SEC EDGAR — Corporate Filings

1. Summary

EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) is the SEC's system for corporate disclosure filings: 10-K (annual), 10-Q (quarterly), 8-K (current events), DEF 14A (proxy), Form 4 (insider trading), 13F (institutional holdings).

2. Access Methods

API: https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK<10-digit-padded>.json (no auth)
Filing index: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=...
Full-text search: https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=...
Auth: None — requires User-Agent header with contact info per SEC policy
Rate limit: 10 requests/second per IP (enforced)

3. Data Schema

Key fields emitted by fetch_sec_edgar.py (filings index):

Column	Type	Description
`cik`	str	Central Index Key (10-digit padded)
`company_name`	str	Registrant name
`form_type`	str	10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, etc.
`filing_date`	str	YYYY-MM-DD
`accession_number`	str	Filing accession (e.g. 0000320193-24-000123)
`primary_document`	str	Filename of main document
`filing_url`	str	Direct URL to filing index
`reporting_period`	str	Period of report (where applicable)

4. Coverage

All public US registrants from 1993 → present
1993-2000 has spotty coverage of older filings (paper-to-electronic migration)
~12M filings cumulative
Updated within minutes of filing acceptance

5. Cross-Reference Potential

USAspending ↔ company_name (public companies as federal contractors)
Senate LD ↔ company_name (public companies hire lobbyists)
OFAC SDN ↔ company_name (sanctions screening of public registrants)

Join key: company name OR CIK if you have it. CIK is canonical and stable.

6. Data Quality

Subsidiaries often filed under parent CIK — be careful with name matches
Name changes over time (rebrands, acquisitions) — CIK remains constant
10-K Item 1A Risk Factors are free-form text — useful for web_extract-style parsing, not structured queries
Foreign private issuers file 20-F instead of 10-K

7. Acquisition Script

Path: scripts/fetch_sec_edgar.py

# By CIK
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_sec_edgar.py --cik 0000320193 \
    --types 10-K,10-Q --out data/edgar_filings.csv

# By company name (resolves to CIK first via name search)
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_sec_edgar.py --company "APPLE INC" \
    --types 8-K --since 2024-01-01 --out data/edgar_filings.csv

Set SEC_USER_AGENT env var with your contact email (SEC requirement). Example: SEC_USER_AGENT="Research example@example.com".

8. Legal & Licensing

Public record under SEC Rule 24b-2 / 17 CFR § 230.401
No commercial use restrictions on filing content
SEC asks all bulk users to include a User-Agent with contact info and to respect 10 req/s — failure to do so can result in IP blocking

9. References

Developer docs: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/sec-api-documentation
EDGAR full-text search: https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index
Fair access policy: https://www.sec.gov/os/accessing-edgar-data

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