Method and system for forecasting financial statements and analysis there of

A method for analyzing data-defined dependencies of line items in financial statements of a first company, comprising:

• obtaining financial statements of the first company, and optionally of one or more additional companies, as input;
• optionally obtaining one or more of the following to add to the input:
• (a) user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of the first company;
• (b) user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of said additional companies;
• (c) macroeconomic data;
• optionally filtering said input;
• using all or a subset of the line items of the financial statements of the first company as line items of interest, wherein said subset of the line items can be either user-selected or system-selected;
• using a multidimensional model which fits the line items of interest as a function of the input to quantify the strengths of data-defined dependencies of the line items of interest on other line items in the input;
• optionally guiding the user from a given line item of interest to one or more other line items in the input on which there is a data-defined dependency meeting a criteria that is either user-defined or system-defined.

A system for forecasting financial statements of a first company comprising:

• at least one computer;
• means for obtaining a first feed of financial statements of the first company;
• optional means for obtaining a second feed of financial statements of one or more additional companies;
• optional means for obtaining a third feed of user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of the first company;
• optional means for obtaining a fourth feed of user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of said additional companies;
• optional means for obtaining a fifth feed of macroeconomic data;
• optional means for filtering data from said feed(s);
• software executing on said computer(s) for implementing a multidimensional model using said feeds as input to fit a set of line items of interest, wherein said set of line items of interest may be the entirety or a subset of the financial statements line items of the first company;
• software executing on said computer(s) for using the projections of said multidimensional model to forecast the line items of interest.

A system for analyzing data-defined dependencies of line items in financial statements of a first company, comprising:

• at least one computer;
• means for obtaining a first feed of financial statements of the first company;
• optional means for obtaining a second feed of financial statements of one or more additional companies;
• optional means for obtaining a third feed of user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of the first company;
• optional means for obtaining a fourth feed of user-provided forecasts of particular line items of the financial statements of said additional companies;
• optional means for obtaining a fifth feed of macroeconomic data;
• optional means for filtering data from said feed(s);
• software executing on said computer(s) for implementing a multidimensional model using said feeds as input to fit a set of line items of interest, wherein said set of line items of interest may be the entirety or a subset of the financial statement line items of the first company;
• software executing on said computer(s) for quantifying the strengths of data-defined dependencies of the line items of interest on other line items in the input using said multidimensional model;
• optional software executing on said computer(s) for guiding the user from a given line item of interest to one or more other line items on which there is data-defined dependency meeting a criteria that is either user-defined or system-defined.