edgaronline.com vs. sec.freeedgar.com

trickynick said: "My interest in the capital markets has given rise to the need to access an increasing amount of financial statements of publicly traded companies. I am quickly realizing that you don't have to own many companies for the amount of information to be kept constantly aware of to become very large. The question before me at this time is what information (if any) is worth paying for. EdgarOnline charges $59.85 per quarter for basic access and $1200 a year for pro access and as far as I can tell there is nothing you get from EdgarOnline that you don't get for free from the Securities and Exchange Commission's sec.freeedgar.com other than it is more easily searched and more easily compiled into a variety of charts, making the information easier to track and compare. Also, the basic access only allows you to access 25 documents a month and as it is I look at twice that many a week. Does anyone here have firsthand knowledge to know if I am missing something regarding the benefits of EdgarOnline subscription? It's a deeply held investment belief of mine that it is necessary to control the [I]costs of investing[/I]. These include not only commissions from trades but the money you spend on materials such as books, magazine/newspaper subscriptions, etc. I just have a really hard time justifying spending money for information that is publicly available no matter how nicely it is organized or easy it is made to use. Any thoughts?"

alhamid said: "does edgar provide more indepth info than the standard and poors? value line is quite good."

trickynick said: "Alhamid, I was not aware the Standard & Poor site included regulatory filings at all. If they do, then that is definitely something to check out if you could point me to it. Also, have you found any quick way to get a hold of the long-term financial history of a company? For example, income statements and balance sheets dating back ten years?"

AlfredSokol said: "$1,200 a year seems steep. Wow."

trickynick said: "[QUOTE=AlfredSokol]$1,200 a year seems steep. Wow.[/QUOTE] Yeah, no kidding. I imagine the only way you'd ever need that level of access would be if you needed access to so huge an amount of information on a constant basis that the cost is less than the value of what time it would take for you to organize all the information yourself using the resources that are either less expensive or free. I don't see that being the case unless you are in the actual business of investing (broker, fund manager, market maker, etc.) or you are an individual whose primary source of income is capital gains from stock. Neither are likely to be the case for me in the foreseeable future."