Category: Resources

An earnings release gives you the headline numbers. The more interesting details are often somewhere else.

Before forming a view on a public company, here are seven places worth checking.

1. The 10-K

The annual report provides financial statements, risk factors, business descriptions, litigation disclosures, segment information, and management commentary.

2. The 10-Q

Quarterly filings can reveal changes that get lost in earnings headlines—particularly in cash flow, working capital, debt, and risk disclosures.

3. The 8-K

Material corporate events can show up here: acquisitions, leadership changes, financing agreements, restructurings, and other significant developments.

Resource for 1–3: SEC EDGAR

4. Form 4

Form 4 reports transactions by corporate insiders. Insider buying or selling isn’t automatically bullish or bearish, but it can provide useful context.

Resource: SEC Insider Transactions

5. 13F Filings

Institutional investment managers meeting applicable reporting requirements disclose certain holdings quarterly through Form 13F.

Resource: SEC EDGAR

6. The Proxy Statement

Often overlooked, the DEF 14A can be one of the most interesting documents in the stack. It contains information on executive compensation, board structure, ownership, governance, and shareholder proposals.

7. Investor Relations

Company investor-relations pages can contain earnings presentations, transcripts or call materials, investor-day decks, historical financial information, and management guidance.

The earnings release tells you what management wants to highlight first. The filings and supporting materials help you understand the rest of the picture.

A good research process usually starts after the headline.

This is not financial advice. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always conduct your own research and consult a qualified professional when appropriate.

Private-market diligence doesn’t always require expensive data platforms. A surprising amount of useful information is available through public sources—you just have to know where to look.

Here are a few places to start.

SEC EDGAR — Public Comparables

Use public-company filings to understand margins, risks, customer concentration, industry economics, executive compensation, acquisitions, and competitors.

Resource: SEC EDGAR

FRED — Financing and Macro Conditions

Interest rates, credit spreads, inflation, lending conditions, and hundreds of thousands of economic data series can help frame the environment surrounding a potential investment.

Resource: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

BLS — Labor Economics

For labor-intensive businesses, wage trends, employment data, productivity, and industry-level statistics can materially affect underwriting assumptions.

Resource: Bureau of Labor Statistics

BEA — Industry Economics

The Bureau of Economic Analysis provides data on GDP, industries, consumer spending, corporate profits, and regional economic activity.

Resource: Bureau of Economic Analysis

U.S. Census Bureau — Market and Industry Data

Useful for demographic research, business formation, geographic analysis, industry statistics, and estimating potential markets.

Resource: Census Bureau Data

Google Patents — Technology and IP

For technology-heavy businesses, patent searches can help identify intellectual property, inventors, competitors, and prior innovation.

Resource: Google Patents

FINRA TRACE — Debt Markets

When relevant debt securities trade publicly, TRACE data can provide another window into pricing and credit-market activity.

Resource: FINRA Fixed Income Data

None of these replaces proprietary diligence or paid institutional platforms. But together, public sources can build a surprisingly detailed first-pass picture of a company, its industry, and the environment in which it operates.

This is not financial advice. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always conduct your own research and consult a qualified professional when appropriate.

Macro narratives move quickly. Before forming a view on the economy or markets, I like starting with a handful of indicators that put the story into context.

1. The 10-Year Treasury Yield

A basic read on long-term rates and one of the most important reference points across financial markets.

Resource: FRED — 10-Year Treasury Rate

2. The 2-Year / 10-Year Treasury Spread

A simple way to visualize the shape of the yield curve and how markets are pricing different parts of the economic cycle.

Resource: FRED — 10-Year Treasury Minus 2-Year Treasury

3. High-Yield Credit Spreads

When investors demand substantially more compensation to own risky corporate debt, it’s worth paying attention.

Resource: FRED — U.S. High Yield Option-Adjusted Spread

4. Unemployment

Market narratives can change daily. Labor-market data helps anchor the discussion in what is actually happening in the economy.

Resource: FRED — U.S. Unemployment Rate

5. Bank Lending Standards

Credit availability matters. The Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey provides insight into whether banks are tightening or easing lending standards.

Resource: Federal Reserve — Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey

No single chart tells you where markets are headed. Together, however, these five provide a useful starting dashboard for separating the macro narrative from the underlying data.

This is not financial advice. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always conduct your own research and consult a qualified professional when appropriate.

The bond market can offer a useful read on growth expectations, inflation, credit risk, and financial conditions—without requiring you to become a fixed-income specialist.

Here are five places to start.

1. The Treasury Yield Curve

Start with U.S. Treasury yields across maturities. The curve can help frame expectations around growth, inflation, and monetary policy.

Resource: U.S. Treasury — Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates

2. The 2-Year vs. 10-Year Spread

One of the most widely followed relationships in fixed income. Comparing short- and longer-term Treasury yields provides a quick view into how markets are pricing the economic outlook.

