mokwit, Thank you very much. The SMF add-in is easy to use and the functions download data very quickly. Regards, Max __________________ maxdama.com - The log of my research on and implementation of automated trading strategies
check blocks or telechart from worden bros. Blocks has a very good historical fundy database, fed by thompson. 20+ yrs on most metrics. no api, not sure of other export options. Blocks EOD is roughly 49 / month. Fundys and the ETF component lists are the only reasons i KEEP A SUBSCRIPTION TO BLOCKS. sorry caps.
Value line sells very good fundamental data relatively inexpensively. Compustat is the best but big $.
AFAIK compustat is the only reliable source that quant hedge funds use other than their own research. the problem with fundamental data is IMO twofold: first you obviously need correct data, but second, its of absolute necessity that you know when the data came out and if you can rely on it to come out at the same time in the future. let me illustrate this: i spend weeks and weeks in 2001 or 2002 gathering balance sheet data of top 1500 stocks in the US out of bloomberg. it was quite some work but it seemed worth the effort. we then found out that bloomberg does the following: if you are let us say in december 2008, bloomberg will give you for the latest quarter earnings of a company Q3, which is quite correct, since in december you do not know the earnings of Q4. at the beginning of jan, they still show Q3 as latest quarter earnings, since they have not got data for Q4. now comes the point, at the moment they actually get the data for Q4 they assume they had known it early january. thus you have a time series for quarterly earnings that assumes that on jan 1st you knew earnings of Q4, which is plain wrong. now you tackle that by putting save cushion in, but you end up with data that is meaningless for forecasting. the most interesting fundamental figure are earnings forecasts. IMO this is because a researcher does not just forecast a single number, but essentially forecasts the whole balance sheet and the earningsforecast is a mere function of that. so, instead of having a mere description of last quarter's balance sheet, you have and educated guess about the next quarter's. while i believe fundamental data does make sense for big picture decisions, it is probably just 25%-35% ingredient for a trading system based on fundamentals. the rest will again be price derived or option derived. we tested about two dozen of factors. about 8 or so were balance sheet data. the rest was technicals. if you use fundamental data, make sure, that the different figures do not overlap. 1.5 cents ...