Frequently asked questions

Smart Money Radar is a research and analytics platform that tracks publicly disclosed insider stock trades, institutional fund holdings, and large crypto wallet movements, and explains what they mean in plain English. Instead of digging through regulatory filings and blockchain explorers yourself, you get one feed showing where "smart money" — company insiders, institutional investors, and large crypto holders — is putting its own money, updated as new activity is disclosed.

We built it for people who want to follow the same public information that professional investors watch, without needing a finance background to make sense of it. Every signal comes with a short, plain-English explanation of what happened and why it might matter, so you're never just staring at a raw filing.

Smart Money Radar covers stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrency in a single feed, and offers a free plan that never expires alongside paid plans with real-time alerts and additional features. Everything on the platform is built from information that's already public and legally required to be disclosed — we simply organize, connect, and explain it. Smart Money Radar is a research tool, not a financial advisor, and nothing on the platform is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Smart Money Radar is for anyone who wants to follow what insiders, institutions, and large crypto holders are doing with their own money — without spending hours reading regulatory filings by hand. That includes individual investors who want an edge in their research process, more active traders who want to catch meaningful activity as it happens, and financial professionals or advisors who want a faster way to monitor public disclosures across many companies at once.

You don't need any prior experience with SEC filings or blockchain data to use it — every signal is explained in plain language. Whether you check in once a week or want instant alerts the moment something happens, Smart Money Radar is built to fit how you already invest, not to replace your own judgment or research process.

Smart Money Radar is not a broker, and it is not an investment advisor. We don't execute trades, hold your money or securities, or manage a portfolio on your behalf, and we don't provide personalized investment recommendations. What we do is collect publicly available information — SEC filings, institutional holdings reports, and on-chain crypto data — and present it in an organized, easy-to-understand way.

Think of Smart Money Radar as a research and monitoring tool that sits alongside your broker, not a replacement for one. You'll still buy and sell securities through your own brokerage account; we simply help you notice and understand relevant public activity faster than reading filings manually. Nothing on Smart Money Radar is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, and none of our content should be treated as personalized financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Always do your own research, and consult a licensed professional before making investment decisions.

Insider trades, institutional holdings, and large crypto transactions are all public information — but they're scattered across different regulatory systems and blockchain explorers, published in dense, technical formats that take real effort to read and cross-reference. Most people either don't know this information exists, or don't have the time to dig through it themselves.

Smart Money Radar was built to close that gap: to take information that's already legally required to be public, and make it genuinely usable — organized in one place, explained in plain English, and delivered as it happens rather than buried in a filing archive. The goal isn't to predict the market; it's to make sure that publicly available information is actually easy to find and understand, for anyone who wants to use it as part of their own research.

All of our data comes from official, public sources. Insider trading activity comes from Form 4 filings that company insiders are legally required to submit to the SEC. Institutional holdings come from 13F filings that large investment firms must submit to the SEC every quarter. Crypto whale activity comes from public blockchain data, which is inherently transparent and viewable by anyone. Prices, company profiles, and other market data come from established financial market data providers.

We don't have any private or non-public information, and we don't need it — the value of Smart Money Radar comes from organizing and explaining information that's already required to be disclosed publicly, but that most people never have the time to read directly.

A Form 4 is a filing that company insiders — executives, directors, and major shareholders — are legally required to submit to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission whenever they buy or sell shares of their own company's stock. By law, it must be filed within two business days of the transaction, which makes insider trading one of the fastest-disclosed types of public market data available.

A Form 4 includes who made the trade, their role at the company, how many shares were bought or sold, and at what price. Smart Money Radar reads these filings as they're published and turns each one into a clear, readable card — so instead of parsing a regulatory document, you see a plain-English summary of what happened.

A Form 13F is a quarterly filing that institutional investment managers — hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and similar large investors — are required to submit to the SEC if they manage over $100 million in securities. It lists the fund's holdings as of the end of that quarter, giving a public window into what large institutions own.

