Prior Moves
Seed round · 2026
Mirror the world's best investors, before their next move is public.
A research publication. Free at
priormoves.com.
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
02 · The problem
Smart money is public, but always stale by the time you can act.
Famous investors reveal their holdings once a quarter, up to 45
days late, in dense SEC 13F filings almost nobody reads in time.
Copy-investing apps just mirror that stale filing. Their users
are always following
six-week-old data.
45 days
filing lag after quarter end
6 weeks
how far behind copy-investors trade
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
03 · The insight
The hard part is predicting the buy
before it files.
A separate model per investor learns each one's style from filing
history and ranks what they will buy next, about six weeks before
the 13F is public.
Everyone else
Read the filing
≈ 6 weeks late
Prior Moves
Predict the buy
≈ 6 weeks early
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
04 · The product
Three live boards at priormoves.com
01
Anticipation board
What each investor buys next.
02
Sell signal
Which holdings they exit or trim next.
03
Factor fingerprint
The buyable style behind each book.
You place the trades at your own broker.
We never touch your money.
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
05 · Why it works, the data moat
The asset is three years of per-investor training data.
~3x
better than random on next buys, followable cohort
0.38–0.80
AUC by investor · median 0.61
218
signals per name
~0.67
sell model walk-forward AUC
72,268
out-of-sample predictions, calibrated & leak-free
~0.50
shuffle canary collapses to a coin flip
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
06 · The honesty moat
We publish our misses.
The backtest is shown in full: the top-15 spread against the S&P
was
+2.2 pts/quarter
over 35 quarters, net of cost. We say plainly it is not
statistically significant, and that factor adjustment leaves
+2.73 pts/quarter at t=1.45, which is still not significant, and
+0.75 at t=0.68 once the single biggest quarter is dropped. After
finfluencer and crypto blowups,
calibrated honesty is the scarce asset in retail research.
95% CI includes zero · n = 34 · directional signal, not
proven
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
07 · Why now
Three curves crossing at once
Demand
Copy-investing is mainstream retail behavior, with tens of
millions of users.
Feasibility
Per-investor ML prediction is newly feasible at this depth and
cost.
Trust gap
Trust is scarce after years of retail-finance blowups.
The market wants to follow smart money, and wants to be told the
honest odds.
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
08 · The market
Follow-the-greats retail, narrowed to a wedge
Retail investors who follow institutional and famous-investor
moves
MARKET
Copy-trading and social-investing platforms with large user
bases
ADJACENT
The honesty-valuing, anticipation-seeking segment they
underserve
OUR WEDGE
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
09 · Business model
Publisher first, then the data feed
Free
General-circulation publisher
Not a registered adviser (Lowe v. SEC). No licensing
drag.
$8/mo
Paid tier on Substack
Full ranked list and per-investor deep dives.
Later
Data & API licensing
The prediction feed, licensed to brokers and fintechs.
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
10 · Traction and the real work
Built and validated. Distribution is the work.
Shipped
Live product, three boards shipped, free weekly digest.
The binding constraint
The model is built and validated. Distribution is the
constraint, and the use of funds.
PRIOR MOVESResearch, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026
11 · The ask
Raising
$750K
to fund distribution.
Content, partnerships, SEO, and the paid-tier launch.
Vision: the
trusted research layer for following smart money, expanding from
US 13F to global disclosure and onchain smart money.
PRIOR MOVESpriormoves.com · Research, not advice. DYOR.
As of Jun 2026