Securities Filings Securities & Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. During a three year period that ended in 1996, public companies were phased into filing electronically with the Securities & Exchange Commission in the EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis & Retrieval) system. Most public companies now file their forms electronically with the SEC, although there are still a few exceptions. The SEC Web site also provides electronic access to current securities laws, news releases, staff interpretations, regulatory action, and the Telephone Interpretation Manual. Although the SEC provides access to company filings, it does not provide any added-value features. For example, the ability to obtain a copy of a document in PDF or RTF is not possible, so printing documents from this site, especially charts and financials, can be a hit or miss affair. The EDGAR database also does not provide full-text searching of documents. If you are looking for a database that offer these features, the Business Library provides a securities database for all UW students and faculty called, Thomson Research. To access Thomson Research, go to the Business Library home page at http://business.library.wisc.edu/, at the menu box titled Shortcut to Business Databases, select Thomson Research from the drop down menu. At the top of the screen are a selection of tabs, if you want to do a quick search, type the name of the company or the ticker symbol in the quick search box on the left side of the screen. You will get a list of filings and a selection of viewing and printing formats. If you want to search full-text in EDGAR documents, select the EDGAR free-text tab and enter your search in the full-text query screen. For Law Students and Faculty LEXIS NEXIS provides full-text searching of SEC documents on EDGARPlus. You can locate this dabatase by selecting Area of Law by Topic, scroll to the Securities file, select and scroll to Filings. Westlaw also provides full-text searching of SEC documents. To locate select Directory at the top of the screen, locate Topical Practice Areas and select Securities, scroll to EDGAR SEC filings and select. Westlaw provides two ways of searching the filings, you can choose an Advance Template Search or a Standard Search. These search features are located at the top of the EDGAR SEC filings database screen. Other Fee-based Databases 10K Wizard at http://www.10kwizard.com/. 10K Wizard offers more than just 10K filings. Most of its services are by subscription, but you can view a list of company filings for free. FreeEdgar.com at http://www.freeedgar.com/. Several years ago FreeEdgar was just that, free. You could searching company filings and download in PDF or RTF, but those days are long gone and Freedgar.com is now a subscription service. LivEdgar at http://www.gsionline.com/, is a securities database provided by Global Securities Information, Inc.. LivEdgar has many add-value features, such as automatic searches on commonly requested information, for example, their M&A database or their Section 8-K database. LivEdgar also offers full-text searching for SEC No-Action Letters, and an alert service. SECinfo.com at http://www.secinfo.com/. Has real time Canadian (SEDAR) filings as well as EDGAR filings. SECnet http://www.wsb.com/. Provided by Commerce Clearing House, Inc. (CCH). SECNet offers the same features that are in EDGARPlus in Lexis Nexis. For example, full-text searching for No Action Letters and a Watch service for tracking filings. Canadian Securities Filings Most Canadian public securities documents are filed with the Canadian Securities Administration (CSA). Their database is called SEDAR (System for Eletronic Data, Analysis & Retrieval) and is located at http://www.sedar.com/. SEDAR has been operated by CDS Inc. since 1997. Stock Quotes Yahoo Finance at http://finance.yahoo.com/ provides stock quotes as well as a wealth of financial news coverage. For stock quotes select Stock Research from the link at the left side of the screen. You can search by company name or ticker symbol. Yahoo Finance also provides a Ticker Symbol lookup. For historical quotes search Yahoo Finance at http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=msft. Google.com now offers a Google Finance page at http://finance.google.com/finance. For more information about Google.com's Finance page, see Wisblawg at http://www.law.wisc.edu/blogs/wisblawg . Scroll to "Nothing Special About Google Finance," for a link to a review of this site. BigChart.com at http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/. Look for the tab at the top of the screen labeled Historical Quotes. This tab is easy to find and a nice feature of the site. DailyStocks.com at http://www.dailystocks.com/. For real time and current stock quotes, for historical quotes DailyStocks.com links to Yahoo Finance. MSN Money at http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/research/welcome.asp. You can find real time stock quotes, charts, and historical charts at MSN Money. Company Information Hoovers at http://www.hoovers.com. Hoovers offers basic business information on companies for free. However, if you require Hoovers premium services, the Business Library subscribes to this database and Hoovers can be accessed electronically through the pull down menu on the home page of the business library. To access Hoovers, go to the home page at http://business.library.wisc.edu. At the pull down menu, Shortcuts to Business Databases, select Hoovers. Another great company directory available electronically through the Business library is D&Bs Million Dollar Database. This provides company information on companies with sales greater than three million and employees of more than 45. To access locate Shortcuts to Business Databases pull down menu and select D&Bs Million Dollar Database. Both Hoovers and D & Bs Million Dollar Database provide company overviews, financials, and brief biographies of company officers and executives. Both services provides information on international companies as well as information on private companies.
Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on March 25, 2006
This article appears in the categories: Law Library/IT
