Form 13F Short Positions Not Reported: Why, and What Changed in 2026

If you pulled a Form 13F filing and found no short positions, you did not find an error. You found the rule working exactly as Congress intended in 1975. Short positions are not reported on Form 13F, and they never have been. What has changed is that a separate mandatory short reporting regime, Form SHO under Rule 13f-2, is now live as of 2026. Understanding both regimes, and the gap that still exists between them, is essential for compliance officers at institutional investment managers, investors trying to read institutional positioning, and governance professionals assessing market transparency.

Key takeaway: The SEC's own FAQ is unambiguous: "You should not include short positions on Form 13F." This is not a loophole. It is the statutory design.

Why Are Form 13F Short Positions Not Reported?

Form 13F covers long positions only, by deliberate statutory design. Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 was enacted in 1975 with a specific, narrow purpose. As the SEC's Division of Investment Management explains: "Congress passed Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act in 1975 in order to increase the public availability of information regarding the securities holdings of institutional investors. Congress believed that this institutional disclosure program would increase investor confidence in the integrity of the United States securities markets."

The word "holdings" is the operative one. Congress was focused on long ownership stakes, not short positions. Short selling had a different regulatory treatment in 1975, and the statute was never written to capture it.

Form 13F only covers "Section 13(f) securities," which are defined by an Official List published by the SEC. That list is a long-only concept: exchange-traded equities, certain equity options, and convertible debt. There is no short-side equivalent. Securities not on the Official List should not be reported at all, and short positions in securities that are on the list should also not be reported. The exclusion is total.

The $100 million filing threshold for Form 13F is calculated on the aggregate long market value of Section 13(f) securities under investment discretion. A manager with $200 million in long positions and $150 million in short positions files based on the $200 million long figure only.

What Was Available Before Form SHO?

Before Rule 13f-2, short position data existed only in aggregate, anonymized form. Investors and analysts who wanted to understand institutional short activity had three imperfect options:

• FINRA short interest reports: Published twice monthly, showing aggregate short interest by security across FINRA member firms. No manager-level attribution.
• Exchange-level short interest data: Similar aggregate figures from NYSE and Nasdaq, also without manager identification.
• Schedule 13D/13G filings: Activist short sellers occasionally disclosed short positions in these beneficial ownership filings, but only when their overall economic exposure crossed the 5% threshold and only when the position was structured to require disclosure.

None of these sources told you which specific institutional manager held a short position in a given stock. That information asymmetry was a persistent complaint from regulators and market participants, and it came to a head during the 2021 GameStop episode, which the SEC cited explicitly in its Rule 13f-2 adopting release as evidence that the lack of regulatory visibility into short positions created dangerous information gaps.

What Is Form SHO and How Does It Relate to Form 13F?

Form SHO is the SEC's first mandatory short position reporting regime for institutional investment managers, adopted October 13, 2023 under Rule 13f-2 (SEC Release No. 34-98738). It operates entirely separately from Form 13F, with different thresholds, a different security universe, a different filing cadence, and fundamentally different public disclosure mechanics.

The rule is "designed to enhance market transparency and regulatory oversight of short-selling activities, in response to concerns about manipulative or abusive short selling and the lack of transparency of short positions to both market participants and regulators."

Rule 13f-2 came into effect January 2, 2024. The original compliance date was January 2, 2025. After industry pushback, the SEC granted a temporary exemption on February 7, 2024, pushing the first filing deadline to February 14, 2026, covering the January 2026 reporting period. As of September 2026, Form SHO filings are live and the SEC is publishing aggregated data.

Note on stale sources: Several widely-cited articles still reference the original January 2025 compliance date or a 2028 extension. The operative deadline, based on the February 2024 exemptive order, was February 14, 2026. Filings are now active.

Form 13F vs. Form SHO: Side-by-Side Comparison

This is the comparison no top-ranking source provides. The two regimes differ across every material dimension:

For Form 13F filing deadlines and the 45-day arithmetic, see "When Are 13F Filings Due? 2026 Deadlines, Deadline Arithmetic, and EDGAR Traps".

What Are the Form SHO Reporting Thresholds?

Form SHO triggers are per-security and monthly, not aggregate. This is a critical structural difference from Form 13F. As McDermott Will & Emery notes: "Unlike Form 13F filing obligations, there is no exclusion under Rule 13f-2 for Managers who exercise investment discretion over securities below an aggregate threshold."

