Watchlist and alerts

Watch a company, a fund, or an owner, and SECSift emails you when it files. Keywords and filing screens catch new filings across every company. Alerts are on the Analyst and Pro plans.

Open alerts

Select "Alerts" (bell icon) in the top bar. On a phone, the bell sits under the three dots. The dialog has six tabs, "Inbox", "Companies", "Owners", "Keywords", "Screens", and "Settings".

Watch a company

On the "Companies" tab, search for a company and select the result to start watching. Alerts cover filings from that day on.

"Favorites", beside the search box, lists the companies of the filings you saved. Select one to watch, or select "All favorites" to watch every one.

Select the kinds of filings you want alerts for. Each company starts with Reports, Events, and Proxies selected:

Reports: 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 40-F, and the notice that a report will be late.
Events: 8-K, 6-K, merger communications, tender offers, going-private filings, delistings, and deregistrations.
Releases: Only the 8-Ks and 6-Ks that carry a press release. Turn this on and Events off to hear about announcements without every routine 8-K.
Proxies: DEF 14A and the other proxy materials, merger proxies and proxy fights included.
Buys and Sells: A Form 4 open-market purchase or sale, not under a 10b5-1 plan. SECSift reads the Form 4 itself to tell them apart.
Insider: Forms 3, 4, and 5 without an open-market trade, like grants, option exercises, and 10b5-1 plan trades.
Ownership: Schedules 13D and 13G, filed by a holder of 5% or more.
Registrations: S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, F-10, Form 10 registrations, draft registrations, and 424B prospectuses.
Other: Every other form, like 13F holdings reports.

The "All companies" row at the top sets a checkbox for every company at once. Select a company's name to open the company in the reader, or "History" (clock icon) to see its last 10 alerts.

To stop a company's alerts for a while, select "Pause alerts" (pause icon) at the end of its row. The company keeps its checkboxes, and "Resume alerts" (play icon) starts its alerts again from that day on. A company with every checkbox cleared counts as paused too.

Follow an owner

The "Owners" tab follows people and funds that file with the SEC, like Berkshire Hathaway, an activist investor, or a company executive. Search for one by name.

Listed companies belong on the "Companies" tab. The owner search shows a listed company only when it also files as an investor, with 13D, 13G, or 13F reports, like Berkshire Hathaway.

An owner starts with every kind of filing selected, so you get their 13D and 13G stakes, Form 4 trades, proxy filings, and 13F holdings reports. The checkboxes are 13D/13G, Buys, Sells, Insider, Proxies, and 13F and other.

Sift on arrival

Select "Run Sift" for a company, and every new filing the company sends is Sifted with your credits, at the normal price of 3 to 10 credits by length on the Standard model. That includes the company's 8-Ks and Form 4s, if their checkboxes are on.

The email then lists every flag Sift found, positives first and concerns last, each linked to its line. A finding flagged in more than one section shows once.

When you open the filing, Sift shows that analysis at no charge, whichever model you have selected. "Re-run" pays for a new one. When you're short of credits, the alert still comes, without Sift.

What the email says

Each alert email describes the filing by its kind:

Report: For a 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 40-F, proxy, or a foreign company's quarterly results on a 6-K, how many passages are new, changed, and removed since the company's last filing of the same kind. With "Run Sift" on, Sift's flags take the place of those counts. The "Open with changes marked" button opens the filing in the reader with every change marked.
8-K or other 6-K: The headline, or the items the filing reports when there's no headline, and its exhibits.
Press release: The release's own headline.
Insider trade: The trade, the shares and dollars, and who traded, like "Open-market sale, 12,500 shares ($1.0M)".

Every alert also lands in the inbox.

Keywords

On the "Keywords" tab, type a word or phrase and choose which companies to watch. Then press Enter, or select "Add keyword" (return icon) at the end of the box. SECSift then looks for the phrase in new filings of the kinds you choose.

A keyword is one exact phrase, 3 to 80 characters long, without operators like OR or a minus.

The "Companies" chooser reads "Any" for every company. To name up to 10 companies, search the tickers, or type several separated by commas. "Favorited companies" adds the companies of the filings you saved.

Each keyword has its own filters:

Forms: Which filings are searched. Reports and events by default, or proxies, insider forms, ownership, registrations, and every other form.
Float: The public float on the cover of the company's latest 10-K, in the bands global filings search uses, from under $75M to $10B or more. A company that files no 10-K counts by its SEC filer class. "None stated" covers companies that state no float and have no filer class.
Industry: A whole group of industries, like Manufacturing, or single industries, like Semiconductors and Related Devices.
Headquarters: States, countries, or a whole region.

