Module 1 said a share is a claim on a business. This module is where the business reports what it did with your money — in four standardized documents every U.S. public company must file. The map below follows the SEC's Beginners' Guide to Financial Statements (paraphrased, linked, worth reading whole — it's short and free).
The four statements
The balance sheet — what it owns and owes, today. A snapshot at one date: assets (cash, inventory, factories, brands) on one side; liabilities (debts, obligations) and shareholders' equity on the other. The famous identity — assets = liabilities + equity — just says: everything the company has was financed either by borrowing or by owners. Equity is what would notionally be left for shareholders if the assets paid off the debts; it's your claim from Module 1, in ledger form.
The income statement — what it earned over a period. Top line: revenue, all the money customers paid. Then costs peel away layer by layer — cost of goods, operating expenses, interest, taxes — until the bottom line: net income. Divided by shares outstanding, that's EPS, the number the market obsesses over each quarter (the Catalysts course covers why). The layers matter as much as the bottom: a company can grow revenue while margins rot, or shrink revenue while profitability blooms.
The cash flow statement — what actually moved through the bank account. Profits are an accounting opinion; cash is a fact. This statement reconciles the two, split into operating, investing, and financing flows. It exists because accrual accounting lets reported earnings and actual cash diverge — legitimately (a sale booked now, paid later) or otherwise. The classic warning sign, per the SEC guide's framing and every forensic accountant since: rising reported profits with weak or negative operating cash flow. Someone is claiming income the bank account hasn't seen.
The statement of shareholders' equity — how your claim changed. Share issuance (dilution), buybacks, dividends paid, profits retained. The bookkeeping of Module 1's ownership arithmetic.
Reading them like a trader, not an accountant
You don't need to audit anything. The literacy bar is three questions, answerable in ten minutes from any free filing viewer: Is revenue growing? (Is the business getting bigger?) Is it profitable, and are margins moving? (Does bigger translate to richer?) Does operating cash flow roughly track net income? (Are the profits real?) Those three questions are the skeleton the whole Fundamentals track fleshes out — valuation asks what those answers are worth; catalysts ask when the market reprices them.
Where to look: every U.S. public company's filings are free on the SEC's EDGAR system — the annual report (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) contain all four statements, plus management's own discussion. Primary sources, straight from the machine. No paid data needed at this level.
Assignment
Take the company from Module 1's assignment. Find its latest annual filing (search "EDGAR" plus the company name), open the financial statements, and answer the three questions in writing: revenue trend, profit and margin trend, cash-versus-profit check. Plain sentences, no jargon. This is the fundamental analyst's equivalent of the chart course's "describe, don't predict" — and it's the same discipline.