The whole library
315 articles · page 4 of 7
EDGAR: The Filing Database
Every filing a US registrant submits is public, free, and searchable within moments of being accepted. It is the single most underused resource in equity research.
The 10-K: The Annual Report
The most complete document a public company produces. Audited, comprehensive, and structured identically across every registrant, which is what makes it navigable.
The 10-Q: The Quarterly Report
A lighter, unaudited version of the annual report, filed for the first three quarters. Its value lies in the comparison to the same quarter last year.
The 8-K: Current Reports
The form a company files when something material happens between periodic reports. It is the fastest-moving filing type and the one most worth watching in real time.
The Proxy Statement (DEF 14A)
The document covering the shareholder vote. It is also where executive pay, board composition and related-party transactions are disclosed in detail.
The S-1 and the IPO
The registration statement filed before a company sells shares publicly for the first time. It is the most detailed document a company ever produces about itself.
Shelf Registrations and At-the-Market Programs
A shelf pre-clears securities so they can be sold on short notice. An at-the-market offering is the quiet mechanism that sells them without an announcement.
Form 13F: Institutional Holdings
A quarterly disclosure of US-listed equity positions by large managers. Genuinely informative, and surrounded by more misconceptions than any other filing.
Schedule 13D and Schedule 13G
Both are filed after crossing five percent of a class. Which one is filed is the entire message: one signals intent to influence, the other signals passivity.
Insider Transactions: Forms 3, 4 and 5
Officers, directors and large holders must report their own trades within two business days. The transaction codes are what separate a real signal from routine administration.
Prospectus Supplements (424B)
The filing that sets the final terms of an actual sale under an existing registration. When a stock gaps down overnight on an offering, this is usually the document.
Form 144
Notice of an intended sale of restricted or control securities, filed before the sale rather than after. It is one of the few genuinely forward-looking filings.
Tender Offers and Merger Filings
When one company moves to acquire another, a specific set of filings follows on a defined schedule. The gap between the offer price and the market price is the market's estimate of whether it closes.
SEC Comment Letters
Correspondence in which SEC staff question a company's disclosure. Published once resolved, and almost nobody reads them.
How to Read a Filing Fast
A 10-K runs to two hundred pages and most of it is boilerplate. A repeatable order of attack extracts the substance in twenty minutes.
Form 20-F and Form 40-F
The annual reports filed by foreign private issuers. Less frequent than a 10-K, on a different accounting basis, and with a different disclosure regime behind them.
Form 11-K
The annual report of an employee benefit plan that holds the company's own stock. Obscure, audited, and occasionally the only place a number appears.
Going Private
When a company or its insiders take it private, an additional filing is required, and it demands disclosure that an ordinary merger does not.
Reg A+ and Form D
Two routes to raising capital without a full registration. One is a limited public offering; the other is a private placement with a short notice filing.
XBRL and Structured Filing Data
Filings are tagged so that individual figures can be extracted by machine. It makes comparison across thousands of companies possible, with a specific set of caveats.
What a Catalyst Is
A catalyst is an event that changes what the market knows about a stock, such as earnings, an 8-K, an offering or an economic release. Price reacts to the distance between the news and what was expected.
What the Federal Reserve Actually Does
The US central bank has a dual mandate and a small set of tools. Understanding what it controls directly, and what it only influences, removes most of the confusion around it.
The FOMC and the Dot Plot
Eight scheduled meetings a year set policy. The projections published at four of them are the most scrutinized chart in macro, and the most over-interpreted.
The Federal Funds Rate
One overnight rate between banks, and the single lever from which almost every other rate in the economy is derived.
Quantitative Easing and Tightening
Buying or running off bonds to influence longer-term rates, used when the policy rate alone is insufficient. It affects the long end, which the funds rate reaches only indirectly.
CPI: The Consumer Price Index
The best-known inflation measure and one of the highest-impact scheduled releases. What moves markets is the surprise against expectations, not the level.
PCE: The Fed's Preferred Inflation Gauge
The measure the Federal Reserve actually targets. It differs from CPI in ways that matter, and it consistently reads lower.
The Jobs Report
Monthly employment data from two separate surveys that regularly disagree. Along with CPI it is the highest-impact scheduled release of the month.
Gross Domestic Product
The broadest measure of economic output. Comprehensive, and released so late that markets have usually worked out the answer already.
Yield Curve Inversion as a Recession Signal
Short yields above long ones has preceded every modern US recession. The record is genuinely striking and the lag is long enough to make it close to useless for timing.
The Dollar and Equities
A stronger dollar mechanically reduces the reported earnings of US multinationals and tightens conditions globally. The relationship is real and it is not constant.
Oil and Commodity Shocks
Energy is an input to nearly everything, which makes a large oil move a shock that propagates through inflation, consumption and policy at once.
Which Calendar Events Actually Move Markets
Dozens of releases appear on an economic calendar each week and a handful matter. Knowing which, and why the reaction depends on the surprise, is most of the value.
ISM and PMI Surveys
Diffusion indices built from surveys of purchasing managers. They measure the breadth of change rather than its size, which is what the fifty level means.
Retail Sales
A monthly measure of spending at retailers. Consumption is most of the economy, which makes this one of the most closely watched releases and one of the noisiest.
Housing Data
A set of monthly releases covering construction, sales and prices. Housing is the most rate-sensitive part of the economy, which makes it an early indicator of policy taking effect.
Consumer Confidence and Sentiment
Surveys asking households how they feel about conditions and prospects. What people say and what they do have diverged substantially for long periods.
Fiscal Policy and Deficits
Spending and taxation decisions made by government rather than by a central bank. They affect growth directly and reach the bond market through issuance.
Money Supply
Aggregate measures of money in the economy. Their relationship to inflation is theoretically clear, empirically unstable, and the subject of a long argument.
Financial Conditions Indices
Composites combining rates, spreads, equity prices and the currency into a single measure of how easy it is to obtain financing.
Other Central Banks
Policy is set in several places at once, and the differences between them drive currencies, capital flows and the conditions faced by companies operating across borders.
Position Sizing
Position sizing is choosing how many shares to trade so that a stopped-out trade loses a fixed, chosen amount. It is separate from what to trade, and it decides whether a losing run is survivable.
Stop Losses: Types and Placement
A stop loss is a price set in advance at which a position is closed because the reason for it no longer holds. Where it sits should follow from the chart's structure rather than a preferred dollar amount.
Risk and Reward
The risk-reward ratio is the distance to a target divided by the distance to a stop. It is useful for comparing opportunities, and meaningless without a realistic probability of reaching each.
Diversification and Correlation
Diversification only works to the extent holdings move differently. Counting positions is not the measure; correlation is.
Drawdown and the Arithmetic of Recovery
A drawdown is the fall from a peak to a later low. Recovering takes a larger gain than the loss (a 50 percent loss needs a 100 percent gain), and the asymmetry worsens quickly as losses deepen.
Expectancy and Win Rate
Win rate is the share of trades that make money, and on its own it says little. Expectancy combines it with the sizes of wins and losses to give the average result per trade, the number that decides everything.
Liquidity and Slippage
Slippage is the gap between the price on the screen and the price actually filled. In thinly traded stocks it is frequently larger than the edge the strategy was pursuing.