Before a company reports, I want six things: the date, the consensus, management's guidance, last quarter's call, the options-implied move and the short interest. They live in six different places. Lately I've been asking for them in Claude with the Equibles MCP server connected (I work on Equibles), and I wanted to write down what the assistant actually calls behind each prompt.
The example is SoundHound (SOUN), which reports Q3 on November 5. Every answer below came from tool calls on November 3.
GetUpcomingInvestorEvents: November 5, 22:00 UTC (5 p.m. Eastern), with a link to the event on SoundHound's investor site.GetAnalystEstimates: revenue of $62.18M on average from 6 analysts, EPS of -$0.05 from 5, in a snapshot captured October 29.GetGuidance, GetFinancialStatement and GetInvestorRelationsNews: $230M to $260M, set August 5; first-half revenue of $106.1M, so the second half needs $123.9M to $153.9M; and a LivePerson acquisition that closed September 4.GetEarningsBrief: record Q2 revenue of $61.9M, up 45%, a GAAP net loss of $42.8M, and the CFO's quote raising the outlook.GetOptionExpirations, then GetOptionChain for November 6: the $4 straddle cost about $0.52 at the midpoints with the stock at $4.15, a move of about 12.5%.GetShortInterest: 170.8M shares at the October 15 settlement, 10.1 days of average volume to cover.
My first version of prompt 3 asked only for the guidance and what it left for the second half. The answer was correct and misleading. The guidance tool's newest source was the August 5 call, and SoundHound closed its acquisition of LivePerson on September 4. LivePerson booked $52.5M of revenue in Q2 on its own, and on the August call the CEO said the outlook would be updated to include it once the deal closed.
So reported Q3 revenue will include 27 days of LivePerson, while the $62.2M consensus is barely above SoundHound's own $61.9M in Q2. Comparing the result with that consensus without knowing about the deal would mislead you.
Adding "has anything happened since that changes it?" made the assistant read the investor relations news and the 8-K list, and the deal showed up. That's the general lesson for any tool-using assistant: a tool answers from what's on file as of its last source, so ask for the date of every number and for what has been filed since.
The full walkthrough, with every answer, how to check each one and the setup steps for ChatGPT and Claude, is here:
https://equibles.com/blog/how-to-research-a-stock-before-earnings-with-chatgpt-or-claude What do you check before a company reports that isn't on this list?
Data: SEC filings, FINRA short interest, company investor relations pages and option quotes, processed by Equibles.