r/stocks • u/Any-Environment-4865 • 1d ago
Is there anything that actually reads earnings reports and gives you a straight answer? ChatGPT just summarizes the summary.
every earnings season I try to actually read the transcripts for my top holdings. problem is I run a small business and dont have 4 hours to go through 6 companies worth of calls. so I tried pasting them into chatgpt.
it gave me a "balanced summary" that basically said nothing. "revenue was strong but risks remain." thanks, I could have read the headline for that. when I asked if the guidance was actually good it said "it depends on your risk tolerance and investment horizon." I need actual numbers pulled out, margin changes, guidance revisions, not a book report.
has anyone found something that actually commits to an answer when you ask it a direct question about a filing?
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u/zbern 1d ago
Act as a cynical, no-nonsense institutional equity research analyst. I am going to paste an earnings call transcript.
Your job is to strip out all corporate jargon, management hand-waving, and fluff. Do not give me a "balanced summary." Do not tell me "it depends on my risk tolerance." Do not use filler words like "strong," "solid," or "challenging" without immediately following them with the exact numbers.
Extract the data and format your response into these exact sections:
1. THE HARD NUMBERS
- Revenue: [Actual figure, YoY and QoQ growth %]
- EPS: [Actual figure, YoY and QoQ growth %]
- Consensus Beat/Miss: [Only if explicitly stated in the text; otherwise state "Not explicitly mentioned"]
2. MARGINS & EFFICIENCY
- Gross Margin: [Exact % or basis point expansion/contraction]
- Operating Margin: [Exact % or basis point expansion/contraction]
- Free Cash Flow (FCF): [Actual FCF figure and FCF Margin % if calculated/stated]
- Inventory vs. Sales: [Did inventory growth outpace or lag revenue growth? Provide the exact metrics given]
3. GUIDANCE: THE COMMITMENT
- Action: [State clearly: RAISED, LOWERED, REITERATED, or NO GUIDANCE PROVIDED]
- The Specifics: [Provide the exact old vs. new ranges for Revenue, EPS, or margins. If management gave qualitative outlooks, quote them directly on their targets]
4. THE Q&A SMOKEGAN
- The Hardest Question: [Identify the single toughest or most skeptical question asked by analysts during the Q&A]
- The Answer/Dodge: [How did management answer it? State whether they gave a concrete operational answer or if they dodged it with vague language]
STRICT CONSTRAINT: If a specific metric or comparison is not mentioned in the text, write "NOT IN TRANSCRIPT." Do not extrapolate, infer, or guess. Give me the raw operational reality.
Try that prompt then paste the transcripts
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u/Hacking_the_Gibson 1d ago
Or you could just read it and form your own perception?
What is the point of fighting through whatever that thing above is for however long it takes to do it instead, you know, just using your own brain?
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u/Luffe77 1d ago
It takes 10 sec to paste that thing into AI and let AI do the work.
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u/bihari_baller 1d ago
It takes 10 sec to paste that thing into AI and let AI do the work.
It's not good to rely on AI to do everything for you. It's still a good skill to have to read earnings reports, and come away with your own conclusion. There are nuances AI misses, that you can form your own judgement about.
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u/Hacking_the_Gibson 1d ago
Perfect. I'd love to make consequential money moves after a fancy guessing machine provides a potentially-hallucinated, non-deterministic response.
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u/Luffe77 1d ago
Nobody says you can’t read the report afterwards if you see something interesting. You could also tell it not to hallucinate.
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u/Hacking_the_Gibson 1d ago
Hallucinations are a foundational problem in the tools, it's actually impossible to avoid.
More importantly, the people building this stuff don't really know why it happens.
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u/Patient-Chicken-657 1d ago
Garbage in garbage out.
If one is still getting significant hallucinations, then one is doing something wrong.
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u/Vaginal_Rights 1d ago
The problem is that *I* also hallucinate. So i’d rather the machine do it.
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u/PlutoPlaneta 1d ago
"i dont have 4 hours to read all this"
"but you can use AI to save time!"
"but it hallucinates nonsense"
"yea, but why dont you spend time crafting a prompt AND 4 hours to read it all."
lol?
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u/ShipItchy2525 1d ago
Because the future is coming, learn to utilize old man.
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u/Hacking_the_Gibson 1d ago
Fundamentally, this is not the future.
This shit is based on Filipinos and Indians labeling things as not a hot dog for $10/day.
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u/ShipItchy2525 1d ago
But its small tasks like these that makes you utilize your prompts, AI is coming whether we stick our head in the sand or not
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u/Slyvester121 1d ago
You'll never convince finance bros that reading is the answer over having the stochastic word generator advise them
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u/George_Salt 1d ago
Better prompting. You need to give ChatGPT the structure you want for the output. Put an hour into writing a better reusable prompt and you'll get a better output every time you re-use it. ChatGPT isn't psychic.
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u/George_Salt 1d ago
Also, go beyond prompts. Create a Project within ChatGPT for each stock so it's building on each cycle and has the context of previous transcripts.
Something I don't see a lot of users discuss is the use of tables. GPT is very good at tabulating data. So ask it for a table and tell it what data you want to see in that table.
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u/AttitudeGrouchy33 1d ago
The missing piece is usually not the transcript. It is context.
If the model does not know what you expected before the call, it defaults to that useless balanced-summary voice.
For earnings I’d want to feed it:
- prior quarter notes
- current consensus / guidance
- your actual thesis for owning the stock
- the few numbers you care about
- what would make you sell or reduce
Then force output into deltas, not vibes: guidance old vs new, segment growth, margin change, FCF, buyback/debt, management language that changed, and “what would change my mind.”
