Reading SEC documents can be a tricky business. There’s the up-front information, and then there’s the hidden information that you have to know to look for. In this week’s article, first published by (and reprinted with kind permission from) our esteemed colleagues at Apra-Louisiana, HBG Senior Researcher Grace Chandonnet reminds us of the importance of reading the small print. ~Helen
Read the footnotes! It’s not new advice, but it is important and bears repeating. When evaluating the stock holdings of an individual, it is so important to read the footnotes in a proxy statement underneath the beneficial ownership section.
I know, it’s tempting to just take the number in the “total amount of beneficial ownership” column (let’s call it the ABO column), price the stock, and call it a day. But sometimes there is important information in the footnotes that will value that person’s stake very differently. [Read more…]
