
A 2012 law that requires members of Congress to report stock trades by themselves, a spouse or a dependent child within 45 days.

A real example

In January 2016, when bank stocks were falling, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon bought 500,000 JPMorgan shares with his own money, worth about $26 million. His Form 4 made the purchase public within days, and investors read it as a strong sign of confidence.

Explain it like I'm 13

This is the "how it works" part of the site, written so anyone can follow it.

Data from public SEC filings and congressional reports. Information, not investment advice. Check every number against the filing linked on the page.

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Funds and 13FUpdated Oct 28, 2026 · 3 min read

How to Read a 13F Filing

A walk through every column of a 13F information table: issuer, class, CUSIP, value, shares, put/call, discretion and voting. Plus the three mistakes people make most often.

By · Founder and editor, WallStPal

Where to find it

On SEC EDGAR, search for the manager’s name and look for filings of type 13F-HR. Each filing has a cover page, a summary page and an information table. The summary page gives two numbers worth noting first: how many rows the table has and their total value. The information table holds the positions.

The columns, one by one

Column What it means
Name of issuer The company or fund that issued the security, often abbreviated (APPLE INC, BANK OF AMER CORP).
Title of class The type of security: COM for common stock, CL A for class A shares, or a description for ETFs and bonds.
CUSIP A nine-character code for that exact security. Two share classes of one company have two different CUSIPs.
FIGI An optional global identifier, added in 2023. Many filers leave it blank.
Value Market value at the end of the quarter. In whole dollars since January 2023, in thousands before that.
Shares or principal amount The number of shares, or the face amount for bonds, with SH or PRN to say which.
Put/Call Filled in only when the row is an option. The value and share count then refer to the underlying shares.
Investment discretion SOLE, DFND (shared, usually with an affiliate) or OTR (shared in some other way).
Other manager A number that points to a related manager listed on the summary page.
Voting authority How many shares the manager can vote alone, shares the vote on, or cannot vote.

Reading it in four steps

  1. Sort by value. The largest rows show where most of the money is. Divide each row by the total on the summary page to get its weight.
  2. Group duplicate rows. One stock can appear on several lines, for different share classes or because different internal managers hold it. Add them up before you judge the size.
  3. Separate the options. Any row with PUT or CALL is an option position, and its value is not money the fund spent.
  4. Compare with last quarter. A 13F is a snapshot. Changes only show up when you put two quarters side by side, which is what our fund pages and changes page do.

Three common mistakes

  • Reading thousands as dollars. In a filing from 2022 or earlier, a value of 500,000 means $500 million.
  • Treating a value increase as buying. If the share count did not change, the value moved because the price moved.
  • Reading option rows as cash bets. The value shown is the worth of the underlying shares, which can be many times what the options cost.

Examples

One row from Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire’s 13F for the second quarter of 2026 lists Apple as COM, 227,917,808 shares, worth about $66.0 billion, or about 22% of the reported portfolio. Further down the list are two Alphabet lines, one for class A shares (GOOGL) and one for class C (GOOG). They have different CUSIPs and must be added together to see Berkshire’s full Alphabet position. You can see both on our Berkshire page.

Michael Burry’s puts, 2023. Scion Asset Management’s 13F for the second quarter of 2023 listed put options on the SPY and QQQ funds, covering about 2 million shares of each, with a combined reported value of roughly $1.6 billion. Headlines called it a $1.6 billion bet against the market and “93% of his portfolio.” The $1.6 billion was the value of the underlying shares. What Scion actually paid for the options was far smaller, and Scion managed only a few hundred million dollars at the time. The put/call column was the clue.

Explain it like I’m 13

A 13F table is like the list on the back of a big kid’s trading card binder. Each line says the card’s name, a special code that tells you exactly which version it is, how many copies they have, and what all those copies are worth today.

Some lines are not cards at all. They are bets like “I can sell you 100 cards at today’s price next month.” Those lines show what the 100 cards are worth, which is much more than the bet cost. Read those lines carefully, or you will think the kid owns a lot more than they do.

Next step

Open the latest 13F report and pick one fund. Find its biggest position, check whether it appears on more than one line, and see whether any option rows are mixed in.

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