The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) assembles and proceeds the financial accounts that are sent to it by foreign and domestic American publicly traded corporations. Such a SEC EDGAR database can be reached by the public free of charge.
The whole system of the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) works for people’s benefits and admits investors to quickly find out any necessary operational and financial info about a corporation.
There is a comprehensive list of reports that are stored in this database. So, to get the info you are interested in you have to learn which kind of report can comprise it.
E.g. the info regarding the latest events is presented in the SEC filing 8-K.
You can deal with the data operating the filter «Companies & Other» to search the required info.
For a productive search, you would better search the corporation name as mentioned in the reports. E.g., if searching for GE SEC files, search for «General Electric» not for the abbreviation GE.
If failed in the trial, get down to the advanced search that provides searching via such markers as a number of a filing, state, country, and even industry.
Use the direct link to get to the searching process https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
EDGAR search function
The alternative way of searching is using the EDGAR Full-Text Search, which performs a search via keywords or a conceptual search query. This way allows extracting of an SEC reports’ list from the whole SEC filing database. There are options for filtration of the info by the report type, date, and industry.
EDGAR filing search function provides a searcher with a list of reports that have been deployed to the system, presenting them in the reverse order.
Any specific disclosure demands reviewing of the scope of the info you got as a result of search
Limitations of Edgar Database for SEC filings
The limitation you can face lies in the impossibility to compare disclosures within definite listings even if the filings were conducted by the same firm.
Another limitation concerns getting info regarding the quantity of publicly traded corporations and summarizing the number of the specific market issuers.
And finally, there are limits for searching the quantity of the returned results.
Moreover, there are limitations in working hours. So, please learn the schedule of SEC Edgar filing hours to avoid missing the deadlines.
The Bottom Line
The service we provide aims to cope our clients with all the challenges connected with filling reports and general operating with the SEC data.
To fill all forms in time use http://project-edgar.com/edgar-filing-deadlines/