Here's a clue for you: Some emerging markets publish, on a DAILY basis, foreign inflows and outflows, for free. All things being equal, they provide good proxy for Trimtabs' product. Here is one of my favorites: http://www.tse.com.tw/docs/market/t13sa230.htm
That information is based on mutual fund disclosure. It is dated even though IBD publishes it as a monthly information the actual information may be much older. There is a proposal to get mutual funds to release information on their holding on monthly basis, currently most release on six monthly basis. Many release only top 20 or 25 holdings on a regular basis. As to the tab on etrade, whenever institutional investment in particular company crosses a threshold of 5% they have to declare that and they also have to file changes in their investment on regular basis. This information is also available on MSNmoney or yahoofn.
tse.com is a great example, it has timely information but I'm not a foreign investment investor. The regulations with mutual fund companies is arwy. Maybe the current mutual fund scandal will reverse this indisclosure problem. The way tse.com operates is the way in which I would like trimtabs.com to operate but nonetheless I still am very happy with trim tabs and the whole liquidity theory is for me. In my opinion, a good generalization of the US equities markets would be, they're intricate government regulated pyramid schemes because nearly all shares are inflated beyond what any of the otc or nyse traded companies are actually worth (obviously). For this reason, the equities markets are hilariously absurd (games) and greatly sybolic of the illogical-logic and redundancy, et cetera that is probably rife throughout the entire universe. And the institutional investment tab on my etrade account states mostly buys that are under 5%, and so according to easyguru's explanation these companies that own under 5% and are not required to state ownership are simply granting the information? My two bits are probably not original, but nonetheless.... The Newbie