BROADCASTS.com

b"In Episode 94, we welcome entrepreneur, author, and SEC filings expert, Michelle Leder.\\nWe start with Michelle\\u2019s background. She was a business journalist \\u2013 a self-professed \\u201cdocument geek.\\u201d She wrote the book Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value and decided to launch a website as an accompaniment to the book. Here we are, 15 years later.\\nMeb asks Michelle to give an overview of what she\\u2019s looking for in the various filings. She tells us that changes are important. She doesn\\u2019t necessarily look closely at the numbers because it\\u2019s more about the language. Also, the forward-looking statements can be big. Michelle mentions an example of one that used a significant amount of extra language.\\nThis dovetails into a discussion about the process \\u2013 is it a keyword search or is there software? Michelle uses both, as keywords alone don\\u2019t always work. She gives the example of when Goldman Sachs was subpoenaed, the language used to describe it in the filings was something like \\u201can invitation to respond to the DOJ.\\u201d\\nMeb asks for examples of red flag behavior in the filings. Michelle looks for unusual compensation or stock grant amounts. Also, lots of extra language used to describe earnings or adjusted EBITDA. She mentions a company called GT Advanced Technology, which used to be an Apple supplier. In one particular filing, they added new disclosure language, identifying their dependence on Apple, and their vulnerability if that relationship soured. Some time thereafter, Apple ended the relationship.\\nNext, Meb and Michelle discuss the \\u201cFriday Night Dump.\\u201d This is the 90 minutes after market close on Friday, when there\\u2019s no major trading. Companies tend to dump all their bad info here. Michelle mentions recent examples using Tesla and Wynn. But her most memorable disclosure dump was Chesapeake Energy, revealing it had paid over $12M for a map collection.\\nMeb asks if Michelle has ever been contacted by a company she\\u2019s profiled, trying to defend or explain itself. She mentions Dell. Apparently, the company once purchased a company from Dell\\u2019s own brother and something seemed a tad off. After Michelle covered it, Dell reached out to tell her she had gotten it all wrong.\\nThis is a fun episode with plenty more in it \\u2013 what sort of time commitment this would take the average investor\\u2026 the atmospheric changes Michelle has seen in the last 10-15 years\\u2026 the story of Meb stealing someone else\\u2019s disclosure language for his own blog but forgetting to remove the other company\\u2019s name\\u2026\\nThere\\u2019s even a discussion of something Twitter did recently that grabbed Michelle\\u2019s interest. If you\\u2019re a Twitter investor, you might want to listen.\\xa0\\nAll this and more in Episode 94.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"