A manager must assess every calendar month whether any individual short position crosses the applicable threshold:

Threshold A: Reporting company issuers (equity securities registered under Exchange Act Section 12, or where the issuer files under Section 15(d))

• Monthly average gross short position of $10 million or more, OR
• Monthly average gross short position equal to 2.5% or more of total shares outstanding

Threshold B: Non-reporting company issuers (all other equity securities)

• Gross short position of $500,000 or more at the close of regular trading on any settlement date during the month

The securities universe for Form SHO is broader than the 13F Official List. It includes stocks, limited partnership interests, ETFs, and derivatives, options, warrants, and convertibles that qualify as "equity securities" under Exchange Act Section 3(a)(11) and Rule 3a11-1. A manager who does not file Form 13F because its long book is under $100 million could still have Form SHO obligations if a single short position crosses a threshold.

Will Form SHO Show Which Manager Is Short a Stock? No.

This is the most important misconception to correct. Form SHO does not give investors or analysts manager-level short position data. The SEC publishes Tables 1 and 2 data on an aggregated and anonymized basis, approximately one month after the reporting period. Cover page information identifying the reporting manager is not publicly disseminated.

In practical terms: you can see that, say, $450 million in aggregate gross short positions existed in a given equity security during a given month. You cannot see that Firm X held $200 million of that short. The manager-level attribution that makes Form 13F so useful to investors does not exist in Form SHO's public output.

This means the information asymmetry between institutions with access to prime brokerage data or proprietary short interest analytics and those relying solely on SEC disclosures persists, even after Form SHO. The rule improves regulatory visibility significantly. It does not create the manager-identified short disclosure that some market participants expected.

Dual Compliance Obligations: What IIMs Must Do Now

If your firm files Form 13F, you now need to assess Form SHO obligations separately. The two regimes run on different calendars and cover different security universes. Here is what that looks like operationally:

Quarterly (Form 13F):

1. Aggregate long market value of Section 13(f) securities as of the last trading day of each quarter.
2. If $100 million or more, file Form 13F-HR within 45 calendar days of quarter-end via EDGAR in XML format.
3. Include only long positions in securities on the SEC's Official List.

Monthly (Form SHO):

1. At month-end, assess every equity security in which the firm holds a short position.
2. For each reporting company issuer: calculate the monthly average gross short position. If it reaches $10 million or 2.5% of shares outstanding, a filing is required.
3. For each non-reporting company issuer: check whether the gross short position reached $500,000 on any settlement date during the month.
4. File Form SHO via EDGAR in XML format within 14 calendar days of month-end.
5. If any error is discovered in a filed Form SHO, file an amended report within 10 calendar days.

Compliance trap: "Elective over-reporting may itself be viewed as non-compliant with Rule 13f-2." Do not voluntarily include short positions that do not meet the applicable threshold. This is the inverse of the 13F situation, where over-inclusion is generally low-risk. On Form SHO, threshold precision matters in both directions.

Non-U.S. managers face a particular compliance risk here. If a foreign institutional investment manager files Form 13F because it uses U.S. interstate commerce and exercises discretion over $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities, it must also assess Form SHO obligations. The Rule 13f-2 definition of "institutional investment manager" mirrors the Section 13(f)(6)(A) definition used for 13F. As King & Wood Mallesons notes: "Non-U.S. managers who are subject to Form 13F filing requirements must now monitor and track their short positions to comply with this [Rule 13f-2]."

For a full breakdown of 13F deadlines and EDGAR operational traps, see "Form 13F Filing Deadline: 5 Operational Traps Beyond the 45-Day Rule".

FAQ

Is it legal to omit short positions from a Form 13F filing? Yes. It is not just legal, it is required. The SEC's FAQ explicitly states short positions should not be included on Form 13F. Including them would be an error, not a conservative disclosure.

How are short positions reported now? Through Form SHO, filed monthly via EDGAR under Rule 13f-2. The first filings were due February 14, 2026. The SEC publishes aggregated, anonymized data approximately one month after each reporting period.

What needs to be reported on Form 13F? Long positions in Section 13(f) securities on the SEC's Official List, held by institutional investment managers with $100 million or more in aggregate long market value under discretion. The form requires the security name, CUSIP (and optionally FIGI), number of shares, market value, and investment discretion type.

Can mutual funds take short positions? Yes, subject to their investment mandate and applicable fund regulations. If a mutual fund manager exercises discretion over a short position that crosses Form SHO thresholds, it must file Form SHO regardless of whether it also files Form 13F.

How long can I hold a short position without reporting it? There is no time-based trigger for Form SHO. The trigger is whether the position's market value crosses the applicable threshold during a calendar month. A short position held for years but below the threshold never triggers a filing. A short position that crosses the threshold on a single settlement date (for non-reporting issuers) triggers a filing for that month.

Does Form SHO replace FINRA short interest reporting? No. FINRA short interest data and exchange-level short interest reporting continue to operate. Form SHO is an additional, separate regime that provides the SEC with more granular, manager-level data, even though that manager-level detail is not publicly disseminated.