WhaleWisdom Review – Can This Tool Help You Invest Like the Pros?

WhaleWisdom enables you to track the portfolios of major investment funds by analyzing 13F filings. The platform offers advanced tools for researching what stocks are favored by the biggest investment firms and which firms have consistently outperformed the market. The goal is to help you create your own custom investment portfolio based on fund managers’ insights into the market.

In our WhaleWisdom review, we’ll cover everything you need to know about this investment platform.

WhaleWisdom Pricing

WhaleWisdom offers a Free subscription tier that gives you access to 13F data for the past two years. You can use most of the platform’s backtesting and reporting tools, but you are limited to analyzing five funds at a time for most reports.

WhaleWisdom’s Standard pricing tier costs $90 per quarter or $300 per year. It unlocks 13F data going back to 2001 and allows you to analyze up to 10 funds at a time. It also includes the WhaleIndex, which shows the 100 most popular stocks among 13F filing funds, and a WhaleScore for each fund that indicates its long-term performance.

The Pro tier costs $150 per quarter or $500 per year. It allows you to analyze up to 50 funds at a time and offers a combined holdings report that includes multiple fund’s holdings in a single portfolio.

WhaleWisdom Features

WhaleWisdom relies on 13F filings, which are financial disclosures made quarterly by any fund manager controlling at least $100 million in assets. The filings can be up to 45 days old at the time they are issued, but they can still provide valuable information about funds’ holdings for funds that invest for the medium- and long-term.

You can access and search 13F data using WhaleWisdom, as well as export this data to Excel for further analysis. However, WhaleWisdom’s online platform offers a number of tools for analyzing funds’ holdings and performance.

13F Backtester

One of the most important tools that WhaleWisdom offers is the 13F backtester. You can select any combination of funds (not limited by your subscription tier) to build a theoretical portfolio, then run a backtest to see how the performance of that portfolio compares to the S&P 500 over time.

Importantly, you have a lot of control over what holdings are included in your theoretical portfolio. You can set the number of holdings allowed (up to 50); restrict what holdings are included by market sector, market cap, or performance; customize your portfolio’s rebalancing strategy; and restrict what stocks are included based on their weights inside the contributing funds’ portfolios.

Consensus Picks and Heatmap

Another nice thing that WhaleWisdom can do is help you find out what stocks are most popular among investment funds. The platform’s consensus picks tool allows you to select any group of funds (up to the number allowed by your subscription tier) and generate a report that shows the holdings they have in common.

WhaleWisdom also has a heatmap of stocks, which displays stocks that have been seeing increased buying activity from 13F filing funds over the most recent quarter. If you click on any individual stock, you can see the total number of funds holding the stock, the number of funds increasing their position in that stock, and the number of funds decreasing their position in that stock.

13F Stock Screener

You’ll find built-in stock screeners with most research platforms and tools; TipRanks has one, Wallmine, and many others. But unlike these other research tools, WhaleWisdom has a built-in stock screener that incorporates 13F filing data. You can search for stocks based on all 13F filing funds or a subset of funds and then narrow your search based on the number of funds holding a stock, the percentage of funds increasing their position in a stock, or the average weight of that stock within funds that hold it.

Relatedly, WhaleWisdom also offers a “double-down” report. This is essentially a pre-built screen that searches for stocks that lost value quarter-over-quarter and for which funds that already held the stock then increased their position.

WhaleIndex and WhaleScore

WhaleWisdom also puts its own data to work to provide the WhaleIndex, a list of the 100 stocks most commonly held by fund managers. The WhaleIndex is rebalanced quarterly and has more than doubled the performance of the S&P 500 over the past 1, 3, and 5 years.

WhaleWisdom also assigns a WhaleScore to each individual fund it tracks. The WhaleScore is a single number that’s designed to indicate the long-term performance of the fund relative to the S&P 500.

The WhaleIndex and fund WhaleScores are only available to paid subscribers.

WhaleWisdom Customization and Layout

WhaleWisdom’s online dashboard can be somewhat difficult to navigate. The interface is split into an “interactive” dashboard where you can run reports and a non-interactive dashboard where you can find premade graphics like the 13F heatmap and WhaleIndex.

However, the platform does an excellent job of making its data accessible. Almost all report results can be exported to Excel, including with a free subscription, and WhaleWisdom offers an Excel add-in for easy integration. Paid subscribers also get access to WhaleWisdom’s API.

WhaleWisdom Platform Differentiators

WhaleWisdom offers a comprehensive way to track and analyze the data provided by 13F filings. The fact that the platform offers recent 13F data for free is a huge advantage since WhaleWisdom’s platform is much easier to use than the SEC’s EDGAR filing search platform. In addition, having the ability to export data to Excel easily means that you’re not limited to the reporting tools that are built into WhaleWisdom.

Those reporting tools are worth noting, though, as they are very flexible. WhaleWisdom makes it easy to investigate individual stocks with respect to how their representation in professionally managed funds is changing over time. The platform also offers a way to group funds, build custom portfolios based on those grouped funds’ holdings, and then backtest those portfolios.

What Type of Trader is WhaleWisdom Best For?

WhaleWisdom is best for self-motivated investors who want to piggyback off the work and market insights of professional fund managers. The platform provides an enormous amount of data, so investors must be willing to sift through it and use WhaleWisdom’s analysis tools to build custom portfolios. At the same time, WhaleWisdom’s WhaleIndex does offer an option for less hands-on investors to build a high-performing portfolio.

WhaleWisdom is best for investors who are holding positions for at least 3 months at a time. 13F filings are only updated quarterly, and they may be up to 45 days out of date when filed. So, they may not provide actionable information for shorter-term trading.

Pros

• Historical 13F filing data from 2001
• Build and backtest custom strategies from 13F holdings data
• Screen stocks based on changes in fund representation
• WhaleIndex portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500
• Free tier offers access to most reporting tools

Cons

• 13F data can be up to 45 days out of date
• Standard plan only allows analysis of 10 funds at a time

Source: https://daytradereview.com/whalewisdom-review/