5. Compare, screen and follow the money

Filings and attention

SEC filings, risk factors, executive pay and attention.

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  • 4 lessons
  • 16 min
About this section

What the company itself has filed (every SEC document, its 8-K event notices, its risk factors, its executives' pay) and how much attention the stock is getting from researchers and social media.

What you will be able to do

  • Find any filing of a company and read its 8-Ks by item (SEC, EK).
  • Read the risk factors of a 10-K and what changed since last year (RISK).
  • Read executive pay from the proxy statement (EXEC).
  • Measure research and social attention, and tell signal from noise (ATTN, BUZZ).

Five words to know

EDGAR
the SEC's public database of company filings
8-K item
the numbered category of an event notice (e.g. 5.02 executive change)
risk factor
a risk the company lists in its annual report
proxy statement
the document sent before the annual meeting, with executive pay
cashtag
a ticker written with a dollar sign on social media, like $NVDA
  1. 01SEC filings and 8-K events (SEC, EK)SEC lists a company's filings on the SEC's public EDGAR database and opens them, and EK reads its 8-K event notices item by item with a short summary of each.4 min
  2. 02Risk factors (RISK)RISK groups the risk factors in a company's 10-K by theme and shows what was added, dropped or reworded since the previous year.3 min
  3. 03Executive pay (EXEC)EXEC reads the yearly proxy statement into key pay figures (CEO total pay, the pay ratio, the share in stock, shareholder support) and a table of the top executives.4 min
  4. 04Attention: research and social buzz (ATTN, BUZZ)ATTN ranks the tickers Gloom users are researching against each ticker's usual level, and BUZZ counts the day's posts on X naming a ticker, with the top posts and their stance.4 min

Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.