Resource: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) — 10-Year Treasury Minus 2-Year Treasury

3. High-Yield Credit Spreads

Watch what lower-rated companies have to pay above comparable Treasuries. Widening spreads can signal increasing concern about corporate credit risk.

Resource: FRED — ICE BofA U.S. High Yield Index Option-Adjusted Spread

4. Investment-Grade Credit

Investment-grade spreads can provide another view of corporate financing conditions and investor risk appetite.

Resource: FRED — ICE BofA U.S. Corporate Index Option-Adjusted Spread

5. Actual Bond Trading Activity

For a look beyond indexes and yields, FINRA’s TRACE data provides information on transactions in corporate and other fixed-income securities.

Resource: FINRA Fixed Income Data

You don’t need to trade bonds to listen to what the bond market is saying. Rates, spreads, and trading activity can provide useful context for decisions across equities, private markets, and the broader economy.

This is not financial advice. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always conduct your own research and consult a qualified professional when appropriate.

More than 230 new code repositories were created every minute on GitHub, according to its 2025 Octoverse report. They aren’t all startups—but they illustrate how much building happens beyond the headlines.

For investors and founders, the challenge is finding useful signals in that activity. These five resources offer a practical starting point.

1. Product Hunt

Browse new products and study their positioning. Which problems keep appearing? How are competing teams promising to solve them?

2. Y Combinator’s Company Directory

Explore startups by industry and batch. Look for clusters of companies tackling similar workflows—and where their approaches differ.

3. GitHub Trending

Watch open-source projects attracting developer attention, particularly in AI and infrastructure. Then look beyond popularity: documentation, contributors, and ongoing development deserve a closer read.

4. Hacker News: Show HN

Read product introductions alongside community feedback. Questions and objections can reveal practical limitations that a polished launch announcement leaves out.

5. Google Trends

Check whether a recurring idea also attracts search interest. Treat it as a measure of curiosity, rather than evidence of paying customers.

A 20-minute research habit

Choose one narrow problem—such as automating insurance paperwork—and compare what appears across these sources.

Ask: Who is building, what keeps repeating, and what evidence suggests users actually care?

Repeated launches can indicate opportunity, crowding, or both. I’d keep an eye on the problems people keep trying to solve—and whether anyone is actually paying for a solution.

Credit conditions rarely change in one place at one time. Banks can tighten standards before loan volumes decline, market spreads can move before defaults rise, and household stress can build unevenly across products.

No single chart settles the question. These five free sources offer a practical starting point for checking whether borrowing is becoming more difficult, expensive or risky.

1. Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey

What to watch: The net share of banks tightening standards, changes in lending terms and reported demand for business and household loans.

The Federal Reserve’s quarterly SLOOS provides a direct view into bank lending behavior. Tighter standards across several loan categories can signal reduced credit availability, but weak loan demand may also reflect borrowers choosing not to borrow rather than banks refusing to lend.

2. U.S. High-Yield Credit Spreads

What to watch: Whether the option-adjusted spread is widening, narrowing or moving sharply away from its recent range.

This FRED series measures the additional compensation investors demand for holding high-yield corporate bonds rather than comparable government debt. Wider spreads generally indicate greater concern about credit risk or lower risk appetite. They show the market price of risk—not the specific cause of the move.

3. Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index

What to watch: The direction of the index and the contributions from risk, credit and leverage.

The NFCI combines more than 100 measures from money markets, debt and equity markets, and the banking system. Positive readings indicate tighter-than-average financial conditions; negative readings indicate looser-than-average conditions. Because it is a broad composite, the underlying contributions matter as much as the headline level.

4. Federal Reserve Consumer Credit Report

What to watch: Growth in revolving credit, such as credit cards, compared with nonrevolving credit, such as auto and student loans.

The monthly G.19 release tracks credit extended to individuals for personal expenditures, excluding real-estate-secured loans. Slowing balances can reflect tighter supply, weaker demand or repayment. Rapid growth can indicate access to credit—or greater reliance on borrowing. The direction alone does not tell the full story.

5. New York Fed Household Debt and Credit Report

What to watch: Transitions into delinquency, balances 90 or more days past due, credit limits and differences among mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student loans.

For a broader set of sources covering rates, liquidity, filings and economic conditions, see The Capital Markets Dashboard: 12 Free Sources Worth Checking Each Week.

This quarterly report uses a nationally representative sample of consumer credit records. Rising delinquency transitions can reveal repayment stress that aggregate debt growth misses. Product-level detail is important: strain in one borrower group does not necessarily describe the entire household sector.

