Method

Everything on HedgeCopy is estimated from 13F holdings. A 13F-HR lists a manager's long positions in US-listed equities (and options) at quarter end. It omits shorts, cash, non-US assets, most derivatives and anything bought and sold within the quarter, and it is filed up to 45 days after the quarter ends.

Follow-the-filing (headline)

For each fund we take the long US-equity rows (no PUT/CALL rows, no principal-amount rows) of each 13F-HR, map CUSIPs to tickers (OpenFIGI), weight by reported value drifted to the entry date, and buy at the close of the first trading day after the filing date. The book is held (weights drift) until the next filing becomes actionable. Amendments only count from the day they were filed. Prices are split/dividend-adjusted closes (total-return proxy).

Costs

Every rebalance is charged an assumed 10 bps per unit of turnover (sum of absolute weight changes, so the initial buy-in costs 10 bps and a complete switch 20 bps). Management fees, taxes and spreads beyond that are ignored.

Ranking: annualised return from copying the filings

Funds are ranked by the annualised follow-the-filing return over the last 3 years, net of costs: the compound yearly rate a follower would have earned buying each 13F the day after it was filed. Three years is one common window for every fund, so the numbers compare like with like; SPY over the same window is shown alongside, and alpha vs SPY is the difference in percentage points per year. A window counts only if every trading day in it is covered by a filing. We also show the annualised return since the series started (each fund's own window, printed next to it). Funds need at least 8 quarters of follow-the-filing history to be ranked; others are listed at the bottom as “Not enough data”. Other presets sort by TTM, alpha vs SPY, AUM or concentration, and every column can be sorted and filtered.

Holdings heatmap and map

Each fund page shows its latest 13F book twice. The heatmap groups the top 50 positions by sector, sized by weight and coloured by the change in weight since the previous 13F (green added, red trimmed). The map sizes each position by reported value and colours it by the stock's own price return (YTD or 12 months, red to green, clamped at ±50%). Sector, industry and company HQ location come from Yahoo, cached for 90 days.

13F-implied return (reference)

The same book held from the quarter-end date. This is what the fund's disclosed book did, but nobody could trade it — it is shown for comparison only.

Flags

• Coverage < 80%: less than 80% of the long book (by value, last 8 quarters) could be priced.
• Hard to copy: quant, macro and multi-strategy managers, books with more than 1,000 positions, or average one-way turnover above 50% a quarter. Their 13F is a weak proxy for the fund's actual returns.
• No recent 13F: nothing filed in ~140 days.

Universe

About 50 hedge funds that file 13F-HRs, chosen for recognisability and including notable activists. Index giants, banks and long-only asset managers are excluded. Data refreshes quarterly after the 13F deadline (mid-Feb/May/Aug/Nov) and prices weekly.