Forward Looking

"The following quarterly report, delivered by The Company's CEO, CFO and others will contain forward looking statements which may or may not reflect accurate portrayals of how events will in fact play out..." Something like that, anyway. If you've ever listened to a Wall Street company quarterly call, you'll have heard some legal waiver mumbo-jumbo like this.

The investor relations person and/or the company's general counsel will almost always read this waiver, because so many skeezy lawyers love chasing companies for a few million bucks because they didn't read the Street its "Miranda Rights."

Basically, a forward looking statement is a guess. A prognostication with only a bit of foresight. But companies make these claims because, well, at least it's something. That is, having a skosh of guidance as to how well or poorly a company is doing allows the investment community to make small adjustments along the way, rather than get one report every year or longer and have the stock make violent adjustments in short periods of time. The backward looking foci are designed for prisoners in a shower, and by making the forward looking waiver statement, company management hopes to avoid said backward-looking efforts.

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Finance: What is Regulation Full Disclos...43 Views

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finance a la shmoop. what is regulation full disclosure or in industry parlance

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reg FD ?all those whispery hallways of the 1970s and 80s

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insiders muckety-mucks cheaters Liars deceivers key employees on the take [men in suits discuss stocks]

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sound like the dramatic cover for a Hollywood movie and while it was and it

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was real life as well. the practice of gleaning information

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essentially unavailable to the average investor was a large part of the

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practice of quote doing research unquote for all too many of the professional by

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side investment firms of the era. the regulator's finally noticed and began to

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crack down with only modest success for a while when finally reg FD was enacted

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via the SEC in 2000. well that regulation massively prohibited the type of

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discussions that could legally happen among analysts and company insiders. in

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fact disclosure of much more than much more than the company name mailing

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address and the product they sold was prohibited unless it was done in a

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broadly available and well-publicized public forum that John Q public could [woman gives presentation]

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participate in. the goal here was to take away free money or profits or gains from

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insiders leaking information you know so that investors could make bets with way

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more information on whether or not the roulette wheel of the company's

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quarterly performance in earnings was going to in fact land on red twenty

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three. so yeah that's what reg FD is about. trust us we've fully disclosed

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everything we know about it and we're going modern here. modern era people come

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on get with it. [man folds arms inside casino]

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