A Real Act of Sunshine

Bill Cara recently posted: "I'd like to see the average person access the SEC database with the use of computer bots so that a level playing field is possible." The SEC has an easy path toward providing that access in the form of RSS feeds.

Shortly after the voluntary program began, the SEC starting publishing an RSS feed of the XBRL filings coming into the system. Prior to that just a few of us EDGAR geeks could really see what was going on. But now you can subscribe to the feed and get daily updates on who is filing.

Things got a bit more interesting when the Financial Explorer was released. The Financial Explorer has a number of cool features but the one that applies here is the company specific RSS feed. Once you click through to a specific company there is an RSS button individualized for that issuer. You can subscribe to a feed that will alert you whenever that issuer submits XBRL data to the SEC! The issue with these feeds is that they are updated overnight and so are not in real time.

However, the SEC has provided XML feeds on both the Latest Filings page and on individual issuer pages. Both the latest filings feed and the individual company feed (not the XBRL version) are in real time today and would include XBRL submissions but you'd have to sniff them out. But investors can subscribe to their favorite companies and get immediate notification of a filing today without using a costly service.

We should not expect the SEC to provide the most sophisticated tools for either search or analysis of this information. It isn't their job and the capabilities they will develop will be for enforcement, not investment. But RSS provides significant capabilities in a simple way that can help the individual investor keep up with news and not fall too far behind the big guys in terms of access. Analysis is a different story for another day.

-- Ed Hodder