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Comment by bpicolo | Hacker News Reader

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bpicolo·

Are billion dollar investments in public companies not public knowledge? (Serious question)

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They are once the quarterly 13F reports come out.

https://www.sec.gov/answers/form13f.htm

For smaller companies it can also come out in a 13D which is faster (within 10 days), but only if the investment is more than 5% of the company. That's why there are a lot of ownership stakes of 4.9%.

>only if the investment is more than 5% of the company

Interesting, I think it's the same percentage in Indian stock exchanges.

> That's why there are a lot of ownership stakes of 4.9%.

Is reporting speed really important enough to change the size of your investment?

Apparently so. Hedge funds really don't like to disclose their positions.

Institutional investment managers are required to disclose their investments. In this case it's called a 13F.

Corporate insiders (officers, directors, and employees) need to disclose trades involving their own company.

I don't believe an individual trading his or her own money need to disclose anything to the SEC. I could be wrong though.

Rank and file employees generally do not have to disclose their trades. I've worked at 3 public companies and never had to disclose to the government. At Merrill Lynch (and at other private investment houses), we did have to have ALL of our trades cc'd to the compliance desk, but that's a Wall St thing, not a government thing.

I'm pretty sure the rule is around owning a certain fraction of a stock (to make sure it's publicly known if you're trying to buy a controlling stake, because this would affect the price), not the dollar-value of it. And Berkshire owns ~0.18% of AAPL.

Seems public to me. What am I missing?

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