Episode Summary

Understanding and avoiding common red flags in corporate filings with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is essential for buyside and sellside analysts, auditors, and external reporting teams. In this episode, we spoke with Michelle Leder, founder of Footnoted and author of “Financial Fine Print”, to discuss her top red flags both in terms of content and “metadata” like the timing of the filing itself. We also spoke about what are some of the best practices for external reporting teams at corporations.  

Guest-at-a-Glance

• Name: Michelle Leder

• What she does: Michelle is the founder of Footnoted. 

• Company: Footnoted

• Noteworthy: Michelle is also an author. Her book ‘Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value’ came out almost two decades ago, and she started the site, Footnoted, to promote it. Soon, Michelle started posting about the red flags she found buried in their routine SEC filings. From 2008 to 2018, she ran a subscription-based service focused on actionable disclosures in the SEC filings. After a five-year break, she has returned with Friday Night Dump. ''We call it the Friday Night Dump because what it does is it looks at the filings that are made after 4:00 p.m. on a Friday,'' explains Michelle. 

• Where to find Michelle: Mastodon｜Twitter｜Amazon