Puts and calls in 13Fs — and why we never net them

Option lines are the most misread rows in every filing. The safe way to read them.

13F filings can include listed option positions, reported as the market value and the number of shares underlying the option, flagged "Put" or "Call." These rows are the source of the most spectacular misreadings in 13F journalism — most famously whenever a fund's put position is reported as a massive short bet without noting what the form cannot show.

Why option rows mislead

The form reports notional exposure, not premium at risk or direction of the overall trade. A $1 billion "put" line might be a hedge against a long book, one leg of a spread whose other leg is invisible, or a cash-secured put-writing program — economically bullish. The form does not disclose strike, expiry, or whether the option was bought or written. Presenting puts-minus-calls as a directional stance fabricates information the filing does not contain.

The rules this site follows

Option positions are never netted against share positions, and never combined with them. Share tables on this site contain only common-stock ("SH") rows; option lines appear in their own clearly labeled section on manager pages. Aggregate ownership statistics — holder counts, institutional buying, consensus lists — are computed from share positions only. A manager's put and call notional totals are shown as separate figures where relevant, with this caveat linked.

When option rows are informative

Sudden appearance of large option notional at a manager who rarely reports options is descriptively interesting, and pairs of put+call lines on the same underlying often indicate structured trades. This site surfaces such patterns as observations about reporting, without inferring direction. If a page cannot say which way a trade points, it says that.