sec and xbrl

[John Wonderlich]

looks like a great move from the SEC...

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20081219_3214.php

SEC mandates open standard for financial records

By Gautham Nagesh 12/19/2008

The Securities and Exchange Commission passed a rule on Thursday requiring public companies and mutual funds to use a standard electronic format to publish financial information, bringing more transparency, and presumably oversight, to corporate balance sheets and earnings...

Adding XBRL tags to financial disclosures makes them searchable and much easier to compare. What used to be available only to financial professionals now will be easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Investors, and regulators, in theory, will be able to analyze data faster and more easily, and possibly finding anomalies in corporate financial statements and investments...

[David Stephenson]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:43 PM, John Wonderlich <johnwon...@gmail.com> wrote:

looks like a great move from the SEC...

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20081219_3214.php

IMHO, this is a real watershed! When companies have to compile reports in XBRL, it is logical that they'd want to amortize the cost by making that same data available on a real-time basis externally to try to rebuild public trust (especially in banking and auto industries) and by making it available to their workers to give them, in  many cases, the first real-time data they've had access, making them more efficient.  Plan to really stress this in my "Democratizing Data" book!

W. David Stephenson  |  Principal  |  Stephenson Strategies
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