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Make every conclusion defensible
A reader should be able to understand the answer, inspect the evidence behind it, and see where the research stops—without reconstructing your process.
Start here
Conclusion
Evidence
Boundary
Use the four-line test
Conclusion
What the evidence means, stated in one falsifiable sentence.
Evidence
The exact quote or value that most directly supports it, with attribution and date.
Challenge
The strongest conflicting evidence or credible alternative explanation.
Boundary
What was covered, what was missing, and what would change the conclusion.
Turn the answer above into a defensible evidence table. For each finding, show: 1. the conclusion; 2. the exact supporting quote or data point; 3. who or what produced it, with company, role, event or document, date, fiscal period, section, and units where relevant; 4. the source link or identifier; 5. your inference and the strongest conflicting evidence; and 6. any coverage gap or search limit that affects the conclusion. Quote only verbatim earnings-call evidence. Keep media summaries unquoted unless you independently verify the linked source. Do not guess missing metadata. End with enough search scope and methodology for another analyst to reproduce the work.
Build a visible chain from answer to source
- 01
Lead
State the conclusion first. Avoid opening with “we searched” or a list of documents. - 02
Show
Put the strongest supporting quote or data point immediately below the claim. - 03
Identify
Attach the speaker or provider, role, company, event or document, date, fiscal period, section, units, and source link where relevant. - 04
Interpret
Explain why the evidence supports the conclusion and label that explanation as analysis, not source text. - 05
Challenge
Include conflicting evidence and the next observation that would overturn the conclusion.
Know what you can quote
| Source | How to use it | Attach |
|---|---|---|
| Verbatim earnings-call excerpt | May be quoted exactly | Speaker and role, company, section, call date, fiscal period, citation |
| Normalized earnings finding | Paraphrase; do not quote as spoken words | Company, speaker, period, and linked evidence |
| Analyst question or management refusal | Keep the returned quote labeled as a composite analyst ask and management response; do not assign sentences to inferred speakers | Analyst firm when available, topic, response quality, any refused number, call date, fiscal period, and citation |
| Executive-media finding | Keep FactIQ’s sourced summary unquoted | Person and role, title, channel, publication date, timestamped link |
| Filing, economic series, or market value | Present as data, not speech | Provider, metric, units, period, identifier, and transformation |
| Your conclusion | Label as analysis or inference | The evidence that supports and challenges it |
Keep sources separate before reconciling them
Spoken
What management or an analyst said on a call
Formal
What the company officially guided or disclosed
Filed
What appeared in the filing or reported operating metric
External
What government, market, trade, or satellite data shows
For a guidance scorecard, show what management said live, the formal guidance range, and the subsequent actual in separate columns. Preserve metric, units, target period, publication date, and source for each.
Show the research boundary
- Companies, sectors, or geographies included, and why they form the comparison set
- Exact call dates, fiscal periods, publication dates, or observation window
- The main terms or company language used to find qualitative evidence
- Missing coverage and any search batch that reached the 50-row limit
- Dataset or filing identifiers, units, revisions, and calculations for numerical evidence
Write absence claims narrowly
Avoid
“Management never discussed pricing pressure.”
Defensible
“No matching structured evidence appeared in the covered calls and bounded searches; one quarter was missing and one batch reached 50 rows.”
Review the answer before you rely on it
- Every quotation is genuinely verbatim and allowed by the source.
- Every important fact has a person or provider, date or period, and source link or identifier.
- Analyst questions, management refusals, media summaries, and model analysis are labeled correctly.
- Numbers retain their units, basis, period, denominator, and transformation.
- The conclusion acknowledges conflicting evidence, missing coverage, result limits, and a credible falsifier.
Return to earnings-call research, or continue to executive media.