XBRL and searchable financial statement database?

[mikazo]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm not sure how many of you here are technical-minded in terms of computer programming or databases, but I just wondered if any of you have:

 

- Had any experience with eXtensible Business Reporting Language ( http://www.xbrl.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=5 )

- Used any sort of online database that you can query for financial statement data

 

Thanks!

 

-mikazo

[Guest hellsten]

I did some research on XBRL last week. You could build some very useful and valuable software using XBRL (see examples below).

 

I read somewhere that all reports might not be valid XBRL or according to XBRL specifications, so I guess you would have to write a pretty intelligent parser to be able to parse all reports. Wikipedia mentions that inaccuracy was an issue in a study:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBRL

 

Below are a few of the resources I found.

 

Introduction

http://hitachidatainteractive.com/2012/01/04/xbrl-2011-sets-a-stage-for-better-consumption/

http://seekingalpha.com/article/177215-edgar-online-s-unique-xbrl-database-and-analytics-platform

 

Libraries

 

http://code.google.com/p/xbrlware/

 

Examples

 

Example on how to extract cash and equivalents from XBRL:

http://code.google.com/p/xbrlware/source/browse/example/case_study/cash_analyzer.rb

 

FinModeling seems to be a pretty advanced parser:

https://github.com/jimlindstrom/FinModeling

 

FinModeling uses a version of xbrlware behind the scenes:

https://github.com/jimlindstrom/xbrlware-ruby19

 

This is a description of what you can do with the FinModeling library and XBRL (copied from the FinModeling homepage):

* Pulls annual (10-k) and quarterly (10-q) financial reports from SEC

* Uses Naive Bayes Classifiers to classify financial statement items

* trained on medium-to-large NASDAQ tech companies

* Reformulates GAAP statements to better highlight enterprise value

* Generates forecasts based on analysis of historical performance

[oddballstocks]

hellsten,

 

Thanks for the links, I was looking for something like this a year ago when I first started looking at Japanese companies.  I can't read Japanese but saw all their filings were in XRBL, so I had figured if I could find a way to import them I could easily parse the filings without actually reading the language.  I didn't find was I was looking for so I ended up relying on Google Translate.

[mikazo]

hellsten, thank you for all the info! That's actually more helpful than what I was able to find. Here are some links I came up with before starting this topic:

 

http://www.xbrlwiki.info/index.php?title=Open_Source_and_XBRL

 

http://www.sedar.com/search/search_form_pc_en.htm (Can search for XBRL filings)

 

Ever since a few months ago, I wondered if there was some sort of website where you could create custom queries on the financials of a company, such as searching for a minimum net income or maximum capex or cash & equivalents + inventories less than market cap, etc. The query might search over all companies that filed in XBRL format and produce results that match what you're looking for.

 

My first thought was to implement an XBRL interface, but it looks like xbrlware is one of many that already exist. What doesn't exist (at least that I've been able to find) is a searchable database with some sort of web interface. It seems to me like it could be a very powerful tool over other stock screeners that just focus on P/E ratios and 52-week lows.

 

Would people on this board make use of something like that, if something doesn't already exist?

[mikazo]

Apparently someone had the same idea as me and already implemented it:

 

http://www.calcbench.com/

[Liberty]

Apparently someone had the same idea as me and already implemented it:

 

http://www.calcbench.com/

 

Thanks for posting that link, seems interesting. Will dig deeper when I have a chance.

[rukawa]

The SEC is now providing financial statement information in database ready form. You no longer have to parse XBRL:

https://www.sec.gov/dera/data/financial-statement-data-sets.html

 

Essentially anyone can now pretty easily create their own financial statement database. I tried loading one of the files into postgres. Mostly it worked except that the file is encoding (UTF-8) is bad in some places and since postgres is anal about this it complained repeatedly.

 

This is pretty fantastic. I'm a pretty big fan of the SEC right now.