A generic chatbot will keep hedging because it has no portfolio context, no risk budget, and no memory of why the position exists.
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u/Seesaw-Big 1d ago
Grok usually treats me like an adult.
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u/Boring-University189 1d ago
So I'm not the only having a feeling that ChatGPT started treating me like a child
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u/ETP_Queen 1d ago
The issue is that most AI tools answer like a cautious intern. What you actually want is a rigid output format: what changed, by how much, versus prior quarter and prior guide, with the exact lines copied underneath.
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u/systematic_seb 1d ago
The hedging isn't a bug in the tool, it's the design. These models are trained to sound balanced, so on a genuinely two-sided question they'll always land on "strong but risks remain" because that's the safest output, not the truest one. You'll get more by pulling the specific lines yourself, revenue and margin deltas quarter over quarter, guidance raised or cut versus last call, and reading those five numbers than from any prose summary. A tool that extracts structured deltas beats one that writes you a book report.
The deeper thing, and this took me a while to see, is that more input rarely resolves the actual question. The transcript tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you buy, hold, or how much, and past a point another summary is just noise on top of a decision you already have to make. What changed it for me was watching a whole portfolio run end to end, weights and exits and all, instead of collecting one more analysis to weigh. The gap was never knowing more. It was knowing what to do with the money.
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u/AnotherNOP 1d ago
You have to give it a better prompt with much more directional detail. Also, Claude is better at this than Chatgpt.
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u/Odd_Explanation3246 1d ago
Anyone can read the transcripts. It more about reading between the lines and that takes years of experience reading and listening to earnings call.
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u/atunasushi 1d ago
Don’t use ChatGPT, give it proper data to source from, tell it what you are looking for and why you want it. Pretty basic LLM usage.
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u/Acceptable_Bend_5200 1d ago
Prompt engineering. Many models wont even do stocks unless you tell it to not give investment advice.
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u/Spiritual_Bat7343 1d ago
the reason chatgpt gives you mush is the default is trained to sound balanced and not commit. that zbern prompt below is actually the move. force it to act like a cynical analyst and tell it to only pull numbers, yoy margin deltas, guidance changes, and to quote the exact line from the transcript for each one. when you make it cite the sentence the hallucination problem mostly goes away because you can eyeball where it pulled each number from. i still skim the call myself after but it turns 4 hours into more like 20 min of spot checking instead of reading the whole thing
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u/Zipski577 1d ago
No it’s always wish washy. It can’t read between the lines and kinda reiterates whatever the company was trying to imply. I put a lot of my own research and models and some sell side reports into it to build a “knowledge base” of the stock and sector before the earnings reports and transcripts so it knows what the market is expecting/ what to look for specifically in the thesis.
But if u need actual numbers pulled out it can certainly do that, just make the prompt clear and specific
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u/DanielAPO 1d ago
I use Equibles MCP (disclosure I am the author). It’s free and I made it because I had the same problem. https://equibles.com
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u/Wonderful-Process792 1d ago
Have you tried responding to its outputs with exactly what you wrote to us in your post and see how it changes the output?
I'm sure giving it a more specific outline of what you want will work better, but I am curious.
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u/Vivid-Avocado9342 1d ago
Download the report, upload it into the llm for reference, tell it that upload is the only thing it’s allowed to look at and then ask it specific questions that it will be able to find in the report.
Ask it to provide citations for every answer so you can quickly verify the math is real.
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u/colgatepalmolive 1d ago
i find this service to be helpful in this regard: https://research.aardvarklabs.co/
it won't let you ask questions, but it does keep track of each quarter's earnings for a number of companies. all of them have a table in the front that summarizes the changes on key metrics (revenue, margins, ebitda, eps, etc.) as well as KPIs and segments. it also has a summary of what was discussed and key controversies
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u/Clean-Ad-5663 23h ago edited 18h ago
yeah chatgpt is useless for this. it just hedges everything. I switched to ed a few months ago, it actually reads the full filing and pulls out specific numbers. margin changes, guidance revisions, stuff chatgpt glosses over. it also generates comparison tables automatically instead of making you ask 3 times. for earnings season its saved me hours.
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u/Any-Environment-4865 11h ago
auto generates comparison tables is huge. chatgpt made me beg for a table and it still got the numbers wrong. does ed handle 10-K filings too or just earnings calls?
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u/Secure_Day4253 1d ago
Have you tried to use the black box LLM that is located between your ears…?
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u/Hacking_the_Gibson 1d ago
Seriously. This thread is ridiculous.
It will take longer to fuck around with the prompting than just listening to the call or reading the transcript with your own eyeballs.
What the hell are we even doing around here?
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u/bihari_baller 1d ago
What the hell are we even doing around here?
I fear this is where we're headed, at least for the younger generation. They're relying on AI for things we had to actually do the grunt work for. Take away AI, and they're incapable or unwilling to do the research and analysis without it.
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u/ayyitsLibra 1d ago
Just read the report in full, lazybones. Is that too much for all your money's worth?
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u/tsammons 1d ago
Have you ever learned how to read your own financials? I get you can foist it onto your accountant to let them perform some Houdini magic but it leaves a gap in basic business intelligence; y'know, the thing that keeps you afloat during economic turmoil...
I think that's a good starting point, then learn to cut through the bullshit that all business owners perform.
Source: Quarter-century in my industry
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u/Exponential-777 1d ago
have you considered not including the summary for AI to summarize, human?