Introduction to Financial Analysis
In the fast-paced world of marketing, gaining a rapid yet rigorous financial snapshot of your competitors can mean the difference between seizing an opportunity and missing the mark. To get this information, the best source of unfiltered insight often lies in a company’s own SEC filings — specifically the 10-Q quarterly reports. These documents lay out everything from emerging risks to executive commentary on performance and strategy.
The Problem with Manual Analysis
To eliminate the manual slog of downloading PDFs, hunting through dozens of pages, and scribbling notes, a lightweight Python toolkit powered by OpenAI and SEC-API was built. This toolkit allows users to specify up to six tickers and automatically pull their latest 10-Q filings, fetch market data from Yahoo Finance, summarize each section, and compile the distilled bullet-point takeaways and four customizable charts into a polished PDF report.
How the Toolkit Works
The toolkit uses SEC-API to handle the heavy lifting of SEC extraction, and ChatGPT powers the rapid analysis. The entire process runs in minutes, not hours. The toolkit transforms quarterly filings from a chore into a strategic advantage. Future enhancements could automatically detect insider transactions or real-time material events by pulling different filings.
Configuration and Setup
The toolkit uses API keys and clients to pull the SEC-API and OpenAI keys from environment variables. It also instantiates the QueryApi, ExtractorApi, and the OpenAI client. The work directory and ticker list are set up to accept up to six tickers via the command line, validating input count immediately. This makes it easy to swap in new keys or switch to a test environment without hunting through code.
SEC 10-Q Fetch and Extraction
The toolkit queries the latest 10-Q filing for each ticker and pulls two key sections: Item 1A: Risk Factors and Item 2: Management Discussion & Analysis (MD&A). It saves these sections as _10q.json. The toolkit uses SEC-API instead of HTML scraping because it returns clean JSON blobs for exactly the sections needed.
Financial Data and Chart Generation
The toolkit downloads 12 months of daily closing prices via yfinance and pulls quarterly EPS, Revenue, Gross Profit. It computes quarterly gross margin % and normalizes price to a 0-baseline. The toolkit then renders four Matplotlib line charts: EPS, Revenue, Gross Margin %, and Indexed Share-Price Change.
Chunked GPT Summarization
The toolkit summarizes each section by splitting the text into ≤15,000-char chunks. It builds a precise GPT prompt and calls gpt-4o-mini. The toolkit then extracts the JSON array out of the raw reply and appends and dedupes the results. This yields a tight, non-redundant summary.
PDF Assembly
The toolkit uses ReportLab to assemble the PDF report. It creates a heading for each ticker symbol, a subheading for Key Risks and Management Discussion & Analysis, and embeds the four charts. The toolkit uses a pure-Python library with straightforward flow-document abstractions and no external dependencies.
Putting it all Together
The toolkit ensures repeatability, scalability, and robustness. It can be integrated into nightly jobs, reporting dashboards, or adapted to other SEC filings with minimal changes. The toolkit provides a complete and polished PDF report that combines narrative and graphics.
Conclusion
The Python toolkit powered by OpenAI and SEC-API provides a rapid and rigorous financial snapshot of competitors. It eliminates the manual slog of downloading PDFs and hunting through pages, and provides a polished PDF report that combines narrative and graphics. The toolkit is scalable, robust, and can be integrated into nightly jobs or reporting dashboards.
FAQs
Q: What is the purpose of the Python toolkit?
A: The purpose of the Python toolkit is to provide a rapid and rigorous financial snapshot of competitors by analyzing SEC filings and market data.
Q: How does the toolkit work?
A: The toolkit uses SEC-API to handle SEC extraction and ChatGPT to power rapid analysis. It queries the latest 10-Q filing, pulls key sections, and summarizes each section using GPT.
Q: What is the output of the toolkit?
A: The output of the toolkit is a polished PDF report that combines narrative and graphics, including four customizable charts.
Q: Can the toolkit be integrated into other systems?
A: Yes, the toolkit can be integrated into nightly jobs, reporting dashboards, or adapted to other SEC filings with minimal changes.