13F filings are disclosed roughly six weeks after each quarter ends, so they always reflect a snapshot from the recent past rather than real-time activity — but they're still one of the only ways to legally see what major institutional investors are holding. Smart Money Radar tracks changes between quarters for the funds we cover, so you can see what a fund added, trimmed, or exited from one filing to the next, rather than just a static list of holdings.

Insider transactions are any purchase or sale of a company's stock made by someone with privileged access to that company — typically an executive, director, or shareholder who owns a large enough stake to be legally classified as an insider. Every insider transaction in U.S. public markets must be disclosed to the SEC, which is what makes this information public in the first place.

Not every insider transaction is equally meaningful — routine transactions like stock granted as part of compensation, or shares sold automatically on a pre-scheduled plan, look very different from a deliberate, open-market purchase made with an insider's own money. Smart Money Radar labels this context on every trade, so you can tell the difference at a glance instead of treating every filing the same way.

Institutional holdings are the stocks and other securities owned by large investment organizations — hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, endowments, and similar institutional investors — rather than individual retail investors. In the U.S., institutions managing more than $100 million are required to publicly disclose their holdings every quarter.

Because these are some of the largest, most well-resourced investors in the market, many people find it useful to see what institutions are collectively buying into or moving away from — not as a signal to copy, but as one more piece of publicly available context. Smart Money Radar organizes institutional holdings by company and by fund, and highlights what changed from the previous quarter's filing.

A "whale" is a wallet that holds or moves an unusually large amount of cryptocurrency compared to typical activity — large enough that its transactions can be seen clearly against the normal background of blockchain activity. Because blockchain data is public by design, anyone can technically see these transactions, but spotting genuinely significant activity among the enormous volume of daily blockchain transactions is difficult without dedicated tools.

Smart Money Radar monitors on-chain activity and surfaces meaningful whale movements — large transfers, wallets moving funds onto or off exchanges, and other patterns that suggest a large holder is repositioning — alongside insider and institutional signals, so crypto and traditional markets show up in the same feed instead of being tracked separately.

Update frequency depends on the type of data, since each source has its own disclosure schedule. Insider trades (Form 4) and crypto whale activity are checked frequently throughout the day, since both can be disclosed or observed almost immediately. Prices update regularly throughout market hours. Institutional holdings (13F) are inherently quarterly, since that's how often funds are legally required to file them — we pick up each new filing as soon as it's published.

Free accounts see signals with a one-day delay; Pro and Business accounts see everything as soon as we've processed it, with no delay.

No. We don't alter, summarize away important details, or reinterpret the underlying facts of any filing — the numbers, dates, and parties involved always match the original public source. What we do is present that same information more clearly: turning a dense regulatory document into a readable card, adding plain-English context (like whether a sale looks routine or discretionary), and grouping related activity together so patterns are easier to notice.

If you ever want to verify something yourself, the underlying filings are public record and can always be looked up directly through the SEC or the relevant blockchain explorer.

The Smart Money Score is a single number, from 0 to 100, that summarizes how much "smart money" interest a stock or crypto asset is currently seeing. Instead of asking you to separately track insider filings, institutional fund flows, and large wallet activity, we combine all three into one easy-to-read figure — the higher the score, the more of these different signals are pointing the same direction at once.

A high Smart Money Score doesn't mean a stock is guaranteed to go up — it means multiple independent, publicly disclosed sources of activity (company insiders buying their own stock, large institutional investors adjusting their holdings, and, for crypto, large wallets moving funds) currently agree that something is worth paying attention to. A low score simply means there isn't much of this activity happening right now, not that the asset is a bad investment.

We built the Smart Money Score because these types of activity are usually tracked in completely separate places, if at all, and comparing them side by side takes real effort. Bringing them together into one number lets you scan a whole watchlist or the Markets page and immediately see where attention is concentrated, without doing that work by hand.

The score updates automatically as new filings and transactions come in, so it always reflects the most recent activity we've picked up. Like every metric on Smart Money Radar, it's a research and information tool, not a prediction or a recommendation to buy or sell — always do your own research before making an investment decision.