Read the indicators together

A stronger tightening signal appears when several measures move in the same direction: banks report stricter standards, credit spreads widen, financial conditions tighten and delinquencies rise. When the indicators disagree, the disagreement is useful. It points to where pressure is concentrated—and where a broad market narrative may be oversimplifying the evidence.

These resources are starting points for research and do not constitute investment, legal or financial advice. Methodologies and access may change.

Capital markets generate a constant stream of headlines, forecasts and opinions. A more disciplined starting point is to build a small set of primary and institutional sources—and return to the same ones consistently.

The resources below are free to access and useful for monitoring rates, liquidity, credit conditions, market activity and the broader economy. Each answers a different question. None should be treated as a complete market signal on its own.

Rates and liquidity

1. U.S. Treasury Daily Treasury Rates

This is the direct source for Treasury yields across maturities. Comparing short- and long-term yields helps frame expectations around monetary policy, inflation, growth and the cost of capital. The shape of the curve is informative, but it is not a stand-alone forecast.

2. Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

FRED brings together hundreds of thousands of economic and financial time series from government agencies and other data providers. It is especially useful for comparing rates, spreads, inflation, employment and financial conditions over consistent time periods. Always check the original source, units and revision notes behind a series.

3. Federal Reserve H.4.1 Balance Sheet

The Federal Reserve publishes this weekly report on factors affecting reserve balances. It shows securities holdings, reserve balances and the use of liquidity facilities. It can help explain changes in system liquidity, although the balance sheet alone does not measure investor risk appetite or the availability of credit to every borrower.

4. Treasury Auction Schedule

TreasuryDirect provides the schedule for bill, note, bond, TIPS and floating-rate-note auctions, along with links to announcements and results. The calendar helps investors see when new government debt is coming to market and where supply may be concentrated. Auction results require context; one weak or strong auction does not establish a lasting trend.

Credit conditions

5. Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS)

The Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey covers changes in bank lending standards, terms and loan demand across businesses and households. It is a useful check on whether credit is becoming easier or harder to obtain. Because it is a survey released periodically, it should be read as a directional indicator rather than real-time underwriting data.

6. ICE BofA U.S. High Yield Option-Adjusted Spread

This FRED series tracks the spread between U.S. high-yield corporate bonds and comparable government bonds after adjusting for embedded options. Wider spreads generally indicate that investors are demanding more compensation for credit risk. The series shows the price of risk in the market, not the reason it changed.

7. Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index

The NFCI provides a weekly view of U.S. financial conditions across money markets, debt and equity markets, and the banking system. It combines measures of risk, liquidity and leverage into one index. Its breadth is useful, but a composite can hide meaningful differences among its underlying components.

Market activity and corporate disclosure

8. Cboe Volatility Index (VIX)

The VIX is derived from S&P 500 options and reflects the market’s expectation of near-term volatility. It is often used as a measure of uncertainty or demand for protection. It does not predict whether equities will rise or fall, and unusually high or low readings need to be interpreted in context.

9. SEC EDGAR Search

EDGAR provides free access to public-company filings, including annual and quarterly reports, current reports, registration statements and institutional disclosures. It is the best place to move from a market narrative to the underlying filing. Filings are authoritative disclosures, but they may be backward-looking and still require careful interpretation.

For a more focused review of lending standards, spreads and household credit stress, see Is Credit Getting Tighter? Five Free Indicators to Watch.

10. Nasdaq IPO Listings

Nasdaq’s IPO section tracks expected offerings, recent listings and historical activity. It provides a quick view of whether the new-issue market is active and which sectors are testing public demand. Expected dates are estimates and can change, so confirm material details through company filings.

The economic backdrop

11. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

BLS publishes the Consumer Price Index, employment data, wages, productivity and other measures that influence rate expectations and company fundamentals. Monthly releases can move markets, but revisions, seasonal adjustments and longer-term trends often matter more than a single headline number.

12. Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP Data

BEA’s national accounts provide data on economic growth, consumer spending, investment, corporate profits and inflation. GDP releases help frame the broader operating environment for companies and capital markets. Estimates are revised as more complete information becomes available.

A simple weekly routine

This dashboard does not need to become a forecasting exercise. A short weekly review can be enough:

1. Record the date and the latest reading.
2. Note whether the indicator is improving, deteriorating or broadly unchanged.
3. Compare the move with its recent history rather than reacting to the absolute number alone.
4. Write down one question the change raises about companies, financing conditions or investor behavior.

The purpose is not to force twelve indicators into one conclusion. It is to develop a repeatable process for separating observable conditions from market commentary—and to know where to look when a headline deserves closer examination.

Availability, methodology and free-access terms may change. These resources are starting points for research and do not constitute investment, legal or financial advice.

A pitch deck does not need to answer every diligence question. It should, however, show that the company understands which questions matter and provide enough evidence to justify the next conversation.

This checklist is a simple starting point for founders preparing a deck and investors reviewing one.

