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: Form 4 purchases on the open market or in an offering, not under a 10b5-1 plan.
Sells: Form 4 open-market sales and Form 144 notices of a planned sale, not under a 10b5-1 plan. Sales to cover taxes don't count.
Insider: Insider filings worth a look beyond a buy or sale, like 10b5-1 plan trades, sales in an offering, hedges, options exercised and kept, gifts of 10% or more of holdings, Form 4s filed more than 14 days after the trade, and new 10% owners. Grants and routine option exercises don't alert.
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.

An owner's buy or sale alert names the company the owner traded.

Trade size

The "Trade size" column, beside "Sells" on the "Companies" and "Owners" tabs, sets how large an insider buy or sale has to be to send you an alert. Each row has its own trade size, so you can hear about every trade at a small company and only the large ones at Apple ($AAPL).

Choose "Any size" for every buy and sale, or "Custom" to set minimums:

Dollars: The value of the trade.
Percent of holdings: How much a buy adds to the insider's holdings, or how much of their holdings they sell. A buy that starts a new position, or a sale of every share, meets any percent minimum.

Buys and sells each have a dollar and a percent minimum. A trade that meets either one sends an alert. A Form 144 notice doesn't state the seller's holdings, so only the sells dollar minimum applies to a notice.

The "All companies" row has a trade size too. A company starts with that size when you add it with Buys or Sells selected, or when you first select Buys or Sells for it. Until you choose a size there, the "All companies" trade size is "Any size".

To give every company that size, replacing their own, select "Set all 18 companies to this size" at the bottom of the "All companies" trade size menu. The number is how many companies you watch. The "Owners" tab works the same way with "All owners".

On the "Companies" tab, the trade size menu also has "Include outside shareholders over 10%". Clear that checkbox to leave out the insider filings of shareholders who own over 10% but aren't officers or directors, like a fund with a large stake. A CEO or director who owns over 10% always stays in.

Trade size applies to Buys and Sells, so the menu is grayed out while both are cleared.

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.

With "Run Sift" on, the alert arrives in your inbox once Sift has read the filing. If Sift takes more than 15 minutes, the alert arrives anyway.

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, its shares and dollars, how it changed the insider's holdings, and who traded, like "Open-market sale, 12,500 shares ($1.0M), 40% of holdings".
Form 144: The planned sale, its shares and dollars, and the expected sale date.

An insider buy or sale also shows the insider's record at the company, like "3rd open-market buy in 12 months, $1.0M combined." or "First open-market buy since December 2023."

When 2 or more insiders bought, or 3 or more sold, in the last 2 weeks, the alert says so, like "3 insiders bought in the last 2 weeks."

When related insiders, like a fund and its general partner, each file the same trade, you get one alert.

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.

Select "Skip boilerplate" on a keyword to leave out filings that use the phrase only in filler, the standard legal language every company files, like a risk factor or a forward-looking statement. AI reads each match first, and a filing is skipped only when the AI is at least 90% sure. Skipping doesn't use credits.

Skipped filings stay out of your inbox and emails, and "History" marks each one "Skipped". Hover over a skipped filing with your cursor to see the AI's reason.

With "Skip boilerplate" selected, every match quotes the passages where the phrase appears, even on a keyword for every company.

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. With "Skip boilerplate" selected, a keyword's matches usually arrive a minute or two later, once the AI has read them.

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.