Dubaist · Academy
Trace a financial fact to its source
Use the document, page or locator, period, unit and verification date as one evidence chain.Start with a claim, not a loose number
A financial fact is not merely a number copied from a table. It is a bounded claim about a named issuer, a defined metric, an exact reporting period, a currency, a unit and a reporting perimeter. Before searching a document, write down the claim you are trying to verify. A phrase such as revenue increased is incomplete because it does not identify the interval, whether the value is quarter-only or cumulative, whether it belongs to the consolidated group, or which presentation currency is used. Dubaist treats those attributes as part of the fact itself. The same digits can mean different things when a table is stated in thousands rather than millions, when a value covers the parent rather than the group, or when an earlier comparative has been restated. The first rule is therefore to resist extracting a visually prominent figure until its surrounding labels are understood. A blank remains unknown. A dash may mean not applicable, immaterial or unavailable depending on the issuer’s legend, and must not automatically become zero. Defining the claim first creates a checklist against which the source can be tested and prevents a convenient value from silently changing the question.
Identify the authoritative document and version
The evidence chain begins with the exact document, not with a search result, screenshot or third-party summary. Record the issuer, document title, reporting end date, publication or disclosure date, language, and the official exchange or issuer route from which it was obtained. Determine whether the document is audited, reviewed, preliminary, a presentation, a regulatory filing or a later correction. These categories do not carry the same evidential weight. If the issuer publishes a corrected or restated version, preserve the relationship to the original instead of quietly replacing it. A document identifier or stable stored hash helps distinguish two files with similar names. Public availability supports a reader’s ability to inspect the source, but it does not automatically authorize automated collection or republication of the entire file. Dubaist can link to an eligible official document and describe a verified fact in its own structured presentation while keeping ingestion rights as a separate decision. If the source route is unavailable, the version is ambiguous or the document cannot be tied to the issuer identity, the fact remains missing or needs confirmation rather than inheriting certainty from another website.
Capture page, table and surrounding labels
A reproducible locator lets another reader reach the same evidence without guessing. Use the PDF page number when stable, and add the statement, note, table, row and column labels whenever possible. Page numbers printed inside a report can differ from the PDF viewer index, so state which convention is used. For an HTML disclosure, record the section heading and stable fragment or a precise descriptive locator. Read the table title, scale legend, currency, comparative headings and footnotes before recording the row. Then capture enough surrounding context to prove what the row represents. A locator such as page 42 is weaker than page 42, consolidated statement of profit or loss, named row, current-period column, stated scale. Do not crop away a minus sign, footnote marker or unit label. When a value appears in both a primary statement and a note, keep the statement fact and the note’s breakdown related but distinct. If the source is bilingual, verify that the labels describe the same concept rather than assuming a translated heading is exact. The purpose of a locator is not decoration: it makes correction, review and future revalidation practical.
Classify reported, normalized and calculated values
After locating the evidence, classify what it is. A reported fact reproduces an eligible value and definition from the issuer document with its original period, unit and scope. A normalized fact is an explicitly governed transformation intended to improve comparability, and must retain the reported anchor plus a transparent adjustment trail. A calculated value needs a formula and every source input, each with its own provenance. An analyst inference or assumption is not a financial fact and must never be presented with the authority of a reported line item. Management-defined measures require the issuer’s definition and reconciliation; a familiar label is not proof that two companies calculate it identically. Dubaist keeps these classes separate so readers can see where the issuer’s statement ends and project processing begins. Consolidated and standalone values are never merged merely because their metric names match. Quarter-only, year-to-date, full-year and trailing periods remain separate. If a calculation depends on a missing, stale or conflicted input, the output is blocked. The correct response is an explicit unavailable state, not a substitute estimate. This classification protects the evidence chain from becoming an apparently precise but irreproducible conclusion.
Verify, publish and recheck the chain
Complete the record with the verification date, reviewer state and source status. A second reader should be able to answer: which security is this, what exactly is measured, for which period, in which currency and unit, under which consolidation scope, from which document and locator, and when was it checked? The public page should expose those attributes together rather than showing a detached value. It should also reveal missing, stale, conflict or restated states. Freshness is not the age of the webpage alone; it depends on whether a later eligible report, correction or corporate event may supersede the claim. Revalidation therefore checks both the stored evidence and the issuer’s current reporting sequence. If two official documents conflict, retain both, explain their relationship when proven and withhold a single current answer until review resolves it. The identity-only FAB example on this guide demonstrates where a fact would attach without reproducing any financial value. Readers can move from the company identity to its official disclosure routes and apply the checklist themselves. A verified fact remains informational evidence. It is not automatically a forecast, valuation, recommendation or trading signal, all of which require separate data and explicit Editorial review.
Identity-only issuer example
FAB as an identity anchor for evidence
Dubaist identifies First Abu Dhabi Bank as ADX ticker FAB. The example shows how a future eligible fact would attach to one security identity and an exact source chain; it reproduces no financial value or investment conclusion.
First Abu Dhabi Bank · ADX · FAB