It's definitely something we've discussed as a team.
We would like to help make fraud less profitable.
The current iteration of the product requires users with some level of financial expertise - hence why we are starting with fundamentals investors. We believe that the longer a fraud goes on, the more people get hurt - so we want to bring these issue to the forefront. Perhaps each trade can be considered a zero-sum game, but long-term there is a benefit to all market participants.
We love the idea of every investor considering how aggressive accounting/reporting informs management integrity. Unfortunately, I think we have some time before this becomes the norm.
An interesting idea. I'm not sure if say 12 or so questions could cover the risks, or it if would just add one more data point for people to (not) read?
There are certainly some sorts of transactions that are much more risky than others - so having an easy source for these transactions would be useful (and we'd built it into our models). But often the signals are more subtle. Companies with overly aggressive accounting policies across the board tend to have completely different undisclosed problems. Since there are estimates and judgement involved in all areas of accounting looking at the aggregate impact of all policies can be important.
On adding more information - The SEC adopted rules to modernize disclosures of risk factors in 2020, requiring a summary risk factor disclosure if the risk factor section exceeds 15 pages (https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-192).
> or it if would just add one more data point for people to (not) read?
Intuitively fraud should be correlated to specific accounting practices, or maybe simply to the number of hours billed by the auditors, who are likely to charge more if the work is more "complicated"... Disclosing the amount paid to auditors could be one of those questions.
An analogy would be the "Joel Test" (2000) [1]; checklists in general, and direct questions, are much more revealing than blurb written by the target or a communications agency.
The current iteration of the product requires users with some level of financial expertise - hence why we are starting with fundamentals investors. We believe that the longer a fraud goes on, the more people get hurt - so we want to bring these issue to the forefront. Perhaps each trade can be considered a zero-sum game, but long-term there is a benefit to all market participants. We love the idea of every investor considering how aggressive accounting/reporting informs management integrity. Unfortunately, I think we have some time before this becomes the norm.