Question regarding cheap SEC filings

[mattown]

Hey everyone,

I frequent these forums often and my last post I described creating my own financial trading company based on an algorithm I created. It has a sharpe of 17 and I've back tested it for the last 11 years...

I was going to create a blog about it but due to some crazy life situations I've had to put everything on hold until now. Long story short I was laid off 6 months ago and had to put my plans on hold. I still haven't found a decent job but I'm finishing off an internet business and I hope to use the revunue along with funds through my family to get the alogrithm up and operational. In the meantime I'm in Beijing trying to learn Mandarin and I'm working for peanuts but I eventually want to have the cultural understanding of this area to network and hopefully get this algorithm up in the asian markets as well in the future...

I have a question for those who have experience transferring SEC filings into a databases.

My strategy requires that I have trailing 1 year quarterly filing information. At my old company we obtained this through the edgar and some via morning star but I'm not sure how the feed was set up. They say that the information is free to the public but you can also access it at a moments instant through their pro service, the fees for that are $899 annually.

I don't need Edgar filings the moment they come out, I'm not interested in earnings anouncements but what I need is just SEC filings as they update on the close of each day.

Anyone know the best route for this? Will I have to pay a subscription fee if I say want all the descrete accounting information in the filings, parsed, labeled etc. into some kind of relational database file or excel? Basically I want to download all the latest filings after the close (ie don't need them in real time), I need them to be downloaded in some kind of descretized form so I can parse the values I need and upload them into my relational database. I need to do this for every company that has filings in the US.

Any thoughts on what the best route to achieve this is would be really helpful.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

You could have asked this question earlier to the folks at footnoted.org since they are experts in snipping through SEC filings to find gems.
Too bad, Morningstar just acquired the site (congrats to Michelle). You can contact Michelle or one of her staff for details. They may have some similar system in place.

 

[mattown]

thanks

Thanks Andy, I'll try and contact her, I know I can find the information, it's just a pain getting it setup and finding the best solution at the best cost.

 

[winstontj]

Why not set up an LLC and avoid all the filing fees? Is the goal to get investors or start a Fund? If you are in NYC I'd be happy to talk to you about startup/incubator services.

The two biggest hurdles people run into are IP (intellectual property) and track record. I'm looking to facilitate small LLCs that want to clear/exceute through a big name bank and establish a track record before they start going out and fundraising (hedge funds). Your IP, if truly unique, can be protected but thats not cheap either. It all depends on what your end goal is - if you want to have investors you'll need the public filings - but you'll also need a track record of real-life trading before anyone will buy in.

Start small. If you are a one-man shop just get an account at a prop firm and start establishing a track record. Once you have a track record and have some capital, open an LLC and look to start seeking investors. Once you have some (serious) investor interest then look at public filings.

 

[mattown]

UPDATE

Hey guys!!!!

Well looks like the algorithm will work, I found a way to get SEC filings info for free.

2 words

Google -- python



I created a python script that strips finance.google.com in real time of all of its fundamental data. Basically the script takes in ticker symbols and their associated exchange names and strips the relevant info I need from google finance. It's a pretty simple script and I found a pretty cool addon script in python that can break down code from websites, the name of the addon is beautiful soup. It is quite powerful stuff.

I get the latest ticker lists for free from eoddata.com

Well that's it folks, I looked around and it was going to be extremely expensive to strip all fundamental data from sec fillings, around 1000-10000 a month! **** that, I'm just going to strip it from google/yahoo. My strategy doesn't need real time sec info, I just need to scan all the filings around 1-2 times a week, this should work...

Looking to open the interactive brokers account next week, I'll let you guys know how it goes.