Quarterly Earnings Report

Think of it like NASCAR, only where one lap takes 13 weeks. Companies compete. They deliver. Or they don't. And they run another lap.

Most public market/publicly traded companies give a full rendition of their income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement every 13 weeks. The reports contain all kinds of metrics relating to performance...and throw in for spice the newly opened Somalia office's security system to show investors how the company is spending its precious growth capital.

They get filed with various repositories, and are almost always immediately downloadable from the company's website. Type in "investor relations Disney" or whatever to get the gist.

The quarterly report is lovingly referred to as a 10Q, and the annual filing, a 10K. Any special filings intra-quarter? Yep...the cleverly named 8K.