The Confidence Score reflects how strong a particular signal is, based on factors like the size of the transaction, the seniority or track record of the person involved, and how the trade compares to that person's typical activity. It's shown as part of a signal so you can quickly judge how noteworthy something is, rather than treating every insider trade or fund move as equally significant.

A higher Confidence Score means more of these factors line up in a way that historically tends to indicate a more meaningful transaction — not that the outcome is more certain. It's a way to help you prioritize what to look at first, not a guarantee or a prediction of what will happen to the price.

Win Rate shows how often an insider's past open-market stock purchases were trading at a higher price 90 days later, based on their real, publicly disclosed trading history (Form 4 filings with the SEC). It puts an insider's track record into context — instead of just seeing that someone bought stock, you can see how their past purchases have historically played out over the following three months.

Win Rate only looks at genuine open-market buys — routine option grants, vesting, and sales are excluded, since those don't reflect a personal, discretionary decision to buy the way an open-market purchase does.

We're careful about how this number is calculated so it doesn't mislead. If an insider has only made a handful of trades, a couple of lucky ones could otherwise make their win rate look artificially close to 100% — so we treat small samples more cautiously, pulling the number toward a more neutral, realistic estimate until there's enough history to be confident in it. We also always show how many trades the win rate is based on, so you can judge its reliability for yourself.

Win Rate is a purely historical measurement — it describes what has already happened, not what will happen next. Past performance never guarantees future results, and nothing on Smart Money Radar should be read as a prediction, a recommendation, or financial advice.

A Persistent Buyer is an insider or institution that has been steadily buying the same stock over an extended period, rather than making a single one-off purchase. Instead of looking at trades in isolation, Smart Money Radar looks for this kind of sustained pattern, since a series of purchases spread out over weeks or months is a meaningfully different signal than a single trade.

We surface Persistent Buyer patterns as their own signal type so they're easy to distinguish from a one-time purchase, letting you see at a glance which stocks are seeing sustained interest over time rather than a single isolated transaction.

Accumulation refers to a pattern where multiple insiders, or an insider along with institutional activity, are all adding to their position in the same stock around the same time. Rather than a single person making one trade, accumulation reflects several independent parties moving in the same direction — which can be a stronger signal than any one trade on its own, simply because it's less likely to be coincidental.

Smart Money Radar automatically detects this kind of clustered buying activity and flags it as an accumulation signal, so you don't have to notice the pattern by manually comparing individual trades yourself.

Every signal starts from a real, publicly disclosed event — an insider trade, a change in institutional holdings, or a large crypto wallet movement. From there, we look at context around that event: things like the size of the transaction relative to what's typical, whether it's part of a broader pattern (like sustained buying or multiple insiders acting together), and how it compares to that person or fund's own history.

That context is what turns a raw filing into a signal — a plain-English explanation of not just what happened, but why it might be worth paying attention to. Signals are generated automatically and continuously as new public data comes in, and every one is grounded in a real, verifiable filing or transaction, never a projection or estimate of future activity.

No. Nothing on Smart Money Radar — including Win Rate, the Smart Money Score, or any other metric — predicts or guarantees future performance. Every metric we show is a backward-looking measurement of what has already happened, based on real, historical, publicly disclosed data. Markets are influenced by far more than any single signal can capture, and past patterns, including historical insider or institutional activity, are not reliable predictors of what will happen next.

We built Smart Money Radar to make public information easier to find and understand — not to promise outcomes. Always do your own research and consider consulting a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions. Nothing on this platform is financial advice.

The portfolio tracker lets you record the stocks, ETFs, and crypto assets you hold — including how many shares or coins and at what price you acquired them — so you can see your positions alongside the same insider, institutional, and whale activity tracked everywhere else on the platform. It's entered manually, so it stays completely private to your account and isn't connected to any brokerage or exchange.

