Our Methodology
How we built Sharpread to never guess.
Most AI finance tools work the same way: dump the filing into a language model, ask for a summary, and hope the numbers are right. They usually aren't. We got tired of that and built something with a different architecture.
1. The math never touches the AI
Language models are genuinely good at reading text. They are genuinely bad at arithmetic. So we don't ask ours to do any.
Every number on the Sharpread dashboard (Revenue, EPS, Net Income, Total Debt) is pulled directly from the SEC's XBRL data feeds. Structured data, not AI inference. The model only reads the words: the MD&A, the risk factors, the legal disclosures. It never sees the financial tables. It's not magic, it's just the only honest way to build this.
2. Every claim needs a source
If a Sharpread analysis spots a risk or a management evasion, it has to show you the exact sentence from the filing. Not a paraphrase. Not a summary. The actual quote.
If the engine can't find a verbatim source for a claim, the claim gets dropped. This makes the output slower to read than a ChatGPT summary, but it means you can check every single thing it tells you.
3. What management stops saying matters more than what they say
A single 10-K tells you what a company is willing to put on record. Five quarters of 10-Ks tells you how their story is changing.
Sharpread tracks management tone across filings and flags when the language shifts. A CEO who spent three years calling demand “robust” and then stops using that word is telling you something. We catch that.
Beyond Meat's April 2026 10-K is a good example. We rated it High Conviction Bearish based on a clear defensive tone shift and deteriorating fundamentals. The stock pumped 30% that week on a short squeeze. It then fell to under a dollar. The filing was right. The market was temporarily wrong.
4. We don't make price predictions
The Bearish or Bullish rating is our read on the document, not a forecast on the stock.
High Conviction Bearish means the company's own lawyers filed paperwork disclosing serious problems. What the market does with that information in the short term is not something we can tell you. We can tell you what's in the filing before you decide whether to buy.