Start with the reporting institution
A famous investor’s name is a useful search term. The institution named in a Form 13F is the reporting manager; it may exercise investment discretion over client accounts rather than own the assets itself. Your headline and quotation should keep that distinction: an institutional report does not identify who personally made an investment decision.
Choose two adjacent report periods for that same institution. The date you discovered a filing, the date it was filed and the date its positions describe answer different questions.
Use the full tables, including positions that disappeared
Compare securities by identifier, share class and instrument type. A list of the largest holdings cannot establish an exit: an investment may simply have dropped below the displayed cutoff. A complete latest table and complete preceding table are required.
- New: present in the latest table and absent from the complete preceding table.
- Increased or reduced: comparable reported quantity changed.
- Exited: absent from the latest complete disclosure after appearing in the preceding disclosure.
- Unchanged quantity: a different value or portfolio weight alone is not a trade.
Verify before you turn a difference into a story
Open the comparison evidence and check both report versions. Look for amendments, stock splits and share-class changes. A share-count difference can be a corporate action rather than buying or selling. Do not describe an unresolved difference as a confirmed trade.
A useful factual sentence names the institution, both reporting dates, the security, the before-and-after quantities and the calculation. It does not add an execution date, transaction price or investment motive that the reports do not disclose. Use the quotation tool to keep those limits attached.
What the comparison cannot answer
A period-end comparison is not a trade blotter. It cannot, by itself, establish the exact day of a transaction, the average price paid, the institution’s entire balance sheet or a person’s present-day wealth. Link to the original disclosure rather than implying that the website saw a private account.
Follow the evidence
References support the source definitions and dated examples. They do not establish private account access or permission to reproduce an entire external publication.
- SEC Form 13F instructions
- Berkshire Hathaway original Q1 information table
- Berkshire Hathaway original Q2 information table
Editorial review: Foster · 20 Oct 2026.