I am looking for an automated source of fundamental stock data for all
SEC reporting companies. All of this information is in the public
EDGAR filings, but there does not seem to be any common format. Is
there a data provider that has has all the financial information in a
database format?

Revenues, Dividends, Earnings, Cash, and all the balance sheet and
income statement fields are needed. I need the cost per month of such
a service.

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 03 Jan 2004 10:29 PST

CLB --

There are a couple of popular sources for such data.  Pricing will
depend on what format and how often you'd like the prices updated.

University researchers tend to use the University of Chicago's
Graduate School of Business data streams from the Center for Research
in Security Prices (CRSP -- pronounced 'crisp'):
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/research/crsp/products/ccm_data_detail.html

The CRSP data is used because of its ability to track long historical periods.

For current information, the securities industry often relies upon --
and CRSP uses for updates -- the Standard & Poor's Compustat service. 
CRSP offers daily updates but people actively involved with trading
may require up-to-the-minute or intra-day results.  As you'll see from
the Compustat pages, there are dozens of service offerings, including
global stocks that would be in the SEC database but perhaps not even
traded on U.S. exchanges:
http://www.compustat.com/www/

I'm not sure how to proceed further than this for you, as pricing
options will depend on the many delivery factors.  However, in all of
the listings above key earnings and balance sheet information is
available.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Question by clb108-ga on 03 Jan 2004 11:30 PST

Daily data is certainly good enough. Something that updates a few days
after the EDGAR filing is made is plenty fast enough. Even a week
delayed would be fine if that lowers the cost significantly.

I want to setup a public service website that allows people to
automatically rank stocks based on fundamental data. As such, I want
to find out what the cost for the data feed will be to allow this.

The key is to have as large of a coverage of companies as possible so
that an individual investor can search as large a universe of stocks
according to their fundamental parameters. I am looking for
alternatives to manually having to go through all 12,000+ filings on
Edgar updating a database of fundamental data.

Please get price quotes from the available sources.

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 03 Jan 2004 11:35 PST

CLB --

I'll check on the cost with CRSP and Compustat next week.  They'll
probably have a range, depending on such factors as:
*  usage (particularly for a public website)
*  who's hosting data
*  data format

and of course, frequency of updates.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 06 Jan 2004 14:23 PST

CLB108 --

An update: I've heard back from Compustat but not CRSP.  

Compustat's minimum charges are $1,000 per month but there's a huge
number of variables:
*  how often data is provided
*  your pricing model
*  method of distribution
*  whether or not CUSIP is used
*  whether or not you're already licensed for some information
products (via Dow-Jones or FT Interactive)
*  how broad you want the database to be (some elements are
sub-licensed.  An example might be First Call earnings forecasts.)
*  where the data resides

Google Answers is not always the best format for sensitive discussions
like these but I can provide you contacts at both companies -- and
possibly a couple other financial data suppliers.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Question by clb108-ga on 06 Jan 2004 15:42 PST

OK, just give me the contacts and I can take it from there.

CLB --

There are at least four services that could be considered for
providing fundamental earnings and balance sheet information:

Compustat (part of Standard & Poor's)
======================================

The Compustat data, services and contacts are on the page describing that service:
"Compustat Data"
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=sp/sp_product/UmbrellaBodyTemplate&c=sp_product&cid=1021984025986&b=10&r=1&l=EN

Standard & Poor's investment services are owned by McGraw-Hill.  They
have a 2-page client proposal form sent to me by Jim Toomey, one of
their sales people.  I'd outlined some of the criteria in the request
for clarification.  You can contact Mr. Toomey directly at:
Jim_Toomey@mcgraw-hill.com


FT Interactive (owned by London's Financial Times)
===================================================

Home Page
http://www.ftinteractivedata.com/

FT Interactive has 5 offices in the major U.S. financial centers:
U.S. & Canada Contacts
http://www.ftinteractivedata.com/contacts/contacts_na.shtml


ComStock (a division of International Data Corp.)
==================================================

Comstock uses Standard & Poor's data for fundamental analysis,
according to information on their services.  They have regional
offices  in three places in the U.S.:
ComStock
Contact Information
http://www.comstock-interactivedata.com/contact/contact.html


CRSP (Center for Research in Security Prices at the University of
Chicago's Graduate School of Business)
==================================================================

The CRSP database covers a long time series and is set up for academic
research to track information over long periods of time.  It has been
used to help develop many of the common investment concepts today,
including stock beta and the Black-Scholes option pricing model.  CRSP
also relies on Compustat data to update the database.

Though they're located at my alma mater (and I can attest to the
quality of the data), they're not as responsive as the commercial
services.  I'd made contact via both e-mail and phone call.  Since
they hadn't contacted me by today, I felt that I'd best post this
answer so that you could continue the research:

CRSP
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/research/crsp/

Contacts
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/research/crsp/contact/index.html


Using Google to search for "Compustat" or "FT Interactive" will give
you a good idea of what companies are providing information on public
companies.  Use the "Similar pages" links to provide similar services.

Many companies provide raw market data on exchange trading.  Fewer
offer the fundamental earnings/balance sheet information that you're
seeking.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 15 Jan 2004 12:08 PST

CLB --

I've just heard from CRSP and the data is delivered on CD-ROM (soon to
be DVD) from them.  The contact is:

Tina Marie Cruz
Marketing Account Manager
773-702-6220 - Direct
773-834-4606 - Sales Direct
773-702-3036 - Fax
subscriptions@crsp.uchicago.edu
http://www.crsp.uchicago.edu

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA