Every Form 13F filing is made public on EDGAR. Competitors, clients, journalists, and anyone else with an internet connection can see your firm's quarter-end holdings within 45 days of each quarter close. For most filers, this is simply a compliance obligation to manage. For some, it creates a genuine strategic concern.
The SEC provides a mechanism to address this: confidential treatment. Under certain conditions, a filer can request that specific holdings be withheld from the public version of their 13F for a defined period. Not all holdings qualify, and approval is not guaranteed, but for managers with concentrated positions or emerging strategies that would be compromised by disclosure, the request process is worth understanding.
What Qualifies for Confidential Treatment
The SEC may grant confidential treatment for holdings where public disclosure would reveal an investment strategy that is not yet complete — specifically, where disclosure could cause substantial harm to the filer's competitive position by revealing positions being actively built or unwound. This is a high bar. Routine holdings in widely-held securities are unlikely to qualify. Concentrated positions in smaller issuers, or positions that would signal a pending transaction or strategic shift to the market, are the most common approved cases. The SEC does not grant confidential treatment simply because a filer prefers privacy — the request must demonstrate that disclosure would cause identifiable competitive harm.
What Changed in 2023
Before February 28, 2023, confidential treatment requests were submitted on paper, separately from the EDGAR filing. Since that date, all requests must be filed electronically through EDGAR as part of the 13F submission. A checkbox was added to the Form 13F Summary Page to indicate that a confidential treatment request accompanies the filing. This means you can no longer handle the confidential treatment process separately from your filing workflow — it must be coordinated with your filing agent at the time the 13F is prepared.
How the Process Works
The confidential treatment request is submitted alongside your regular 13F-HR. The public version of your filing will omit the holdings for which you've requested confidential treatment. The SEC reviews the request and determines whether to grant it and for what period. If denied, you will receive notice before the information is made public, giving you an opportunity to appeal or withdraw and refile.
The Small Holdings Exception: A Simpler Alternative
For holdings that are simply small rather than strategically sensitive, there is a less complex route: the de minimis exception. Positions where the aggregate is less than 10,000 shares AND less than $200,000 in fair market value can be omitted from your 13F without a formal request. This is not confidential treatment — the positions are simply excluded as below the reporting threshold — but it provides a straightforward way to limit what appears on your public filing for smaller positions.
If you're evaluating whether a confidential treatment request makes sense for your firm's situation, contact File13F. We can walk through the current process and coordinate the request alongside your quarterly filing.