Its a great question. You helped build the EDGAR website?
Obviously you have a good handle on programing.
Now, please don't take my tone the wrong way here, more power to you... but if I had your skills in this area, I'd ask the exact same question. I'd also be filthy rich in a year if done right.
Let me put on my VZ psychic-hotline hat here for a second and prognosticate things as I sip this nasty tasting coffee and watch things bounce around.
You're right, ET is a good place to ask, there's probably a dozen other places out there too. You can hit up individuals on Twitter, Reddit, etc. Scan the web. The more responses the better. I love this part... ****You are the kinds of people we care about....****.
Of course we are.
So lets say 500 retail traders reply and actually share their insights. Ya know, geek types that like filling out surveys for whatever reason. Maybe a few dozen PM's take the time because... well they're probably geeks too. But whatever, you've got some good data.
But what to do with all that data? I know what I'd do if I had your level of skills in this area.
Every quarter hundreds and hundreds of companies report right after the bell. Many of these reports, depending on which company, trigger extreme short term directional moves. And oh don't I know this game. Hands down these are the most predictable money making events that exist today. By predictable I don't mean that we know which way they are going to go, I mean predictable in the sense we know at 4:00:01 EST, or whatever the exact time of the release is... there's gonna be a big move. Sometimes up, sometimes down, but usually it goes in both directions. It happens real fast. After a bit it stabilizes and picks a direction. We can't "predict" when news will hit intraday about a stock that might move it... but we know weeks in advance when that earnings report is.
I'd put together a program that reads the entire 8K the split second it hits the SEC. Depending on which sector the company operates in and thanks to your well researched survey you now have a list of data-points to pull instantly from the report and in the same 1 second time-frame, execute a trade that has an extremely high probability of success. You can hold it overnight, or close within 30 seconds. Depends.
Obviously before you go live with this, you back-test 100's of companies that have a history of big moves for the last 20 years and fine tune the crap out of the program for a given company and a given sector. Going forward they're not hard to find, just look at the % move being priced into the options straddle, that will tell you which companies to focus on for any given day.
So... that's what I'd do anyway.
No need to fill out the survey, here: look for forecast vs actual same store sales in retail and also the fast food sector.
% change in FCF is another good one for any stock.
Those are pretty obvious though.
Note however, there two parts here that are very important. The EDGAR data is only one part of the puzzle. Somehow you're going to have to mine various analyst reports for each specific company to see what they are predicting for those data points prior to the report. That's what will move the stock one way or the other, when those metrics are beat or missed. The top and bottom lines make for good headlines, but the real move is forensic and I have a feeling that's what are trying to accomplish.
Good luck, send me a copy when you get it done. It should work well. I'd bet anything though its already being done. Still, what takes a retail player 10 minutes, you can do in a millisecond. It'll work.
Don't forget to send me a copy!
edit... oops.... not calling you a geek
@newwurldmn.
