SEC Filing Cheat Sheet — Where to Find the Truth

Preview

Four Sections. That's All You Need.

Stop reading the entire filing. Our cheat sheet tells you exactly where to look and what the numbers should tell you.

Section 1

📊 The Financial Statements

Item 8 (10-K) / Part I, Item 1 (10-Q) — Skip management's letter and go straight here. This is where you'll find Operating Cash Flow, Net Income, Cash on Hand, and Accounts Receivable mapped to exactly which financial statement contains each metric and what to look for...

Section 2

💬 MD&A — Management's Story

Item 7 (10-K) / Part I, Item 2 (10-Q) — Where management explains their performance. The cheat sheet reveals the exact keywords to search for that signal a company may be on the verge of a liquidity crisis or going concern warning...

Section 3

⚠️ Risk Factors

Item 1A (10-K Only) — The section where the company is legally forced to admit what could kill them. Our guide shows you the forensic technique for spotting newly added risks that weren't in the previous filing...

Section 4

🔒 Internal Controls

Item 9A (10-K) / Part I, Item 4 (10-Q) — Discloses whether the company's financial reporting systems are actually reliable. If you see one specific phrase here, the numbers in the entire report may not even be accurate...

Inside the Guide

The Occam Metric Table

A quick-reference mapping from each metric to the exact financial statement and what to look for.

Operating Cash Flow Statement of Cash Flows Look for "Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities"

Net Income Statement of Operations The literal "bottom line" — compare to OCF to find Divergence

Cash on Hand Balance Sheet Look for "Cash and Cash Equivalents" — use this to calculate...

Accounts Receivable Balance Sheet If this is growing faster than revenue, customers aren't...

Also Included

How to "Shave the Noise" in 4 Steps

A step-by-step process to evaluate any filing in under 2 minutes.

1

Open the filing on EDGAR or the company's IR site

2

Ctrl+F for "Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows"

3

Find the key metric — if it's negative, the company is a...

4

Calculate the runway by dividing cash by quarterly burn to find...

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Filing Sections That Matter

<2 min

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Get the Full SEC Filing Cheat Sheet

The complete guide — including the full metric table, all four forensic tips, the 4-step "Shave the Noise" process, and the keyword search list — is available free to all Occam's Investing community members.

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