# The filings and events that move a stock you own

*8-Ks, 10-Qs, earnings, guidance, analyst calls — what each one actually is, and why it moves the stock.*

When a stock you own jumps or drops and you go looking for why, the real answer is usually in one of a handful of documents and scheduled events. Most are public, free, and — once you know what you're looking at — surprisingly readable. Here's the field guide.

*(As always: this is education, not advice. It's how these documents work, so you can read them yourself. Nothing here is a recommendation or a prediction.)*

## The 8-K — "something material just happened"

An **8-K** is the filing a company makes when something material happens *between* its regular quarterly reports — and it's often the fastest official signal you'll get. Companies file them for things like:

- an acquisition or a major deal,
- a CEO or CFO departure,
- earnings results (the press release is usually attached),
- a big customer win or loss,
- a lawsuit, a restructuring, or bankruptcy,
- a change in auditors (sometimes a quiet red flag).

The tell: an 8-K exists *because the company decided this was material enough to disclose immediately.* That's a strong hint it's worth your attention — before it becomes a headline. The filing itself sits on the SEC's free EDGAR database, in the company's own words.

**How people misread it:** assuming every 8-K is dramatic. Plenty are routine (a scheduled dividend, a shareholder-vote result). The skill is telling "this changes the story" from "this is admin."

## The 10-Q — the quarterly detail

The **10-Q** is the company's quarterly financial report: revenue, profit, cash, debt, and — often the most valuable part — the "Management's Discussion" section, where the company explains its own results in prose.

Where an 8-K says *something happened*, the 10-Q says *here's how the business is actually doing.* It's where slow stories live: a margin quietly shrinking, debt creeping up, a segment stalling. None of that shows up on a single day's price — it accumulates across quarters. (Reading three or four 10-Qs in a row tells you more than any one of them.)

*(Its bigger annual sibling is the **10-K** — same idea, once a year, more thorough.)*

## Earnings — the number vs. the expectation

Four times a year, earnings land — and this is where one of the biggest misunderstandings in investing lives.

A company can report *record profit* and the stock can *fall.* Not because the results were bad, but because the market already **expected** them to be that good and had priced it in. Stocks move on **surprise** — results versus expectations — far more than on the raw numbers. "Beat" and "miss" are always relative to a bar that was set beforehand.

So the useful question on an earnings day isn't "were the numbers good?" It's "were they better or worse than what everyone already assumed?"

## Guidance — what the company says about tomorrow

Alongside results, companies often give **guidance**: their own outlook for the next quarter or year. Guidance frequently moves the stock *more than the actual results*, because markets look forward. A great quarter with weak guidance can sink a stock; a mediocre quarter with raised guidance can lift it.

(Note exactly what guidance is: the *company's own* stated outlook — a fact about what management said, not a prediction you or I are making. That distinction matters.)

## Analyst actions — the expectation, moving

Between earnings, Wall Street analysts publish upgrades, downgrades, and revised price targets. These move stocks partly on substance and partly on signal — a wave of analysts revising the same direction shifts the *consensus expectation* the next earnings will be judged against.

Worth knowing: analysts often *lag* — reacting to news you may have already seen in an 8-K. An upgrade isn't a verdict; it's one more data point about where expectations are heading.

## Putting it together

None of these is a magic tell, and none says what you should *do* — that's not what they're for. Read together, they answer a narrower, more useful question: *what actually happened to this company, in its own words and on the record?*

Insider filings are a closely related thread — see **[what insider buying and selling actually signals](/learn/what-insider-trades-signal)** — and the full picture is in **[what actually moves a stock you own](/learn/what-moves-a-stock-you-own)**.

This filing stack is also exactly what Pip reads every morning for the stocks you own — 8-Ks, 10-Qs, earnings, and guidance — handed back in plain English with the source attached, so you don't have to camp on EDGAR to stay current. How it reads all that without inventing things is **[its own story](/learn/how-we-keep-the-ai-honest)**.

If you'd rather not find out about the 8-K three days late, [Pip is opening to a small first group →](https://pipthebot.com/#join).

Source: https://pipthebot.com/learn/filings-and-events-that-move-a-stock/

Pip is for research and education only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Pip reflects your own stated reasons against public information and never tells you what to do. You decide.