About Position Sheet

Position Sheet follows the money in ETFs run by managers worth following. Every trading night their funds publish full holdings. We save each file, compare it to the day before, and surface what changed in a way you can read in five minutes, with every detail one click away.

How much history we have

We can only report what we have collected. For each manager we save the funds' holdings file every trading night; that daily record is what the big moves, rebalances and track records are built from, and nothing before it is counted. For some managers we also found older snapshots saved by the Internet Archive. Those are weekly to monthly, not daily, so we use them only for long-range views such as how a fund's positioning has shifted, never for big moves or returns.

Updated every trading night.

Methodology

• Data. The funds' own daily holdings disclosures. Each file shows holdings after the prior day's close, so a move dated Monday happened in Monday's trading.
• Big moves. A position's weight changes, over at most ten trading days, by at least twice that fund's typical position size and by at least 1.5 percentage points. Repeat signals within 20 trading days are merged.
• Weights, not share counts. When investors add or pull money, every position's share count changes. We use portfolio weights so those flows don't look like trades.
• Returns. From the closing price on the day a move first appears to the day the fund sold, or today if still held, compared with the S&P 500 over the same days. Stock returns are price only; the S&P side (SPY) includes dividends, a slightly tougher bar. Shorts, cash and T-bill parking, and swaps are left out of track records.
• Positioning. Holdings are grouped by sector, or by asset class for funds that hold other ETFs. Cash and money-market sweeps are included.
• Rebalances (rules-based managers). A rebalance is a day, or a few days in a row, when at least 3 names, or 8% of a fund's holdings, come in or go out. Each name added counts as a buy for the track record; each name dropped counts as a sale.
• Swaps. When a fund sells one ETF and buys a close substitute at a similar size within two weeks, we show it as one swap, not two trades, and leave it out of the track record.
• Short-lived positions. A big move into a position followed by a big move out within 20 trading days.
• Which managers. Chosen on purpose, not every active ETF. A manager goes live once we have at least 30 trading days of clean data.

FAQ

Why does this exist? I'm a big fan of Hedgeye and how its team thinks about markets. When their asset management arm started running ETFs, I wanted to see what they were doing with real money, so I built a tracker for myself that read the daily holdings files and flagged what changed. It became one of the most useful things I looked at each night. Position Sheet is that tracker, cleaned up and put out in the wild in case it's useful to you too.

The plan is to add other managers I respect: people with a real process whose funds show their hand every day. It's a short list on purpose. You won't find ARKK or Granny Shots here.

Why do some managers show big moves and others show rebalances? There are two kinds of managers here. Discretionary managers (Hedgeye, GMO, Militia, Sprott, Simplify) make judgment calls trade by trade. When one of their positions suddenly gets much bigger or smaller than usual, a person decided that, so we flag it as a big move.

Rules-based managers (Cambria and Alpha Architect) run tested quantitative screens. Every month or quarter the model ranks thousands of stocks, the fund buys the ones that pass and sells the ones that no longer do, and it holds them at roughly equal weights. Between rebalances almost nothing changes, and a new name usually comes in at only 1 to 2% of the fund, too small to count as a big move. So for them we report each rebalance instead: what came in and what went out.

Both are useful, in different ways. A discretionary move tells you what a manager you respect decided. A rebalance tells you what a well-tested model, from people who have published their research for years, now likes. Hedgeye's HECA sits in between: it uses a quantitative model, but trades often and at varying sizes, so big moves describe it better.

Bridgewater's All Weather fund is its own case: a systematic macro model that holds most of its exposure through futures. For it we show exposure by asset class at full notional size, which adds up to about twice the fund's assets, and flag big shifts between stocks, bonds, inflation-linked bonds, gold and commodities.

Which funds do you cover? Not every fund a manager runs. A fund makes the site if it passes three tests. First, the manager we follow makes the decisions, so no index trackers, no funds run by an outside sub-adviser, and no funds that only use the manager's platform. Second, its holdings show decisions worth reading, so no single-asset funds, cash or ultra-short bond funds, broad baskets of hundreds of equal-weighted names, options-income products, or bond funds that are only lists of individual bonds. Third, it reflects what the manager is known for, so no niche side products. Bridgewater's All Weather fund is an exception to the first test: State Street runs it, but it follows Bridgewater's model portfolio every day.

Are you affiliated with any of these managers? No. Position Sheet is independent and uses only public fund disclosures.

Is this investment advice? No. It describes what the funds did. What you do with it is your decision.

Can I copy these trades? You can follow them, but the files are published after the trading day and many moves don't work. Check each manager's track record first.

Something looks wrong. Please tell us at [email protected].