SEC’s New Edgar Search Useful for IROs. Is RSS Next?

By Dominic Jones

AFTER a short time in testing, the Securities and Exchange Commission has flicked the switch to make its powerful new Edgar full-text search public.

I used the beta version a few times and found it extraordinarily efficient to be able to search filings by keyword. I hope other regulators are paying attention.

For IROs, this could be a handy tool for benchmarking and research. Want to know how companies are disclosing a particular perk, or want to find out which companies are filing conference call transcripts? Click on the aforementioned links or use this link and enter your own search terms.

In a news release yesterday, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said: “The availability of this powerful new search capability is a milestone in our interactive data initiative. By harnessing technology to transform corporate disclosure, this new search capability will liberate investors, researchers, and analysts from the more time-consuming and less reliable chore of accessing information in public filings one by one.”

Each year 15 to 18 million pages of filings are submitted to the SEC by more than 15,000 companies and other filers. The full-text search supports keyword or conceptual search queries, Boolean operators and wildcards, the release said.

This is a great enhancement of Edgar and hopefully it is just the start. It would be really useful if the SEC added RSS feeds for each filer, including insiders, so that investors can know when companies make new filings.

The commission’s website already has a variety of feeds available for news releases, XBRL filings, news digests and investor education podcasts, so I have a feeling RSS feeds for each filer isn’t a new idea to them.

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