11. Special datasets

Supply chains and scenario exposure (SPLC, EXPO)

SPLC maps a company's customers, suppliers, competitors and investees from filings, announcements and calls with evidence, and EXPO estimates a portfolio's exposure to a shock along those links.

  • 4 min
  • 3 questions
  • Lesson 6 of 8

Why you would care

Who does this company depend on, and how exposed are your holdings? A chip shortage in one country, a big customer cutting orders, a tariff on one supplier: shocks travel along supply chains. Investors who knew a company's dependencies saw the hit coming. These panes turn scattered disclosures into a map, with the evidence behind every line.

The idea from scratch

Relationships

For a company, four kinds of links:

Customer
Buys from the company
Supplier
Sells to the company
Competitor
Sells to the same customers
Investee
A company it owns a stake in

US companies must disclose customers above 10% of revenue (chapter 03, lesson on RIPL), often without naming them ("Customer A"). Other links come from annual reports, announcements, calls and reporting, each with an evidence tier: filings first, then company statements and calls, then reported news, then unconfirmed leads (kept apart).

Direction matters: "NVDA says" lists what NVIDIA's own disclosures state; "Names NVDA" lists what others say about NVIDIA.

Exposure to a scenario

A scenario is a hypothetical shock (for example, all output from one country stops). Exposure estimates how much of each holding's revenue or supply depends on it, directly or through a chain of links (a hop is one step). Because disclosures are incomplete, the result is often a range and marked as incomplete.

Diagram: Filings, announcements, calls leads to Links: customer, supplier, competitor, investee; Links: customer, supplier, competitor, investee leads to Evidence tier and share; Links: customer, supplier, competitor, investee leads to Graph: hops between companies; Scenario shock leads to Exposure range per holding; Graph: hops between companies leads to Exposure range per holding.
Wide diagram: scroll sideways to see all of it.

See it in Gloom

Gloom screenshot: SPLC NVDA, Table tab, "NVDA says" direction
SPLC NVDA, Table tab, "NVDA says" direction: disclosed customers (anonymous groups with revenue shares), suppliers, competitors and investees, each backed by a filing; free preview. Captured 2026-10-06.

open themSPLC NVDA (tabs Table, Flow, Graph, Path); EXPO "NVDA=60% XOM=40%" or EXPO PORT:<portfolio>.

  1. Counts: Customers 40, Suppliers 15, Competitors 36, Investees 3, with 3 shown on the free plan.
  2. United S... group Filing Customer 86% revenue: an undisclosed customer group making up 86% of a segment's revenue (anonymous groups appear in muted text).
  3. Fabrinet FN Supplier, Hon Hai 2317 Supplier: named suppliers from filings.
  4. AMD, BABA: competitors named in filings; INTC, CRWV: investees.
  5. Names NVDA: switch direction to see what others' filings say about NVIDIA.
Gloom screenshot: EXPO for a two-stock list under a "Taiwan disruption" scenario
EXPO for a two-stock list under a "Taiwan disruption" scenario: the holding's weight, an estimated exposure range and operating stress, marked incomplete; free preview with one holding and one hop. Captured 2026-10-06.
  1. EXPO: Holding weight 60.0%, Exposure 0.0 to 28.0% estimated, Bound Incomplete: a wide range because evidence is partial.

Practice and recap

Try it3 tasks
  1. In SPLC, which evidence type supports every visible row? (Filing.)
  2. Why are some customers shown as "group"? (Companies often disclose customer concentration without naming the customer.)
  3. In EXPO, why is the exposure a range? (Disclosures do not say exactly how much revenue runs through the scenario, so the estimate has a low and a high bound.)
Common mistakes4 mistakes
  • Treating an absent link as no exposure.
  • Mixing up whose revenue a share refers to.
  • Reading competitor links as certain overlaps of products.
  • Treating exposure ranges as predictions of losses.
Check yourself3 questions
  1. Name the four relationship roles.
  2. What is a hop?
  3. What does "NVDA says" vs "Names NVDA" change?
Answers
  1. Customer, supplier, competitor, investee.
  2. One step along a chain of company links.
  3. Whose disclosures are read: NVIDIA's own, or other companies' statements naming NVIDIA.
Words in this lesson6 words
supply chain
The network of suppliers and customers around a company.
investee
A company another company owns a stake in.
evidence tier
How a link is supported: filing, company, call, reported, unconfirmed.
hop
One step along a chain of links.
scenario
A hypothetical shock used to test exposure.
exposure
How much of a holding depends on the shock.

Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.