Verifying Financial Conclusions

Verifying Financial Conclusions

When to use this skill

• When a financial summary or recommendation needs source verification.
• When the user asks to check claims against official websites.
• Before finalizing high-stakes conclusions (valuation, thesis change, risk alerts).

Workflow

1. Plan

• Identify which claims must be verified (numbers, dates, guidance, events, policies).
• Build a source priority list for each claim.

2. Validate

• Confirm source quality hierarchy:
  • Primary: SEC filings, company IR pages, official transcripts/releases
  • Secondary: Reputable data portals with citations
  • Tertiary: Commentary sources (use only for context, not final evidence)
• Confirm publication date and period relevance.

3. Execute

• Retrieve evidence for each claim from primary sources.
• Compare original claim vs verified value.
• Classify result: Confirmed / Partially Confirmed / Contradicted / Unverifiable.
• Produce a verification report with citations and correction actions.

Instructions

• Prefer primary sources over all others.
• Include explicit source metadata:
  • URL
  • publication date
  • section/title anchor
  • retrieval timestamp
• If claim cannot be verified, mark as Unverifiable and lower confidence.
• Never overwrite contradictory evidence; preserve both and explain discrepancy.
• Respect site terms and access controls:
  • Do not bypass authentication/paywalls
  • Do not ignore robots/usage restrictions when scraping

Verification checklist

• Claims list defined
• Primary source candidates mapped per claim
• Date/period consistency checked
• Evidence captured with metadata
• Claim status assigned
• Corrections and confidence updates applied

Output template

## Financial Conclusion Verification Report

### Verification Scope
- Claims reviewed: <count>
- Primary sources used: <list>

### Claim-Level Results
| Claim | Original | Verified | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| <claim 1> | ... | ... | Confirmed | <URL/date/section> |

### Contradictions / Gaps
- <item>

### Required Corrections
- <correction 1>

### Final Confidence
- Updated confidence: <High/Medium/Low>

Error handling

• If primary sources are unavailable, return partial verification and mark confidence downgrade.
• If only secondary sources are available, label result as provisional.
• If source dates are stale for the analysis period, block final conclusion and request newer evidence.

Resources

• parsing-sec-filings
• reviewing-financial-analysis