Once your positions are entered, you'll see your portfolio's overall performance, and — because it lives on the same platform as the rest of our signals — you can quickly check whether there's been any notable insider or institutional activity in something you actually hold, without cross-referencing two separate tools.

Yes. You can add any stock, ETF, or crypto asset to your watchlist to keep an eye on it without needing to hold a position. Free accounts can track a limited number of assets at once; Pro and Business accounts can track significantly more.

Anything on your watchlist is automatically included in your personalized feed and alerts, so relevant activity on assets you care about is surfaced to you directly, rather than something you have to go looking for.

Yes. Pro and Business accounts can receive email alerts whenever there's meaningful activity on assets in their watchlist or among the people and funds they follow. You control which types of signals you're alerted about — for example, insider buying versus selling, or how strong a signal needs to be before you're notified — so you only hear about what actually matters to you.

Yes. In addition to email, Pro and Business accounts can connect a Telegram account to receive the same alerts instantly through Telegram, using the same customizable settings for which signals you want to be notified about.

Yes. You can export your own data — including your watchlist, followed investors, and portfolio — so you can keep a copy or use it in your own tools outside of Smart Money Radar.

Yes. Smart Money Radar works directly in your mobile browser — there's no separate app to download. The site is designed to work well on a phone or tablet, so you can check signals, your watchlist, and your portfolio from any device.

You can create a free Smart Money Radar account with just an email address and password — no credit card required. Once you're signed up, you immediately have access to the Free plan, and can upgrade to Pro or Business at any time from your account settings.

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from your account settings. If you upgrade, the change takes effect immediately. If you move to a lower-priced plan, you'll keep your current plan's features until the end of your existing billing period, so you always get what you already paid for.

You can cancel anytime from your account settings — there's no lock-in contract and no cancellation fee. Your plan stays fully active until the end of your current billing period, and after that your account automatically moves to the Free plan rather than being deleted.

Yes. You can permanently delete your account and all associated data from your account settings. Because this is irreversible, we confirm the request with a verification step before anything is deleted, to make sure it's really you and that it wasn't triggered by mistake.

We collect the information needed to run your account and provide the service — things like your email address, the assets and investors you follow, your watchlist and portfolio entries, and your notification preferences. We don't collect more than we need, and we don't require any information beyond what's necessary to create and use an account. Full details are available in our Privacy Policy.

Your data is stored using industry-standard security practices, including encryption and access controls that limit who and what can reach it. Account access is protected by your password, and sensitive actions — like changing your email or deleting your account — require an additional verification step. We continually review our security practices as the platform grows.

No. We do not sell your personal information to third parties. Your data is used to operate and improve Smart Money Radar itself — not to be resold or shared for advertising purposes elsewhere.

Yes. You can request a copy of your personal data, or ask us to correct or delete it, by contacting support. We'll respond in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

You can reach us by email — our support address is listed in the footer and on our FAQ page. We aim to respond within a day.

Smart Money Radar is not a registered broker-dealer or investment advisor, and isn't subject to the regulations that apply to those businesses, because we don't provide personalized investment advice or execute trades. We are a research and analytics tool that organizes information that is already public.

Using this information is completely legal. Form 4 insider transactions and 13F institutional holdings are public filings that companies, insiders, and large funds are legally required to submit to the SEC — we simply collect, organize, and explain data that's already available to the public.

Smart Money Radar is a research tool, not a source of investment advice or guaranteed outcomes. Every metric and signal on the platform is based on historical, publicly disclosed information — insider trades, institutional holdings, and on-chain activity that has already happened. None of it predicts future price movements, and past patterns are never a guarantee of what will happen next.

Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of your money, and decisions should always be based on your own research and circumstances — ideally with input from a licensed financial professional where appropriate. Nothing on Smart Money Radar should be treated as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset.

Insider buying happens when someone with privileged access to a company — typically an executive, director, or major shareholder — purchases shares of that same company's stock on the open market, using their own money. In the United States, these "insiders" are legally required to publicly disclose any purchase or sale of their company's stock to the SEC within two business days, in a filing called a Form 4.

