HOWLET is a free, open-source market terminal in the Bloomberg style. It answers "what are famous investors buying?" using public SEC filings, and adds live-ish quotes, charts, fundamentals, news, and economic data on top - all from free sources, with no API keys and no subscription. It's laid out like a trading terminal: a command line up top, and short "function codes" (like DES or FA) to jump between screens. New here? This page explains every short form and how to drive it. Nothing here is investment advice.
Jump to: Glossary of short forms · Command line · Your screen & blocks · Charting · FAQ · Tips
The terminal uses a lot of abbreviations (that's the Bloomberg heritage). Here's what each one stands for and what it actually is, in plain English.
| DES | Description - the single-stock screen: live quote, day & 52-week range, an interactive chart, financials, and who holds it. The main "look up a stock" page. |
| GP | Graph Price - the same screen as DES, just a nudge toward the chart. They're interchangeable here. |
| FA | Financial Analysis - a company's yearly revenue, profit, earnings per share, assets, and cash flow, straight from its audited SEC annual report. |
| HDS | Holders - which of the famous investors this terminal tracks own a given stock, how many shares, and how big a bet it is for them. |
| PORT | Portfolio - the full list of stocks a given investor reported holding, biggest positions first. |
| EQS | Equity Screener - filter a list of large companies by things like valuation, size, growth, and profitability to find ones that match your rules. |
| ECO | Economics - big-picture data: interest rates (the Treasury yield curve), inflation and jobs numbers, and the Fed's latest announcements. |
| PF | Portfolio risk - enter stocks you own and see how volatile the mix is, its worst drop, and its risk-adjusted return. |
| MKTS | Markets - a world snapshot: stock indices, currencies, commodities (oil, gold), interest rates, and crypto. |
| MY | My tab - your personal page: your watchlist, news about only those names, and their upcoming earnings dates. |
| NEWS | The full news tab: a general market wire, a Fed/policy feed, and an earnings feed. |
| HOME | Your customizable dashboard - a blank slate you fill with the blocks you want. |
| OPT | Options (also OMON, "Options Monitor") - calls and puts for a stock. Experimental; may be unavailable. |
| 13F | A form the biggest investors must file with the SEC every 3 months, listing the US stocks they own. It's the source of the "what is Buffett buying" data - and it's always a bit delayed (see FAQ). |
| CIK | Central Index Key - the ID number the SEC gives every filer. Berkshire's is 1067983. You can type a CIK anywhere a manager name is accepted. |
| CUSIP | The 9-character ID code for a specific security. 13F filings identify stocks by CUSIP; the terminal translates these into familiar tickers for you. |
| Q/Q | Quarter over quarter - what an investor bought, sold, added to, or trimmed since their previous filing. |
| Ticker | A stock's short trading symbol (AAPL = Apple). Any cyan ticker in the terminal is clickable and opens its DES screen. |
| WT / weight | How big a position is as a percentage of that whole portfolio. |
| P/E | Price-to-earnings - share price divided by yearly earnings per share; a rough "how expensive is this stock" gauge. |
| Mkt cap | Market capitalization - a company's total value: share price times number of shares. |
| Net margin | Profit as a percentage of revenue - how much of each sales dollar becomes profit. |
| EPS | Earnings per share - company profit divided by its number of shares. |
| Sharpe | Sharpe ratio - return earned per unit of risk taken. Higher is better; above ~1 is generally considered good. |
| Max drawdown | The worst peak-to-bottom drop over the period - your biggest paper loss if you'd bought the high. |
| Volatility | How much a price bounces around. Higher volatility = bigger swings, more risk. |
| Yield curve | US government interest rates across different loan lengths (1 month to 30 years), shown on the ECO screen. |
| FOMC | Federal Open Market Committee - the Federal Reserve group that sets US interest rates. Its statements show up on ECO/NEWS. |
| DEF 14A | A company's annual proxy statement - the filing tied to its yearly shareholder meeting. |
| IV / OI | Implied volatility and open interest - options terms (expected swing, and how many contracts exist). |
| SMA / EMA | Simple / Exponential Moving Average - a smoothed average price line that helps you see the trend through the noise. |
| RSI | Relative Strength Index - a 0-100 momentum gauge; high can mean "overbought," low can mean "oversold." |
