8 ms·
Sympathy for the SEC on this one. For its faults, EDGAR is an elegant, useful tool for disseminating a massive amount of information. In an effort to be robust
by piker 9y ago
Sympathy for the SEC on this one. For its faults, EDGAR is an elegant, useful tool for disseminating a massive amount of information. In an effort to be robust in the service of its presumably thousands of poorly-configured clients (academia, hobbyists, day traders, etc.) it's probably trivial to mistake a hostile act for poor programming practices. We've used this system successfully to fuel tons of projects and only on a few occasions been rate-limited despite numerous logic breakdowns, fork bombs, etc. resulting in traffic spikes that would have been easily mistaken by a smaller organization to be DoS attacks. While it's easy to say they should have been more vigilant, they have probably been deliberately permissive in the service of their mandate. Thanks to their patience, our projects have been served. That sort of patience probably leads to overlooking something like this.
- dforrestwilson 9y agoWhat kind of projects?
- Cut_N_Paste 9y agoCheck #3 & #4 on his submissions. Btw, hackers accessing this info could possibly explain something I tweeted to them about 10 days ago: https://twitter.com/jeffallen6767/status/907171360769662976 https://twitter.com/jeffallen6767/status/907171360769662976
- dopamean 9y agoWas the SEC notified about the Equifax hack before the public? With enough time for someone to trade on that information?
- wbl 9y agoYes. Regulation FD says you have to tell everyone material information at the same time.
- philipodonnell 9y agoGood catch. Spikes in option activity before the release of non-public information is the clearest indicator of insider trading. If it helps, its also trivially easy for the SEC to identify the traders involved so at the very least they are already looking for these guys to trace where they got the information.
- xadhominemx 9y agoIn what ways is EDGAR elegant?
- piker 9y agoWell, for one, it's 34 years old and is simple enough for non-technical people to use but robust enough for institutional use. For another, it's scaled to accommodate 3 decades of exponential growth in public filings and regulation. Did I mention it's 34 years old?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Harkins 9y agoI'm not sure about exponential growth in public filings (and EDGAR does not track regulation, so it's not relevant). For example, the number of publicly traded companies is down about 70% compared to twenty years ago: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOM01USA644NWDB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOM01USA644NWDB Could you share a link showing exponential increase in the use of EDGAR?
- metaobject 9y agoWhile there may be fewer companies, are there also fewer stock transactions, etc? This system tracks a lot of different types of transactions involving public companies.
- piker 9y agoSure. Although you should be aware that not only public companies are required to make filings with the SEC. Index - Q1 1994 - 3mb - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/full-index/1994/QTR1/form.idx https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/full-index/1994/QTR1/form... Index - Q1 2017 - 45mb - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/full-index/2017/QTR1/form.idx https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/full-index/2017/QTR1/form...
- 9y ago
- 092491 9y agoDo you know where it's possible to get a list of CIK #s associated with the company names. There used to be a .c file available on the sec site, but I can no longer find it.