NEW TOOL HANDICAPS COMPANY FILINGS
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - This is Kentucky Derby
(www.kentuckyderby.com/2003/) week, so it's fitting to present a
new handicapping tool that will put us all on track for fast,
easy-to-read company documents.
Fran Finnegan's SEC Info.com (www.secinfo.com/) is little
known, very new and among the very best of the scores of services
parsing filings from the 10,000 or so publicly held companies in the
U.S. stock market.
Finnegan, a former investment banker, uses an office near the San
Francisco Giants ballpark on the city's waterfront to parse the millions
of words that are contained each day in Securities and Exchange
Commission (www.sec.gov/) electronic filings by publicly held
companies. The so-called EDGAR filings constitute an immense, sometimes
impenetrable database of company facts, some arcane and others explosive
in their upside and downside influence on stocks.
Very few filings, such as Form 144, are exempt from the SEC's mandated
electronic filing.
For my money, SEC Info.com's standout feature is a plain-language
search function that should benefit any money manager or individual
investor looking for specific names, themes or events in daily filings.
It looks right into the eye of the tiger, and comes out a winner.
"I'm the only one using a real text-parsing engine to build my content,
to generate the billion-plus links among the filings, which allows my
users to quickly dig down or jump to what they're looking for," says
Finnegan.
For those who understand the daunting task of examining the thousands
of SEC documents filed each day by companies, such a real-text ability
will serve as a time-saver and a valuable alert tool. Real-language
searches are essential for those who monitor corporate developments such
as acquisitions, proxy statements, tender offers and special events.
That's not all.
"At least one money manager is looking at systematic correlations on
filing times and/or words within filings regarding subsequent price
movements," says Finnegan. "And the SEC is polling my site looking for
stuff their internal systems don't show, but they're not communicative
about why."
In other words, there just might be discernible stock-market reactions
to certain types of filings, or the use of certain words and phrases.
Such patterns, if available to individual investors quickly and with
none of the digging required by most EDGAR-related services, could prove
to be a gold mine.
SEC Info.com's plain-as-vanilla headings include mergers
(www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/...ion+Deals+and+Tender+Offers&Since=2),
acquisitions and disposals, director resignations and changes in
control. The search function lets users troll for specific words or
phrases in such categories as registrants, subjects, businesses and
industries.
The site is free the first 45 times of use. Finnegan's practice at this
early stage is to monitor individuals' activity.
"I remember the number of times you sign in, pages accessed, etc. An
algorithm then determines whether I should consider you a relative
frequent user, based on my experience with all users," Finnegan tells
me.
If you become a frequent user, SEC Info.com asks you to subscribe.
Finnegan says his rates are lower than the other services available to
individuals via the Internet. He charges $120 a year, or $10 a month.
For more, see www.secinfo.com (www.secinfo.com/).
www.secinfo.com
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - This is Kentucky Derby
(www.kentuckyderby.com/2003/) week, so it's fitting to present a
new handicapping tool that will put us all on track for fast,
easy-to-read company documents.
Fran Finnegan's SEC Info.com (www.secinfo.com/) is little
known, very new and among the very best of the scores of services
parsing filings from the 10,000 or so publicly held companies in the
U.S. stock market.
Finnegan, a former investment banker, uses an office near the San
Francisco Giants ballpark on the city's waterfront to parse the millions
of words that are contained each day in Securities and Exchange
Commission (www.sec.gov/) electronic filings by publicly held
companies. The so-called EDGAR filings constitute an immense, sometimes
impenetrable database of company facts, some arcane and others explosive
in their upside and downside influence on stocks.
Very few filings, such as Form 144, are exempt from the SEC's mandated
electronic filing.
For my money, SEC Info.com's standout feature is a plain-language
search function that should benefit any money manager or individual
investor looking for specific names, themes or events in daily filings.
It looks right into the eye of the tiger, and comes out a winner.
"I'm the only one using a real text-parsing engine to build my content,
to generate the billion-plus links among the filings, which allows my
users to quickly dig down or jump to what they're looking for," says
Finnegan.
For those who understand the daunting task of examining the thousands
of SEC documents filed each day by companies, such a real-text ability
will serve as a time-saver and a valuable alert tool. Real-language
searches are essential for those who monitor corporate developments such
as acquisitions, proxy statements, tender offers and special events.
That's not all.
"At least one money manager is looking at systematic correlations on
filing times and/or words within filings regarding subsequent price
movements," says Finnegan. "And the SEC is polling my site looking for
stuff their internal systems don't show, but they're not communicative
about why."
In other words, there just might be discernible stock-market reactions
to certain types of filings, or the use of certain words and phrases.
Such patterns, if available to individual investors quickly and with
none of the digging required by most EDGAR-related services, could prove
to be a gold mine.
SEC Info.com's plain-as-vanilla headings include mergers
(www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/...ion+Deals+and+Tender+Offers&Since=2),
acquisitions and disposals, director resignations and changes in
control. The search function lets users troll for specific words or
phrases in such categories as registrants, subjects, businesses and
industries.
The site is free the first 45 times of use. Finnegan's practice at this
early stage is to monitor individuals' activity.
"I remember the number of times you sign in, pages accessed, etc. An
algorithm then determines whether I should consider you a relative
frequent user, based on my experience with all users," Finnegan tells
me.
If you become a frequent user, SEC Info.com asks you to subscribe.
Finnegan says his rates are lower than the other services available to
individuals via the Internet. He charges $120 a year, or $10 a month.
For more, see www.secinfo.com (www.secinfo.com/).
www.secinfo.com
