Filings Trail is a public research project that turns SEC filing data into panels: it tracks the same firms across monthly vintages of a filing instead of counting them at a single point in time.
A count taken at one date is a snapshot. It can say that 628 SEC-registered advisers reported $0 in regulatory assets under management as of July 31, 2025, but not what became of them. A panel can, because every adviser keeps the same CRD number from one monthly file to the next. The firms in one month’s roster can be found again in every later month, and sorted by what happened to them and by what was already visible about them at the start.
Everything here is built from public data, currently the Form ADV extracts the SEC publishes each month for registered investment advisers. Each piece lists its source files with download links and checksums, and every figure in it is produced by code in a public repository.
Work
- Two-thirds of pre-launch RIAs had launched thirteen months later Form ADV new-registrant panel, August 2025 to August 2026.
- Replication on an earlier cohort In progress The new-registrant panel rerun on an earlier $0-AUM cohort.
- Succession panel In progress