Lesson 1 of 6
Picking one and saying why
Where a company comes from, the sentence that has to exist before an afternoon is spent, and the filed-history check that rules out half the covered universe.
By Javier Sanz
Founder of ValueScreener. Built Ninety Nine, a securities services provider, and sold it to a tier-one global bank; ran operations and internationalization at Alpaca, the brokerage API.
Who writes thisEditorial processLinkedIn (opens in a new tab)X (opens in a new tab)
In one minute
- Write the sentence before spending the afternoon: what you think is true, and what would have to be true for it to matter.
- Check the filed history first, because about half the covered universe cannot support a ten-year reading.
- A candidate with no sentence is not a candidate, it is a name you saw somewhere.
The first decision costs nothing and determines everything after it. It takes one sentence and one lookup, and most people do neither.
Filed history across the covered universe
- Ten years or more2,867companies
- Three to nine years1,923companies
- One to two years556companies
The sentence
One sentence, in words a stranger could check, before any work begins.
Not "this looks cheap", which is not checkable. Something with a mechanism in it: I think this business earns more on its capital than its industry generally does, and I think the reason is the position of its assets rather than a temporary price. That sentence names what you believe and points at the figures that would support or refuse it.
Write it down before opening a filing, for the reason the applied course gives: a question you wrote from your own observation is yours, and a question you form after reading management's narrative is usually theirs.
The filed-history check
Second, and it takes a minute. Of 5,499 covered companies read on 16 September 2026, 2,867 have ten years or more of filed statements on record. Another 1,923 have three to nine years, and 556 have one or two.
So a little over half the covered universe can support the kind of ten-year reading the applied courses run. If the company you have in mind is in the other half, the work is still possible and the conclusions available from it are narrower, and knowing that before starting is worth the minute.
What a screen is and is not good for
A screen produces candidates. It does not produce reasons, and a reader who takes the reason from the screen has taken a ratio as an argument.
The value of a screen is that it is exhaustive over the covered universe in a way a person is not. The cost is that everything it returns is returned for the same reason, so the sentence still has to be written afterwards, about the particular company, by you.
What to do with the sentence
Keep it. It goes at the top of the document this course produces, and every condition written later has to connect back to it. The thesis course calls the connection between a reason and a figure the thing most people skip, and skipping it starts here, with a sentence that was never written.
Check yourself
What does the opening sentence have to contain?
- A valuation and a price
- What you believe and a mechanism, in words a stranger could check
- The industry and the market capitalisation
Show the answer
Answer: B.
"This looks cheap" names no mechanism and cannot be refuted. A sentence with a mechanism in it also tells you what to read first.How many covered companies have ten years or more of filed statements on record?
- All of them
- 2,867 of 5,499, read on 16 September 2026
- Fewer than a thousand
Show the answer
Answer: B.
Another 1,923 have three to nine years and 556 have one or two. If your company is in the second group, the work is still possible and the conclusions are narrower.What is a screen good for?
- Producing the reason to hold
- Producing candidates exhaustively over the covered universe, after which the reason still has to be written by you
- Ranking companies by quality
Show the answer
Answer: B.
Everything a screen returns is returned for the same reason, so taking the reason from the screen is taking a ratio as an argument.Sources
- GET /api/stats/universe, read 16 September 2026, for the covered company count and the distribution of filed history depth.
What this leaves out
- The universe counts describe the coverage on the date they were read. They change as companies are added, delisted and as filings are ingested, and the endpoint is the only place to read the current figures.
- Filed history depth is a statement about what is on record here. A company with a short record here may have a longer one on EDGAR that has not been ingested.
- The two sentences in the worked example describe no company and neither is a view on any security.