This article should cite more sources.
Consider adding references from the company's 10-K report, news stories, or other investing resources.
View the Citation page for more help.

Citations are an essential part of Wikinvest articles. They allow readers to easily verify key statistics and facts within the article and in doing so increase the credibility of Wikinvest articles in the eyes of the investing public. If you're looking for resources (that you will cite later), try the research page.

Basic Citations

Adding a citation is easy:

  1. Type <ref>[sourceURL Text Goes Here]</ref> where you want the citation to appear.
  2. Then, at the bottom of the article, type <references/>
  3. Your citation will appear as a number within the article text, and the source will show at the bottom of the article as a footnote -- like this.[1]

Consolidated Citations

Add a name attribute to the first instance of the reference: <ref name=PUT_NAME_HERE>PUT_LINK_HERE</ref>

To use this reference again later in the article, just use: <ref name=PUT_NAME_HERE />


Annual reports (aka 10-K's) filed with the SEC are chock full of great data and other information. When referencing these, make sure to include:

  • Company Name or Ticker
  • Year published
  • Section
  • Page number

Example: <ref>[ Microsoft (MSFT) Form 10-K, Fiscal year 2007, "Selected Financial Data", p. 50]</ref>

Three examples of articles with excellent examples of citations:

Citation templates

You can use templates to help simplify citation formatting and maintain consistency. Instead of creating a link, specify the template and fields such as title, url, author, date, etc, separating each attribute with a vertical bar "|".

The most commonly used template is "cite_web" with the following fields:
{{cite web

For example, a citation could look like:

<ref>{{cite web| title=Source Title| url=| author=John Doe}}</ref>

Not every field needs to be specified -- the template will automatically format the citation based on which fields are available. For more information on this template, see Wikipedia's instructions.

Another frequently used source is the 10-k. You can use the "cite 10-k" template:

{{cite 10k
|ticker= i.e. MSFT, AAPL, GOOG
|link= link to the 10-k on
|form= 10-K, 20-F, Annual Report, etc"

A sample citation could look like:
<ref name=PFE16>{{cite 10k| ticker=PFE| year=2007| form=Annual Report| link=| pg=16}}</ref>

Citation Tips

  • Be thorough: While you certainly don’t need to cite every single number in an article, be as thorough as possible. Cite major revenue, income, operational, and market statistics. Always cite graphs, charts, tables, and market share information. You should not cite information that is common knowledge. For example, no citation is needed for “General Motors is a car company”, and “General Motors is the largest U.S. car manufacturer by cars sold” probably doesn’t need a citation either. But “60% of GM’s profits come from the sale of SUVs” does require a citation.
  • Be explicit: Remember that the reader should be able to easily verify the cited item by going directly to the source. If you are citing 10-Ks or other SEC filings, include the company ticker, year of the 10-K, section and page number (e.g. TOL 2007 10-K, Item 7: Management Discussion, page 55) and URL. For other sources include a brief description of the source and the URL and a date if relevant. The URL for all links should be hidden. You can do this by using [URL space description].
  • Variety is a wonderful thing: We encourage you to make use of many different sources, including but not limited to competitors’ 10-Ks, business sites like Yahoo! Finance, industry websites, earnings releases, etc. If you take the time to do the work, why not let others know just how well researched your article is?
  • If you see an unsubstantiated claim, make a note of it! Use {{fact}}, like this:   [citation needed]
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