How to research an investment
The edge is rarely in the headline; it is in the filing nobody opened.
Start from what would have to be true for this to work and what would make it fail, then check those specific things against filings, registers and primary documents. The list of claims you could not verify is usually the most valuable part of the output.
Is it a fit?
Question
There is a decision waiting on the answer and a date it has to be made by.
Source
Every claim traces to something you can open and check yourself.
Opposition
The case against is written down too, by somebody who meant it.
Start here. You get back how your own answers would read to somebody running this on you.
Would you pass one tomorrowWork it out in a minute
Five areas a large customer, lender or investor tests, scored on what you could produce tomorrow.
The plan
Do these six, in order
A time against each one and a way to tell it is finished.
Read the filing before the coverage
The primary document, not an article about it.
2 hours · Done when you can cite the page number
Write the case against first
Three reasons this fails, specific enough to check.
1 hour · Done when each of the three can be tested
Tie every claim to a line in the statements
The narrative and the numbers have to agree.
2 hours · Done when each claim has a number or is marked unsupported
Date every figure
As of when, next to the number.
30 minutes · Done when no figure is undated
Name who benefits and who is squeezed
Both sides of the trade, with their incentive.
1 hour · Done when each party has an incentive written beside it
Write the one page brief before deciding
What it is, what has to be true, what would change your mind.
2 hours · Done when someone else can read it and reach a view
Research is not the collection of reasons to do what you already wanted to do. Most poor decisions are well researched, in the sense that a great deal of material was gathered, all of it supporting a conclusion reached in the first ten minutes.
The discipline below is mostly about ordering.
01.Read the filing, not the coverage
Go to the primary document first. The filing, the accounts, the prospectus, the deck, the actual contract. Commentary is someone else reading it for you, with their own position and their own incentives, and it arrives already digested.
Read the sections written to be skipped.
02.Build the case against first
Before writing down why this is attractive, write the strongest possible argument that it is a mistake. Not a token list of risks, the version a smart person on the other side of the trade would make.
If you cannot construct that argument convincingly, you do not understand the situation well enough to take a position in it.
03.Check the numbers against the story
Test whether the numbers support the narrative or merely sit alongside it. Growth described as strong should appear in the revenue line, efficiency in margins, discipline in cash conversion, and demand in retention.
Where they diverge, the numbers are usually right and the story is being managed.
Twenty minutes with a practitioner from our team, and you leave with a plan for your specific situation.
Talk to an expert04.Date everything
Put a date on every fact you rely on. Market sizes, growth rates, competitive positions and regulatory conditions all decay, and a great deal of confident analysis rests on figures that were true four years ago.
This matters more than it sounds, because stale numbers get repeated across sources until they feel like consensus.
05.Map who benefits and who is squeezed
Ask who profits if this goes ahead and who absorbs the cost if it does not. Founders, existing holders, the bank, the adviser, the person who introduced it to you. Incentives explain how information is presented far better than intent does.
Then ask who is quietly being squeezed: suppliers, staff, customers on legacy terms.
06.Write the brief before deciding
Write the view in one page before deciding. What you believe, what would have to be true for it to work, what would make you wrong, and what you would do if the price moved sharply in either direction.
Writing it down forces the reasoning to be specific and gives you something to check against later.
Confirmation by headline; reading only what agrees.
Undated analysis presented as current.
Skipping the bear case because the bull case is exciting.
Questions we get
The ones that come up on almost every call.
Is this investment advice?
No.
How much research is enough?
When you can argue the other side convincingly and state plainly what would change your mind.
What are the most common mistakes?
Reading commentary instead of source documents, gathering support for a conclusion already reached.
How do I keep my own bias out of it?
Write the case against first, date every fact.
Most of this is doable in house.
Your results so far
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By Shaheer Shaikh, technology and operations consultant · Updated October 3, 2026
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Shaheer leads the work, with engineers, writers, filers and analysts behind him. C-suite operations for a San Francisco AI company, Six Sigma on the process side, Anthropic certified on the Model Context Protocol, ten years across eight industries. See what we have built
The operating side of a target is the part that rarely appears in a data room. The diligence readiness check lists the five areas a buyer tests and scores what could be produced tomorrow without a scramble, which is a useful lens from either side of a deal.