Float, Industry, and Headquarters narrow a keyword on every company. Industry and Headquarters can keep only what you select, or leave those out.

A keyword for named companies quotes the passages where the phrase appears, and the alert opens the filing on the first one. Each keyword shows its last match, and "History" (clock icon) lists the matches before that.

"Pause alerts" (pause icon) stops a keyword without losing its settings. When you resume the keyword, it looks for new filings from then on.

Filing screens

A screen tells you about every company that files a certain kind of filing. Select one on the "Screens" tab to turn the screen on. There are 27, in five groups:

Registrations: A company registering to go public (S-1 or F-1), a REIT registering securities (S-11), a spin-off (10-12B), a new class of securities (10-12G), a shelf (S-3), a Canadian issuer (F-10), or shares for an employee plan (S-8).
Deals: Shares registered to pay for a merger (S-4), a tender offer for a company or for its own shares, a company going private, a merger proxy, a completed acquisition or sale, or a change in control.
Ownership: An investor with 5% or more seeking influence (13D), or a contested proxy.
Late filings: The notice that an annual or quarterly report will be late.
Events: An 8-K for a material agreement, a bankruptcy, an auditor change, financial statements that can't be relied on, an officer or director change, a delisting notice, a cybersecurity incident, or results.

Float and Industry narrow a screen to the companies you care about. Select "Amendments" to hear about amended filings too, like an 8-K/A.

To turn a screen off, clear its checkbox. The screen keeps its Float, Industry, and Amendments settings, and they come back when you select the checkbox again.

Volume is how many filings a week the screen catches across EDGAR, averaged over the last four weeks.

"See recent filings" (arrow icon), at the end of a screen's row, opens the screen's filings of the past month in global filings search.

Inbox

Every alert lands in the "Inbox" tab as well as your email, newest first, with pinned alerts at the top. The tabs above the list, "All", "Companies", "Owners", "Keywords", and "Screens", filter the list by kind and show how many are new.

Select an alert to open its filing. A company alert opens with the changes marked when there's an earlier report to compare, and a keyword alert for named companies opens on its first passage.

The toolbar above the list manages your alerts:

Select: Select alerts with their checkboxes, or choose All, None, Read, or Unread, then delete them or mark them read or unread.
Pin: Keeps an alert at the top and out of the clear-out. You can pin up to 12.
Search inbox: Finds alerts by company, ticker, form, or what they found.

Settings

The "Settings" tab controls how alerts reach you:

Send to: Alerts go to your account's address, or another one you set. SECSift emails the new address a link, and alerts move there once someone selects the link. The link expires after 24 hours.
Alerts: Pause every alert at once. Companies, owners, keywords, and screens stop, and so do the emails, until you resume. Each keeps its own settings.
Emails: Pause emails any time. Alerts still reach the inbox, and your watchlist stays. Your mail app's unsubscribe button pauses emails the same way.
When: Keyword and screen alerts arrive as filings come in, or at set times, up to 4 a day in your timezone. New accounts start on set times, 6am and 6pm New York time. Alerts for the companies and owners you watch always arrive as they file.
Late forms: EDGAR makes some forms public weeks after they're filed, like draft registrations and SEC comment letters. They're left out unless you include them.
Bell: Shows or hides the number on the bell in the top bar, which counts the unread alerts in your inbox.

Instant emails stop at 40 a day, on every plan. After that, the day's alerts go to the inbox only. Emails at set times never count toward the 40.

Timing

SECSift watches EDGAR's live index, so a filing is noticed within about a minute of the SEC accepting the filing. Comparing a report with the last one takes a few minutes more, and Sift a few minutes after that.

Keywords set to arrive as filings come in are checked every 15 minutes, and screens with every new filing.

Limits

Analyst watches up to 25 companies and owners combined, and 10 keywords. Pro watches up to 100 and 30. Paused ones count too. A keyword can name up to 10 companies, and screens have no limit on either plan.

The inbox keeps the newest 500 alerts of each kind on Analyst and 1,000 on Pro. Company and owner alerts count as one kind, and keywords and screens as the other two. Past that, alerts older than 15 days are cleared out, except the pinned ones.

Tip: The SECSift Chrome extension shows your unread count on its toolbar icon and your alerts in its popup.