We really enjoyed this Wall Street Journal article about words and phrases in financial reports that translate buyer beware. “Now that most regulatory filings are easily searchable on the Internet, through services such as EDGAR Online, investors can troll through them for telltale phrases,” explains the author, who offers these tips on what to look out for.
Though the article doesn’t mention it, the I-Metrix product has an automated feature that makes it easy to connect footnote information to line item number – information that could cause an analyst to reconsider whether to use or modify the reported line item amount. Here’s the full story from the WSJ on How Corporate Buzzwords Hide What’s Really Going On.

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