Plain English guides
Everything you need to know about following smart money. No jargon, no fluff.
The full 10-section guide — 13F filings, conviction signals, copy-trading myths, and the honest limits of smart-money data. ~15 min read.
Plain English guide to SEC Form 13F. What's in it, when it drops, what it does and doesn't show.
Step-by-step: open any 13F on EDGAR and know what every field means. With real Berkshire examples.
The hedge fund edge explained without jargon. Why 85% of managers have none — and what the 15% have in common.
Why every 13F is six weeks late by design — and how to use lagged data without getting burned.
Which Buffett principles are actually transferable to a retail account, and which depend on structural edges you don't have.
Why mechanically copying Buffett's 13F underperforms the underlying portfolio.
How to tell a real bet from index padding. The −100..+100 scale explained.
Why every hedge fund performance number you read is probably an overestimate — and how missing dead funds distorts 13F signals.
Three SEC filings, three signals. The difference between a quarterly portfolio snapshot, an activist disclosure, and a passive big-stake filing — and how to read each one.
Two SEC filings, two completely different signals. Form 4 is a 2-day insider receipt; 13F is a 45-day institutional portfolio snapshot. Speed, scope, signal strength, and when to read each one.
Original research — April 2026. We backtested our own ConvictionScore over 221 ticker-quarter pairs across 4 quarters. Result: r = −0.12, no predictive signal. Top-decile BUYs underperformed SPY by 5 pts; bottom-decile SELLs beat it by 24 pts. Why, and what to use 13F data for instead.
Both return capital. One is flashier; the other is more tax-efficient. The honest tradeoffs on tax, flexibility, and long-term compounding.
Where the real buyback numbers live in SEC 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filings — plus how to spot debt-funded financial engineering and stock-based-comp distortions.
Plain-English guide: when an investor crosses 5%, which filing they pick reveals their intent. Activist (13D) means board fights. Passive (13G) means index hold.
What short interest actually measures, how days-to-cover is calculated, and why high short interest is BOTH a squeeze setup AND a smart-money signal.
What the STOCK Act of 2012 actually requires, why disclosures show ranges (not exact amounts), how late filings are penalized, and how to read the disclosures.
What overlap actually means, how to measure it, and why owning VOO + VTI + QQQ + SPY delivers far less diversification than you think.