Discovering subtle changes in 10K and 10Qs

[Liberty]

Hey,

 

After reading about how people like Bill Ackman and David Einhorn noticed all kinds of changes in 10K and 10Qs (respectively in MBIA and Allied Capital), some of which were really subtle (a sentence somewhere was remove, a word or two were changed to alter meaning, etc), I got to wondering if I should start routinely running a program to compare the delta between the PDFs and see where the changes are and what stayed the same.

 

Does anyone here do that systematically? What's your system? What software do you use? (Mac software, preferably)

 

Thanks!

[bmichaud]

If you have access to Capital IQ, there is a function called Blackline that does it for you. Super helpful.

[junto.investing]

Give this a shot:

 

http://www.oldschoolvalue.com/blog/investment-tools/tutorial-to-quickly-detect-changes-in-the-footnotes/

[biaggio]

interesting. Thanks.

 

I am part way thru the book "Quality of Earnings" and one of the first chapters is on looking for discrepencies between company reports (annual report + 10K as an example).

 

 

[Guest]

Not that this helps at all, but I believe Buffett has a photographic memory. That would be crazy if we could all just read a ton of annual reports and then remember every sentence.  8)