Fundamentals made simple.
US-listed companies checked against their own SEC filings: 90+ metrics, Jim's 7 checks, our 5 filters and a health check for each one. Tap a preset or build your own screen.
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How we score
Every number comes from the company's own annual and quarterly filings with the US SEC (the XBRL data behind 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F and 40-F reports). We use up to the last 5 financial years. Verdicts are Passes our checks, Watch / Mixed, Red flag or Not scored where free data can't answer the question honestly. A verdict is a starting point for your own research, never a judgement on whether to buy or sell.
Jim's 7 checks
- Revenue: growing at least 3% a year over the period with no more than one down year passes. Shrinking revenue is a red flag. Anything else is Watch.
- Operating costs (revenue minus operating profit): costs growing no faster than revenue (within 0.5 points a year) pass; up to 3 points faster is Watch; more is a red flag.
- Gross profit: falling or negative gross profit is a red flag; gross margin down more than 3 points is Watch; otherwise it passes.
- Net profit: a loss in the latest year is a red flag; profitable in all but at most one year passes; otherwise Watch.
- Short-term debt (due within a year): covered by cash and short-term investments passes; covered with a year of operating cash flow added is Watch; otherwise a red flag.
- Long-term debt: more cash than debt, or net debt up to 3 years of operating profit, passes; up to 5 years is Watch; more, or net debt with no operating profit, is a red flag.
- Profit margins: operating margin (net margin if no operating line) flat or rising versus the first year passes; down up to 4 points is Watch; negative or down more is a red flag.
Banks, insurers and brokers: checks 2, 3, 5 and 6 don't apply (shown as N/A), so they can't pass all 7. Bank revenue = net interest income + non-interest income.
The 5 filters
1 · Revenue growth
5%+ a year over the period with no more than one down year passes. Shrinking revenue, or 2+ down years with under 3% growth, is a red flag. Otherwise Mixed.
2 · Competitive position (moat clues)
Points for gross margin (40%+ / 60%+), a steady gross margin, operating margin (10%+ / 20%+), rising operating margin, return on capital (8%+ / 15%+) and free cash flow positive every year. Passes at 60%+ of available points, red flag at 30% or less. Banks and insurers are judged on return on equity and years of profit.
3 · Leadership quality: not scored, check yourself
Management can't be measured honestly from financial data. Company pages give a checklist, the share-count trend and insider buying and selling as clues.
4 · Timing & valuation: not scored, check yourself
Valuation needs a share price, and we only publish data we're licensed to share, so P/E and similar ratios aren't shown yet. Company pages give a checklist.
5 · Risk
Red flags: net debt over 4x operating profit (7x for utilities and real estate), interest cover under 2x, losses in 3+ of 5 years, or share count up over 25%. Smaller warnings count as Mixed. Not scored for banks and insurers.
The 5-filter score is the average 0–100 sub-score of the filters we can score. Filters passed counts passes among the 3 scored filters.
Health check
Five areas, each scored 0–6 from six yes/no tests on the numbers (scaled if some tests can't be run). It's a quick picture of the fundamentals, not a rating of the shares.
Company size
Size is the company's public float: the market value of shares held by outside investors, which every US annual report (10-K) states on its cover. It is usually months old (the date is on each company page) and leaves out insiders' shares, so it can be well below today's market value. Foreign companies filing 20-F or 40-F reports don't publish it, so they appear under "All sizes" (or tap "show" next to the count).
Money and currencies
Money columns are in US dollars. Companies that report in another currency are converted at European Central Bank reference rates (); currencies the ECB doesn't publish show "–". Company pages show the reported currency.
Insider buying and selling
From the SEC's Form 4 data sets: open-market purchases (code P) and sales (code S) by directors, officers and 10% owners in the last 12 months (). Values are as reported in the filings. Option exercises, gifts and awards are left out. Many sales are pre-planned (Rule 10b5-1 plans) and say little on their own.
All metrics
Ratios use the latest financial year; debt and cash use the latest balance sheet (which may be a later quarter).
Important
Not financial advice. For education only. Beyond the Ticker is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and does not give personal recommendations. Nothing here says whether you should buy, sell or hold any investment. Automated checks can be wrong: data may be delayed, incomplete or misread from filings, companies restate figures, and one-off items distort single years. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, and investments can fall as well as rise. Do your own research or speak to a regulated adviser.
Do Jim's 7 checks work?
Draft. Wording awaiting approval.
We re-ran Jim's 7 checks as if we were standing on 31 December 2018, 2019 and 2020, using only SEC filings published by then (no hindsight on the numbers). Then we looked at how the companies' shares did over the next 3 and 5 years, against the median $2bn+ US company and the S&P 500.
What we found
- Beat the typical company: the group passing all 7 checks beat the median $2bn+ company at all three start dates over 5 years.
- Beat the equal-weight S&P 500 in most tests, but not all (it fell short over 5 years from the 2020 start).
- Fewer blow-ups: its worst 10% of companies fell much less than the worst 10% of all companies at every start date.
- It did NOT consistently beat the S&P 500. It matched it from 2018 and trailed it over 5 years from 2019 and 2020, when a handful of giant tech companies drove the index.
Median total return
| Group | 5 years | 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| Start 2018 (31 Dec) | ||
| Passes all 7 checks (116 cos.) | +106% | +105% |
| 6 or more of 7 checks (251 cos.) | +87% | +90% |
| All $2bn+ companies (median) (1178 cos.) | +64% | +65% |
| S&P 500 (SPY) | +106% | +100% |
| Equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) | +89% | +88% |
| Worst 10%: all 7 checks vs all companies | −1% vs −16% | +25% vs −5% |
| Start 2019 (31 Dec) | ||
| Passes all 7 checks (110 cos.) | +72% | +35% |
| 6 or more of 7 checks (286 cos.) | +61% | +24% |
| All $2bn+ companies (median) (1261 cos.) | +39% | +16% |
| S&P 500 (SPY) | +96% | +25% |
| Equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) | +65% | +29% |
| Worst 10%: all 7 checks vs all companies | −12% vs −39% | −13% vs −38% |
| Start 2020 (31 Dec) | ||
| Passes all 7 checks (121 cos.) | +45% | +30% |
| 6 or more of 7 checks (267 cos.) | +35% | +25% |
| All $2bn+ companies (median) (1242 cos.) | +40% | +21% |
| S&P 500 (SPY) | +95% | +33% |
| Equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) | +63% | +30% |
| Worst 10%: all 7 checks vs all companies | −39% vs −56% | −23% vs −41% |
Read this before relying on it
- Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
- Each group is roughly 100–250 companies and the three start dates overlap, so this is essentially one strong, tech-led US market (2019–2025).
- Some companies were taken over or went private and have no price history; every priced company survived, so results are biased upward. If every missing company had lost everything, the all-7 group's 5-year medians would be +84%, +65% and +35%.
- Returns are equal-weighted, in US dollars, before costs, tax and currency effects. The checks were written in 2026, after the period tested.
- Tighter versions (higher growth or margin limits) did not reliably do better; any that looked better only worked from one start date, which would be curve-fitting.
Share-price returns come from historical end-of-day data used for this research only; no individual prices are shown on this site.