Investors pay attention to insider buying because it can be a meaningful signal: the people running a company generally have more insight into its day-to-day health, upcoming plans, and challenges than anyone on the outside. When an insider puts their own money into the stock — rather than, say, exercising options they were already granted — some investors read that as a vote of confidence, though it's far from a guarantee of anything.

Insider buying is completely legal and is one of the most transparent, publicly available forms of market data that exists, precisely because the disclosure rules are so strict. Smart Money Radar collects and organizes these public Form 4 filings so you can see insider buying activity across thousands of companies in one place, instead of searching through individual filings yourself.

This information is provided for research and educational purposes only, and isn't a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Insider selling happens when someone with privileged access to a company — an executive, director, or major shareholder — sells shares of that company's own stock. Like insider buying, it must be publicly disclosed to the SEC within two business days, in a Form 4 filing.

Insider selling is often more ambiguous to interpret than insider buying, since there are many routine reasons someone might sell — diversifying their savings, covering taxes on vested stock, or following a pre-scheduled selling plan — that have nothing to do with their view of the company. Smart Money Radar labels these routine transactions separately from discretionary, open-market sales, so you can tell the difference instead of assuming every sale is meaningful.

SEC filings like Form 4 and Form 13F are factual records of what already happened — who bought or sold, how much, and when. They aren't statements of opinion or intent, and they don't come with an explanation of why the transaction was made. Treating any single filing as a clear buy or sell signal on its own can be misleading, since there are many routine, non-discretionary reasons behind many transactions.

A more useful approach is to look at context: whether a transaction is part of a broader pattern, how it compares to that person's typical activity, and whether it lines up with other public information. Smart Money Radar is built to surface exactly that kind of context automatically — but the filings themselves are simply factual data points, not investment guidance, and any interpretation of them for your own decisions should be treated as your own research, not advice from us.

Institutional investors are organizations — rather than individuals — that invest large pools of money on behalf of others. This includes hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and endowments. Because of the size of the assets they manage, U.S. institutional investors above a certain threshold are legally required to disclose their holdings to the SEC every quarter through Form 13F filings.

Institutional investors are generally considered more sophisticated and better-resourced than individual retail investors, which is part of why their public holdings are often watched closely — not as something to copy directly, but as one additional, transparent source of information about where large pools of capital are positioned.

Market sentiment refers to the overall attitude or mood of investors toward a particular asset, sector, or the market as a whole — whether people are generally optimistic (bullish) or pessimistic (bearish). Sentiment is shaped by many things: news, economic data, company announcements, and the collective behavior of other investors.

Public data like insider trading and institutional holdings can be one input into gauging sentiment, since they reflect real decisions made with real money by people with direct knowledge of or exposure to an asset — but sentiment itself is broader than any single data source, and can shift quickly based on new information. It's a useful concept for understanding market context, not a precise or predictive measurement.

"Smart money" is a term used to describe capital controlled by investors who are generally considered more informed, experienced, or well-resourced than the average individual retail investor — typically company insiders, institutional investors like hedge funds and pension funds, and other large, sophisticated market participants.

The idea behind following smart money is straightforward: these are people and organizations with direct access to information, expertise, or scale that most individual investors don't have, and their publicly disclosed trading activity is one of the few transparent windows into how they're positioning their own money. Smart Money Radar is built entirely around making that public activity easy to find, follow, and understand — which is where our name comes from.

Public market data — filings, holdings, and transaction records — tells you what has already happened, not what will happen next. The most reliable way to use it is as one input among several in your own research process, rather than as a standalone signal to act on. Looking at context (is this part of a pattern, or a one-off?), comparing it against a person or fund's typical behavior, and combining it with other information all lead to a more informed view than looking at any single data point in isolation.

Public market data is factual and verifiable, but it isn't advice, and it doesn't come with guidance on what to do with it. Any conclusions you draw from it for your own investing decisions are your own research — not a recommendation from Smart Money Radar or any data source.