Smart money, out loud.

HoldLens exists for one reason: to help retail investors follow the smartest minds in the market — without paying for a Bloomberg terminal, without sifting raw SEC filings, and without buying overpriced "stock pick" newsletters.

Every quarter, the world's best investors — Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, David Einhorn, Seth Klarman, Joel Greenblatt, Carl Icahn — file Form 13F disclosures with the SEC. Inside those filings is the single most-credentialed dataset in retail-accessible finance: what professional money managers with at least $100M assets under management bought, sold, increased, or trimmed in the prior quarter. HoldLens parses every filing, scores conviction signal versus mechanical rebalancing, and surfaces the synthesis as a single signed −100 to +100 ConvictionScore per ticker.

What HoldLens does (and what it does not)

What it does: aggregate quarterly Form 13F holdings from 30 tracked superinvestors plus daily Form 4 insider transactions from corporate officers and directors, normalize the raw SEC data into a uniform schema, compute composite ConvictionScore + InsiderScore signals across multiple factors (consensus across managers, multi-quarter persistence, position-size weighting, rare-buy rarity, insider cluster patterns), and present the synthesis as searchable per-ticker, per-investor, and per-insider dossiers — all derived from public SEC filings, all free, all ad-supported.

What it does NOT do: recommend buying or selling any security. HoldLens is not a registered investment advisor. We do not provide personalized financial advice, do not endorse any ticker, and do not tell you what to do with your money. Our 2026 backtest over 221 ticker-quarter pairs found the ConvictionScore has no statistically significant predictive signal for forward returns (Pearson r = −0.117) — meaning the score is useful as market intelligence about where conviction money is positioned, not as a predictor of future price. We disclose this openly because it's the truth.

Methodology in one paragraph

The ConvictionScore (signed −100 to +100) combines six factors per ticker: (1) net buyer-vs-seller count across the tracked manager set, (2) buy-action concentration weighted by position size relative to portfolio, (3) multi-quarter persistence (a 4-quarter accumulation pattern scores higher than a one-quarter spike), (4) rarity of the action (a Buffett initiation in a previously-untouched ticker carries more signal than incremental sizing), (5) cross-manager confluence (multiple independent tracked managers acting in the same direction), and (6) insider-action overlay (Form 4 buying or selling by corporate officers within the same window). The full computation is documented at /methodology with worked examples and a published backtest. All inputs are public-domain SEC filings; the synthesis is original editorial work.

Why we built it this way

The Bloomberg terminal costs $24,000 a year. Stock-pick newsletters charge $200–500 a year and their median 5-year track record is no better than a passive index. Raw EDGAR is free but practically unusable for retail investors — every 13F filing is a 200-page XML document with manually-entered ticker symbols and no aggregation across managers. The gap between the credentialed dataset (13Fs) and the retail investor is mostly a UX problem and a synthesis problem, not a data problem. HoldLens closes the gap by doing the work once, computationally, and surfacing the result as a free public tool — supported by ads, with no paywall on the core data, ever.

Editorial principles

• Free is non-negotiable for the core product. Always will be. Pro tier removes ads + adds heavier features; the underlying ConvictionScore + per-ticker dossier stays free forever.
• Honest about limits — 13Fs are filed 45 days after quarter-end (mandated by SEC), so the data is not real-time. No copy-trading hype, no "follow the whales" promises. Every page that surfaces a 13F-derived signal also surfaces the lag disclosure.
• Original signal > data dump — anyone can republish raw 13F filings. We add a proprietary scoring layer on top of the public data, document the methodology, and publish the backtest. The synthesis is what differentiates HoldLens from a thousand "13F tracker" sites.
• No dark patterns — no countdown timers, no fake urgency, no signup walls, no email-required-to-view-the-data, no confirmshame opt-outs, no auto-charge gotchas. The site renders fully on first paint without an account.
• Plain-English descriptive labels — we describe observed accumulation or selling patterns in factual language (Heavy accumulation, Net selling, Mixed) rather than recommendation labels (BUY, SELL, STRONG BUY). HoldLens is not a registered investment advisor; verdict-style recommendations would misrepresent what the data is.

Operator + contact

HoldLens is built and maintained by Paulo de Vries (founder). Identity, methodology, and contact info are visible on every page; we don't hide behind a brand. Reach the operator at [email protected] for press inquiries, data corrections, citation requests, partnership questions, or anything else. Source code for the conviction-scoring methodology is open: see the methodology page for the full computation and the explainer for plain-English walkthrough.

Sister property

HoldLens is the applied analytical layer on a curated universe of 30 tracked superinvestors. The same operator runs a complementary site for the encyclopedic SEC reference — every form type, every filer, regulatory citations, programmatic JSON twin: SecFilingDex. When you want the catalog (what is a 10-K, what is a DEF 14A, the universe of all filings) start there; when you want applied analysis on tracked superinvestor positions, you're already here. The two sites do not duplicate content — they complement.

Not investment advice

This site is informational only and is not investment advice. HoldLens shows you what tracked superinvestors and corporate insiders are doing in their public SEC filings. It does not tell you what you should do with your money. We are not a registered investment advisor. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. 13F holdings are reported with a 45-day SEC filing lag and represent point-in-time snapshots, not real-time positions. Past behavior of any tracked manager or insider does not predict future results.