How to read a 13F filing: a field-by-field guide to the SEC's institutional disclosure

form 13F exists because of section 13(f) of the securities exchange act of 1934, which requires large institutional managers to disclose their holdings so the public can see what the biggest pools of capital own. the trigger is a single threshold: $100 million in section 13(f) securities under investment discretion. cross it, and you must file within 45 days of each calendar quarter-end.

"section 13(f) securities" means exchange-traded stocks and ETFs, certain convertible debt, and exchange-traded options — the official list is published by the SEC. notably, it does not include short positions, cash, currencies, commodities, or most derivatives. a 13F is a snapshot of the long US equity book, and nothing else.

the filing itself is a 13F-HR (holdings report). a 13F-NT(notice) is filed when another manager reports the holdings on the filer's behalf, and a 13F-HR/A is an amendment — worth noting, because amendments often correct exactly the kind of error this cluster is about. read more on the common 13F filing errors that amendments fix.

everything that matters is in the information table — a structured XML document with one row per holding. EDGAR renders it as a formatted table, but the XML is the source of truth. here is what each field means, with a real value from Krensavage Asset Management's Q1 2026 filing.

the value field is where 13F data quietly goes wrong. since january 3, 2023 (EDGAR release 22.4) the SEC requires holdings to be reported in whole dollars. before that, the value column was stated in thousands — so a $6.5 million position was written as the number 6,500.

some funds never updated their filing process and still file in the old thousands convention. when they do, any tool that reads the value field as whole dollars shows a $6.5 million position as $6,500 — a rounding error. the position is 1,000× larger than it looks, and effectively invisible on every screener at once. this is the exact error HedgeWatch was built to catch; the full breakdown of the thousands-convention bug walks through several verifiable cases.

shares vs principal

the sshPrnamt field holds the amount, and sshPrnamtType tells you how to read it: SH for a share count, PRN for a principal amount of debt. the overwhelming majority of rows are SH. for those, share count × quarter-end price is your value check.

puts and calls

a blank putCall field means a plain long position in the security. CALL or PUT means the row is an option, and the valuereflects the value of the option position, not the underlying shares — a common source of misreading a fund's actual exposure.

discretion and voting authority

investmentDiscretion (SOLE, DFND, or OTR) and the three voting-authority columns describe control, not size. they matter for activism and 13D analysis — see 13F vs 13D vs 13G — but they do not change the dollar size of the position.

take the Embecta (EMBC) row from Krensavage's Q1 2026 filing. the value field reads 6,500 and the share count reads 735,340. at EMBC's quarter-end close of roughly $8.81, the position is worth 735,340 × $8.81 ≈ $6.5 million — not $6,500. the filing is in the thousands convention; the value field is off by 1,000×, but the share count never lies. read every row this way and the data becomes trustworthy.

1. 1
   open the information table

   pull the 13F-HR information table XML from EDGAR for the manager and quarter.
2. 2
   find the holding row

   locate the row by nameOfIssuer and cusip.
3. 3
   read identity + value

   note the issuer, resolve the CUSIP to a ticker, and read the value field.
4. 4
   read shares

   take sshPrnamt (with sshPrnamtType = SH) as the share count.
5. 5
   verify against price

   multiply shares × quarter-end close; a ~1,000× gap to the reported value means the thousands convention.

don't have a filing open yet? the next guide walks through how to find any fund's 13F on SEC EDGAR and open the raw XML.

what is a 13F filing in simple terms?

a 13F is a quarterly report that large institutional investment managers must file with the SEC, listing the US-listed stocks, ETFs, and options they held at the end of the quarter. it shows issuer, CUSIP, share count, and a dollar value for each position, but not shorts, cash, or non-US holdings.

who has to file a form 13F?

any institutional investment manager that exercises investment discretion over $100 million or more in section 13(f) securities — hedge funds, mutual funds, pensions, banks, and registered advisers. once a manager crosses the threshold, it must file within 45 days of each calendar quarter-end.

what does the value column in a 13F mean?

it is the market value of the holding at quarter-end. since january 3, 2023 the SEC requires this value in whole dollars; before that it was stated in thousands. some funds still file in the old thousands convention, which makes a position read 1,000× too small on any tool that assumes whole dollars.

how do you calculate a position's value from a 13F?

multiply the share count (the sshPrnamt field, when sshPrnamtType is SH) by the stock's quarter-end closing price. the result should match the reported value field. if the reported value is roughly 1,000× smaller, the filing is using the pre-2023 thousands convention.

is 13F data reliable?

the holdings are real and legally attested, but the data has known flaws: a 45-day reporting lag, no short positions, stale or wrong CUSIPs, and the thousands-convention error. read filings against the raw EDGAR source rather than trusting a screener's normalized value.

• →find a 13F on SEC EDGAR
• →CUSIP to ticker
• →what 13F filings don't show
• →why some 13F positions show up 1,000× too small