The checklist

1. Problem: Is the problem specific, important and costly enough to change customer behavior?
2. Customer: Is it clear who experiences the problem and who ultimately pays for the solution?
3. Product: Can the company explain what it sells in plain language?
4. Demand: What evidence shows that customers actively want the product?
5. Traction: Does the deck distinguish paying customers from users, pilots, partnerships and letters of intent?
6. Revenue: Is the revenue model understandable, repeatable and connected to customer value?
7. Economics: What do margins, acquisition costs, retention and sales cycles suggest about the business?
8. Market: Is the market estimate based on reachable customers rather than only a large headline number?
9. Competition: Does the company address substitutes and existing behavior—not just direct competitors?
10. Defensibility: What becomes more difficult to replicate as the company grows?
11. Team: Does the team have relevant experience, access or insight for the problem being solved?
12. Dependencies: Does the business rely heavily on one customer, supplier, platform, approval or future financing round?
13. Use of capital: Is the amount being raised connected to specific milestones?
14. Projections: Are forecasts linked to measurable operating assumptions?
15. Central risk: What unanswered question could most materially change the investment conclusion?

When the initial review supports further investigation, continue with Before the Data Room: 12 Free Tools for Evaluating a Company.

What the deck should accomplish

A strong deck creates clarity. It separates demonstrated progress from future ambition, makes important assumptions visible and gives the reader a reason to continue the conversation.

The objective is not to remove every uncertainty. It is to show that the company understands its business well enough to discuss uncertainty directly.

This checklist is a starting point for discussion and does not replace financial, legal or technical diligence.

Good diligence does not always begin with an expensive database. Many of the most useful signals—corporate filings, fundraising disclosures, patents, government contracts, market data and digital activity—are publicly available if you know where to look.

These twelve resources provide a practical starting point for evaluating a company before the data room, management meeting or investment memo.

Company and fundraising records

1. SEC EDGAR

Start with primary documents. EDGAR provides searchable access to public-company filings, financial statements, risk disclosures, executive compensation and material events. Search by company, ticker, individual or keyword rather than relying only on summaries elsewhere.

For the questions that should precede deeper diligence, see Before the First Meeting: 15 Questions for Reviewing a Pitch Deck.

2. SEC Form D filings

Filter EDGAR by Form D to find notices of certain exempt securities offerings. These filings can help confirm an issuer’s legal name, offering date, amount offered, related persons and stated industry. A filing is a disclosure—not proof that the entire amount was raised—but it can provide an important factual anchor.

Market size and economic context

3. U.S. Census Data

Useful for grounding market claims in population, household, business and geographic data. It is particularly valuable when a pitch depends on demographic growth, regional expansion or the number of potential establishments in a category.

4. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS data can test assumptions involving employment, wages, labor availability, inflation and industry growth. It is often more useful to examine the underlying series than to repeat a headline statistic.

5. FRED

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis organizes hundreds of thousands of economic time series. Use it to place company performance against interest rates, credit conditions, consumer behavior, construction, industrial production and other macroeconomic variables.

Technology and intellectual property

6. Google Patents

A fast way to search patent documents by company, inventor, technology or phrase. It can help clarify what has actually been filed, who is named and how crowded a claimed technical category may be.

7. USPTO Patent Public Search

Use the official USPTO search system when patent status and document history require closer review. A patent claim in a deck should be separated into applications, issued patents, ownership and the commercial importance of the protected claims.

Government exposure and contracts

8. SAM.gov

SAM.gov is a central source for federal contracting opportunities, entity information and award-related records. It is useful when a company describes the government as a customer or an important route to market.

9. USAspending.gov

Search federal spending by recipient, agency, award type and geography. This can help distinguish a funded contract from a partnership announcement, subcontracting relationship or prospective opportunity.

Demand and digital signals

10. Google Trends

Google Trends does not measure revenue or total market size, but it can reveal changes in search interest, seasonality and regional concentration. Treat it as a directional signal rather than conclusive evidence of demand.

11. BuiltWith

BuiltWith identifies technologies used on websites. It can provide clues about a company’s product stack, integrations and potential customers, although results should be corroborated before drawing conclusions.

12. Similarweb

Similarweb offers directional estimates of website traffic, geography and acquisition channels. The free view is limited, and estimates can be less reliable for small sites, but it can still help frame follow-up questions about digital reach.

The tool is not the conclusion

No single database establishes an investment thesis. Public records can be incomplete, delayed or easy to misinterpret. Their value is in triangulation: compare what the company says with what filings, customers, contracts, patents, market data and observable behavior indicate.

The goal is not to collect the largest possible volume of information. It is to identify the evidence that could confirm—or materially challenge—the story.

Availability and free-access limits may change. These resources are starting points for research and do not replace legal, financial or technical diligence.