You will be able to confirm or reject a claim by finding it in the source, not by asking the assistant again.
In his first conversation about the REIT, the one from lesson 4.1, Ask AI for questions, not a verdict, the assistant told Farhan three things. The distribution yield was a little over six percent. The REIT's gearing, the share of its assets funded by debt, was in the mid-thirties as a percentage. And its largest tenant accounted for under a tenth of rental income. He now knows where each of those should be published. The question is how to decide whether each claim holds up.
The method is short. The claim counts only when you have found it yourself, in the source, with a date. Asking the assistant again doesn't count, however you phrase it.
Start by asking the assistant for the source of each claim: "For each of these three figures, tell me which document it would come from and what date that document would be." This is useful even if the answer is partly wrong, because it points you at the right kind of document. You saw in lesson 1.3, Where it fails: invented numbers, old facts, wrong country, that the citation it gives may not exist, so treat it as a lead, not a reference.
Then open the source yourself. For Farhan's REIT, that meant the investor relations page, the latest annual report and the most recent results announcement on SGX. Don't paste the document back into the chat and ask whether the figure is in it. Find the page.
A claim is confirmed when you can point to the sentence or the number in the document, and you know what date it refers to. Write down three things: the document, the page, and the as-of date the figure applies to. The publication date isn't enough. An annual report published in March describes the financial year that ended months earlier.
A claim is rejected when you find the figure and it's different, or when the source says something that contradicts it. A claim is unconfirmed when you can't find it at all. Unconfirmed is not the same as wrong, but it doesn't count either. You can't act on it.
Farhan's results, with the figures here as an example. The gearing claim matched the annual report almost exactly, but the report gave it as at the end of the previous financial year, and the latest results announcement showed a higher figure since then. He marked it "true once, now out of date" and recorded the newer one. The largest-tenant claim matched the annual report, as at the same date. The yield claim he couldn't confirm at all, and the next section explains why.
Some numbers change slowly and some change every day. A REIT's list of properties may not change for years. Its gearing changes when it borrows, repays or revalues its buildings, which is reported a few times a year. A fund's fees change rarely, but its holdings change all the time. A yield changes every time the price moves, because it's the payout divided by the price.
That's why the yield claim was impossible to confirm as stated. There's no single correct yield: it depends on which payouts are counted and on which day's price. A source can tell you what the REIT paid out over a period. You then work out the yield yourself at today's price, in a spreadsheet, as module 5 shows. An assistant quoting a yield is quoting a figure for a price on a day it can't tell you.
So for every figure, note whether it's the kind that moves. If it is, the as-of date is part of the fact. A fee without a date is fine. A yield or a holding without a date is half a fact.
Long documents are where an assistant earns its keep. An annual report can run past two hundred pages, and asking for a summary of the risk factors or the debt section is a sensible use of it. Working with AI assistants, lesson 5.4, Build a checked summary of a long report, covers the technique.
But a summary of a document you uploaded is still a summary, and figures can slip. Before you rely on it, spot-check three figures: pick three numbers from the summary, find each on the page it should come from, and compare. If all three match, you can use the summary with reasonable confidence. If one doesn't, check every figure in it, or go back to reading the section yourself.
Farhan asked for a summary of the capital management section. Two figures matched. The third, the average cost of the REIT's debt, was taken from the previous year's comparison column instead of the current one. Same table, wrong column, and easy to miss.
Take three claims an assistant made about the investment you chose, and run each through the same check.
Take three claims an assistant made about your investment and record for each the source, page, date and whether it held up.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).