DEV Community

Mark
Mark

Posted on

I built a plain-English SEC filing reader because I never understood what I owned

I've been investing for years. Index funds, some individual stocks. But I'd never read a single annual filing (10-K) for any company
I owned.

When I finally tried Apple's — 60 pages of dense financial and legal language. I gave up after 10 minutes.

So I built the tool I wished existed.

What it does

Each company gets 3 short pages:

  • Overview — what the company actually does
  • Income — where revenue comes from, by product and by region
  • Health — key financial metrics scored against industry benchmarks

Every finance term is tappable for a plain-English definition.

The stack

  • Next.js + React (frontend)
  • Django + PostgreSQL (backend)
  • Hosted on Vercel + Railway

What's live

10 companies: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla, JPMorgan, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola.

Free, no signup, no ads: decodingstocks.com

What I learned

  • Hand-written explanations take 10x longer than I expected, but the quality difference vs AI-generated text is obvious.
  • Lighthouse audits early and often — fixing performance issues late is painful.
  • Legal pages (Privacy, Terms, Disclaimer, Cookies) took almost as long as actual features. GDPR is no joke even for a free tool.

Not financial advice. Would love feedback — especially what's confusing or what company you'd want added next.

Top comments (0)