| MACD | Moving Average Convergence Divergence - a popular momentum/trend-change indicator built from two moving averages. |
| Bollinger | Bollinger Bands - a band around the average price that widens when things get volatile. |
| ORB | Opening Range Breakout - the high/low of the first part of the session; trading above or below it is watched as a breakout signal. |
Type a command and press Enter (or GO). Just like the real thing, commands are SECURITY FUNCTION:
| AAPL DES | security description: quote, ranges, chart, fundamentals, holders |
| NVDA GP | same screen, chart focus (alias of DES) |
| MSFT FA | same screen - annual financials from SEC XBRL |
| KO HDS | same screen - which tracked managers hold it |
| buffett PORT | a manager's 13F portfolio (preset name or raw CIK) |
| 1067983 PORT | portfolio by CIK |
| HOME | your customizable dashboard: blank slate, add/remove blocks, create tabs with + |
| NEWS | the full news tab: market wire, Fed & policy, earnings/analysis |
| MY | your tab: watchlist, news scoped to it, upcoming earnings for it |
| EQS | equity screener over a curated large-cap universe |
| ECO | Treasury yield curve, BLS macro series, FRED (optional key), Fed calendar |
| PF | your personal portfolio's risk (volatility/drawdown/Sharpe) |
| MKTS | world markets: indices, FX, commodities, rates, crypto |
| AAPL OPT | options chain (experimental - uses an unofficial Yahoo endpoint) |
| HELP | this screen |
| TSLA | bare ticker → DES; bare preset/CIK → PORT |
HOME is a blank slate. "+ ADD BLOCK" offers: 13F portfolio (pick a manager), 13F Q/Q changes, smart-money consensus, watchlists (create as many named lists as you want), watchlist-scoped news (only your names), watchlist events (earnings dates + analyst view), market news, Fed & policy, Treasury yield curve, and world markets. "+ TAB" creates extra tabs for the less important stuff. Everything is saved in your browser. On the security screen, the ← BACK button returns you to wherever you came from.
The DES chart is KLineChart (Apache-2.0 open source, no paywall, fed by this terminal's own data). Stack as many indicators as you want from the "+ indicator" picker - MA, EMA, Bollinger, SAR, BBI on price; Volume, MACD, RSI, KDJ, OBV, CCI, Williams %R, TRIX, ROC, DMI, Momentum, PSY in their own panes - and use the draw buttons for trend lines, rays, price levels, channels, Fibonacci, and annotations. Indicators stay applied as you switch symbols.
| Is this real-time? | Quotes and charts are live-ish (free feed, may be a little delayed). The 13F holdings are not: investors only report quarterly, up to ~45 days after quarter-end, so "what Buffett owns" is always a few weeks to a few months old. |
| Why does a stock in a portfolio show no price? | A few holdings (foreign-listed names, bonds) can't be matched to a US ticker from the free lookup, so there's no quote to attach. The position itself is still shown. |
| Why is the first load of a manager or holders slow? | The first time, it translates every holding's ID into a ticker through a rate-limited free service. That result is saved on your machine, so it's fast every time after. |
| Where is my watchlist / layout saved? | In your browser only (local storage). Nothing is sent to a server or account. Clearing your browser data resets it. |
| Do I need any API keys or a login? | No. Everything works with zero keys and no account. (FRED is one optional extra macro source that takes a free key - the terminal is fully functional without it.) |
| Is this investment advice? | No. It's an information tool built on public data. Do your own research; nothing here is a recommendation. |
• Every cyan ticker anywhere in the terminal is clickable and opens DES.
• First load of a manager, HDS, or EQS screen is slow (keyless OpenFIGI/SEC rate limits or a same-day fundamentals fetch); it's disk-cached after that.
• 13F data is quarterly with up to a ~45 day lag - it is never real-time positioning.
• OPT and EVENTS (earnings date, analyst view) use an unofficial Yahoo auth workaround and can go dark if Yahoo changes it - everything else on this terminal is unaffected if that happens.
• EQS is not the full S&P 500 - there's no free, reliable, no-key source for live index membership this project wants to depend on. It's a hand-picked large-cap universe; point the dashboard/MCP tool at your own ticker list for anything else.
Everything on these screens is also exposed as MCP tools: howlet mcp - see the README for Claude Code / Claude Desktop setup.
SEC EDGAR (13F holdings, XBRL fundamentals) · OpenFIGI (CUSIP→ticker) · Yahoo Finance (quotes/charts) · Yahoo/CNBC/MarketWatch/SEC RSS (news) · CoinGecko/Coinpaprika (crypto market caps) · Federal Register (SEC rulemaking). All free, no API keys.