HG Insights

Skill: HG SEC Research

Risk factors, MD&A and officer changes straight from SEC filings, scoped correctly and cited by form and item.

Overview

Pull what a public company said in its own filings, and cite it properly. Claude resolves the ticker first, picks the right SEC tool for domestic and foreign filers, scopes every search by ticker, form type and date, spots stub sections that point elsewhere, and cites the form, fiscal year and item, so your briefs quote risk factors and officer changes accurately.

Use cases

  • Account briefs grounded in the company's own words

    An AE preparing for an executive meeting gets the target's latest risk factors and MD&A, pulled from the most recent 10-K and cited as form, fiscal year and item, ready to quote.

  • Catch leadership changes and deals early

    Claude checks recent 8-K items for officer changes, acquisitions and material agreements within a set date window, giving the SDR team a verifiable 'why now'.

  • No 'private company' mistakes

    When a lookup returns nothing, Claude checks the ticker resolution, the filer type and the date window before concluding anything, instead of calling a public company private.

View full skill

HG SEC Research

Read and search SEC filings through the HG MCP: pick the right SEC tool, scope it so it returns the filing you meant, and cite what you read.

When to use

  • A brief needs what a public company said in its own filings: risk factors, MD&A, business overview, legal proceedings, officer changes, material agreements.
  • You need to find which filings mention a term or phrase, for one company or across the market.
  • The company is a foreign issuer (20-F, 6-K, 40-F) and you need its disclosures.
  • A PVP or account brief quotes a figure that should trace to a filing.

Tools you'll touch

  • sec_filing_section: full text of one named section from the most recent matching 10-K, 10-Q or 8-K of a US domestic issuer. Cost: 1 per call, not cached (see hg-credit-awareness).
  • sec_full_text_search: keyword and phrase search across EDGAR filings, any form type including foreign-issuer forms. Cost: 1 per call, not cached.
  • web_search: to find a ticker when you only have a name or domain. Cost: 0.05 basic, 0.10 advanced.

Both SEC tools need the SEC integration. If they're absent from your tool list, say SEC data isn't available on this plan and fall back to web_search with allowedDomains:["sec.gov"].

Step 1: resolve the ticker

Both SEC tools take tickers only. company_firmographic doesn't return a ticker, so don't wait for one there. Use a ticker you already know with certainty, or run web_search ("Acme Corp stock ticker") and confirm it. Class shares use a dot or hyphen ("BRK.A", "BF-B"). Private companies have no ticker; stop there.

Step 2: pick the tool

QuestionToolKey Parameters
"What are their risk factors / MD&A / business overview?"sec_filing_sectioncompanyTicker, filingType:"10-K", section:"1A" / "7" / "1"
"Latest quarterly discussion"sec_filing_sectionfilingType:"10-Q", section:"part1item2"
"Did they announce a CFO change / acquisition / material agreement?"sec_filing_sectionfilingType:"8-K", section:"5.02" / "2.01" / "1.01", plus dateFrom/dateTo
"Which filings mention X?"sec_full_text_searchquery, tickers, formTypes, startDate
Foreign issuer disclosuressec_full_text_searchformTypes:["20-F"] or ["6-K"], tickers, startDate
Full earnings narrativesec_full_text_searchformTypes:["8-K"], a phrase query, a tight date window

Using sec_filing_section

  • US domestic issuers only: 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. Foreign issuers file 20-F, 6-K or 40-F; route them to sec_full_text_search with formTypes.
  • It returns one filing: the single most recent filing that matches. To get an older one, narrow the window.
  • fiscalYear matches the calendar year of periodOfReport, not the company's own fiscal-year label. For a company whose fiscal year doesn't end in December the two can differ, so confirm which filing you got from periodOfReport.
  • fiscalQuarter is informational only. It doesn't filter. For a specific quarter or 8-K event window, use dateFrom and dateTo (filing dates).
  • Stubs: 10-K items 10 to 14 (directors, compensation, ownership, related parties, accountant fees) often point to the proxy statement, and 8-K item 2.02 (earnings) often points to an exhibit. If wordCount is under 100, you have a stub; say where the content lives, or use sec_full_text_search.
  • Long sections: full 10-K sections often run 5,000 to 15,000 words. Pass maxWords (1,000 to 3,000 for a summary, 5,000+ for detailed analysis).
  • Amended filings (10-K/A) aren't read by this tool.

Using sec_full_text_search

  • Always pass query. Use exact phrases in quotes (""material weakness"") and AND, OR, NOT. Generic words match boilerplate.
  • Always scope. Pass tickers (preferred) and/or formTypes. Omitting both searches the whole of EDGAR.
  • Set startDate. The default window is the last 30 days. For annual filings (10-K, 20-F, 40-F) pass a startDate around "2020-01-01".
  • formTypes match by family: ["10-K"] also returns 10-K/A and NT 10-K; ["8-K"] also returns 8-K/A. Post-filter on each result's formType if you need exact types.
  • Check searchParams.resolvedCiks and warnings. If no ticker resolved, no search ran and you get 0 results with a warning: that's a ticker problem, not an absence of filings. If only some tickers resolved, only those were searched.
  • Results come back up to 100 per page with filingUrl. Paginate with page.

Reading the result

  • "No filing found" doesn't mean the company is private. It can mean a wrong ticker, a foreign issuer on the domestic tool, a date window that's too narrow, or a section the company didn't file.
  • A full-text hit tells you a filing mentions the term. Open the relevant section (or the filingUrl) before you characterise what it says.
  • SEC text is the company's own disclosure: observed, dated and attributable. It outranks web sources for the same fact.

Citation

Cite the form and fiscal year, and the section where relevant: "Acme Corp 10-K, fiscal year 2024, Item 1A (Risk Factors)" or "Acme Corp 8-K filed 2025-03-04, Item 5.02". Include filingUrl when the output supports links.

Credits

Each call costs 1 credit and isn't cached, so a repeat call is billed again. Plan the sections you need, reuse results within the session, and don't re-call "to refresh": filings don't change.

Common pitfalls

  1. Calling sec_filing_section for a 20-F or 6-K. Foreign-issuer forms go through sec_full_text_search with formTypes.
  2. Passing a name or domain instead of a ticker. Resolve the ticker first; firmographic won't give you one.
  3. Omitting query, tickers and formTypes, or leaving the 30-day default startDate on an annual-filing search.
  4. Trusting results without checking resolvedCiks and warnings.
  5. Using fiscalQuarter to pick a quarter. It doesn't filter; use dateFrom/dateTo.
  6. Quoting a stub as the section. Under 100 words means the content is elsewhere.
  7. Reading "no filing found" as "private company".
  8. Pulling an uncapped 10-K section into a short brief. Use maxWords.

Reference