Research standards

This page describes how Guardian does research: what it reads, how a figure is treated, what the labels mean, what the work does not cover, and how a correction is handled. It is a description of practice. It is not an offer of any service, and no service is offered through this site.

What Guardian reads

The primary sources are filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: registration statements and prospectuses on Form N-2 and the 424B series, annual and semi-annual reports on Form N-CSR and N-CSRS, the fund census on Form N-CEN, portfolio reports on Form N-PORT, repurchase-offer notifications on Form N-23c-3, issuer tender offer statements on Schedule TO and their amendments, annual and quarterly reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, Section 19(a) distribution notices, exemptive applications and the orders that follow them, adviser filings on Form ADV, and notices of exempt offerings on Form D. Sponsor and fund websites are used for a small number of fields and are labelled as sponsor sources rather than filings. Trade press is used to locate a filing, never as the authority for a figure.

How a figure is treated

Every figure is copied from a document that has been opened, and the document is identified by form type and accession number so the same page can be pulled again. Figures are not estimated, interpolated, annualised, or derived and then presented as reported. Where a figure is computed, the computation and its inputs are stated. Where the research did not reach a figure, the field reads unknown; unknown never stands in for zero or for not applicable, and is never quietly filled with a plausible value. A figure carries the date of the filing it came from.

What the labels mean

A claim is labelled known when a cited source states it, inferred when it follows from cited facts, estimated when a stated method produced it, and unknown when none of those applies. Where a classification is assigned by hand, the classification table and the text each classification rests on are published with it. Where a score appears, its inputs, weights, and version number appear with it, so a reader can disagree with the weighting and recompute.

What the work does not cover

Filing-based research is desk work. It does not include site visits, interviews with a manager or its staff, confirmations obtained directly from administrators, auditors, custodians, or other service providers, background investigations beyond public regulatory records, access to non-public books, records, side letters, internal valuation policies or compliance manuals, position-level portfolio transparency, or continuous monitoring between editions. Operational due diligence as the term is used in the industry includes several of those steps, so Guardian does not use that term for work that does not do them.

Independence

Guardian takes no payment from a fund manager, sponsor, issuer, placement agent, or service provider for coverage, for inclusion in any list, for a rating, or for any content, and it publishes no sponsored research and no paid ratings. It does not solicit investors for any fund and accepts no referral fees. Where the author holds a position in a security discussed in a document, the document says so.

Corrections

Each document states its date and speaks only as of that date. When a material factual error comes to light, the document is corrected, republished with a new date and a note of what changed, and anyone who holds the affected version is told. Correction requests, including from a manager whose fund is described, go to matthew@guardianresearch.io and are answered whether or not the correction is accepted; a disagreement can always be recorded in the document.