New Ramblings’ Resource: SEC and FCC Filings Browsers

As some attentive readers have noticed, this morning I introduced two new tools up in the resources box.  Both are for browsing filings for companies within or related to the telecom and infrastructure sector, one is for SEC filings and the other is for FCC filings.  To say that I spend a lot of time gathering information about the companies in the telecommunications and internet infrastructure sector is something of an understatement.  Long ago, I became frustrated with the efficiency of some of the information sources out there.  For instance, the SEC website is an excellent resource that does what is intended – all the filings are there for reading.  But if you’re like me just want to know if anything is new amongst a particular subset of companies, or worse want to collect one single line item from a dozen or more quarterly or annual filings, it takes enough clicks to cause carpal tunnel syndrome and contributed to the destruction of several of my wireless mice over the past few years.  And as for the FCC site, it is a struggle to even find the right search page let alone casually glance through filings.  But improvements in government websites make glaciers look speedy.

So as a software guy, I went out tried to make my life easier – and I’m making what I came up with available to readers of Telecom Ramblings.  Of course, not everyone needs this but there are analysts and investors out there who might find them useful – and who might have suggestions on how to make them more so.

• SEC Filing Browser – From the main page one can get a quick view of the most recent filings from across the sector, something you can only do for all 10K+ companies on the SEC site.  From individual company SEC listings you can immediately access quarterly and annual filings in a popup without leaving the index itself.  On the SEC site you have to step back three pages and forward three pages over and over.  This is just less painful for me.
• FCC Filing Browser – The FCC website is a bit better than it was at its worst, but it is still really difficult to find stuff on.  My tool is not perfect, but it does allow you to quickly see if anything interesting is going on without having to navigate that horrible maze.  As with the SEC tool, you can view the most recent filings across the industry all at once, or focus in on a particular company.

These don’t replace the original information sources, they just add a more specialized front end to the same data – bringing the links you’ll most likely need to your fingertips more quickly.  Or, at least they do for me – I’d appreciate feedback.

Not every company that could be covered is on the list yet.  I’ll be adding more as time goes on, but if there’s one you’d like added sooner rather than later, do let me know – it’s just a line in a spreadsheet.  Both the FCC and SEC filings browsers should be considered as works-in-progress for now, as I tune them for better performance.  Hopefully making them public won’t crash my server!

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Categories: Information