Company Posture reads three things about each S&P 500 company from what it filed or said in public. It is not a rating, a recommendation or a price target, and it uses no share prices.
The three axes
- Expanding ↔ Retrenching (0 = retrenching, 100 = expanding): capital spending against a year earlier, debt raised, buybacks against capital spending, hiring filings (H-1B and PERM), completed deals and Form D raises, and patent publications.
- Confident ↔ Hedging (0 = hedging, 100 = confident): the sentiment and confidence of the latest earnings call, guidance raised against guidance lowered or withdrawn (Guidance Ledger), new risk factors in the latest 10-K, and insider open-market buying against selling.
- Pressure (0 = low, 100 = high): fails-to-deliver (settlement failures, not short interest) and stress filings on Form 8-K (a cyber incident, debt acceleration, a listing notice, an auditor change, or financial statements that can no longer be relied on).
Each component is placed against the company's own past readings and against its sector on the same date, half and half. Each reading lists the components that moved it most, with a link to the filing or statement behind each.
When an axis shows a number
Two rules decide it:
- Enough evidence. If less than 60% of an axis's weight is readable for a company on a date, that axis is withheld for the company, with the reason. It never shows a middle value instead.
- The back-test. An axis is shown as a score only after it passed a test whose rules were written down before any result was computed: does the axis tell you more about guidance cuts, revenue below guidance, restructuring, impairment or debt-acceleration filings over the next six months than a naive reader who knows the company's recent history and its sector? An axis that has not passed shows its components only, with the reason. The test is re-run every 90 days on new data; the rules do not change.
The current state of each axis, and the full test results, are on the [Company Posture methodology page](/methodology/posture).
Point in time
A reading dated on a day uses only what was public that day: cash-flow figures from the 10-Q or 10-K that first reported them, 8-K items from their acceptance time, guidance from its release, insider trades from their Form 4. A later restatement never changes an earlier reading, and stored month-end readings are never rewritten.
Across the S&P 500
Two monthly series follow the index as a whole: the share of companies expanding and the share retrenching, and the median Confident ↔ Hedging reading. Each is published only for an axis that passed the back-test.
Sources
SEC EDGAR (XBRL cash-flow facts, Forms 8-K, D, 4 and 10-K, fails-to-deliver), the Labor Department's H-1B and PERM disclosure data, and USPTO patent publications, all public domain; Palanor's Discourse call scores and Guidance Ledger. Palanor calculation.
Related: [Corporate events](/help/modules/corporate-events)