Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation

CHAPTER FIVE

Data-Driven Investing: New Tools for Business Analysis

THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION COLLECTS data on about 10,000 public companies and thousands of regulated entities. It’s information that’s critical to investors, businesses, and financial professionals. And over the last two decades, it’s gone from hard-to-get expert data to one of the most important kinds of government Open Data we have.

The saga of SEC data is one of the iconic stories of the Open Data movement. It began when Carl Malamud, one of the earliest and most effective advocates for Open Data in government, essentially shamed the SEC into releasing what has now become core public financial information. In 1993, the SEC was maintaining the Electronic Data Gathering, ...