Smart Money

What is Smart Money? — Definition

'Smart money' refers to capital deployed by sophisticated, professional investors — hedge fund managers, institutional portfolio managers, and legendary individual investors like Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, and Michael Burry. The term implies these investors have informational or analytical edges over the average retail investor.

Following smart money is not foolproof — even the best investors make mistakes, and 13F data is delayed by up to 45 days. But tracking where smart money flows can reveal sectors, themes, and individual stocks that pass the scrutiny of the world's best analysts. Consistent accumulation of a stock by multiple top investors is a meaningful signal.

Example

When multiple legendary investors — Buffett, Tepper, and Ackman — each disclosed positions in the same stock within consecutive 13F cycles, the stock outperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 18 percentage points in the following 12 months in historical backtests.

BMInsider's Smart Money Tracker is purpose-built to aggregate and visualize 13F filings from 15 legendary investors, showing their current holdings, recent changes, and conviction bets — updated each quarter.