Frequently Asked Questions

A 13F filing (formally 13F-HR) is a quarterly report that institutional investment managers with at least $100 million in qualifying assets must file with the SEC. It discloses all equity holdings — including stock name, CUSIP, number of shares, and market value. These filings are public and available through SEC EDGAR.

Any institutional investment manager exercising investment discretion over $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities must file. This includes hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, bank trust departments, and registered investment advisers. Over 8,000 institutions file each quarter. Notable filers include Berkshire Hathaway, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Bridgewater Associates.

13F filings are due 45 days after each calendar quarter ends. Q1 filings (January–March) are due by mid-May, Q2 by mid-August, Q3 by mid-November, and Q4 by mid-February. Institutions can also file amendments to correct previously submitted data. FindataFox processes new filings and amendments as they become available on SEC EDGAR.

Institutional ownership is the percentage of a company's outstanding shares held by large financial institutions. High institutional ownership (typically 60–80% for large-cap stocks) can indicate professional confidence in a company. Changes in institutional ownership — especially sudden increases or decreases — are closely watched by investors as potential signals.

On FindataFox, enter any stock ticker in the search bar to see which institutions hold it, how many shares they own, and how positions have changed over recent quarters. You can view the top holders table, ownership trend charts, and Sankey flow diagrams showing capital movement between positions.

Crowding analysis measures how concentrated institutional positioning is in a stock relative to its peers. A highly crowded stock has an unusually large share of its float held by institutional investors. While this can indicate strong conviction, extreme crowding can also signal risk — if many institutions try to exit simultaneously, selling pressure can be amplified.

Yes, FindataFox is completely free. There is no paywall, no account required, and no usage limits. All data is sourced from public SEC EDGAR filings.

All data comes from SEC EDGAR, the official electronic filing system of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We process 13F-HR filings for institutional holdings and XBRL financial facts (from 10-K and 10-Q filings) for shares outstanding and other company metrics. This is the same primary data source used by Bloomberg, Refinitiv, and other financial data providers.

CUSIPs are 9-character identifiers assigned to securities. Some 13F filings contain CUSIPs for securities that have been delisted, merged, or reorganized — making them difficult to map to current tickers. Others may reference private placements, foreign securities, or convertible instruments that don't have standard stock tickers. Our enrichment pipeline resolves the majority of CUSIPs to tickers, but some remain unmapped due to these data quality challenges inherent in the 13F filing process.