A reader of my book, Choose Stocks Wisely, wrote me the other day and our e-mail conversation prompted this post. He was performing stock analysis on several companies and noticed that Finviz was reflecting a September 30, 2013 date for the most recent financial statement information available. He checked Yahoo Finance and found information was updated through December 31, 2013. I appreciated his note and it gives me opportunity to address an important subject, namely the difference between primary and secondary sources of financial statement information.

I recently published a post at my blog called “Filing Financial Reports” which attempted to explain the nature of financial statement filings for a company as either quarterly filings (10Qs) or annual filings (10Ks) and the different timelines for filing quarterly reports vs. filing annual reports. The 10Qs and 10Ks are the “primary” source of financial statement information. These filings reflect the information filed directly to the SEC by the reporting company.

Finviz uses financial statement information supplied by Google Finance. Both Google Finance and Yahoo Finance are “secondary” sources of financial statement information in that they extract their information from the “primary” data included in the SEC filings. The extraction time might vary a little bit such that Yahoo updates financial statement information quicker than Google or vice versa.

So, where can one go to access the primary source, namely the actual 10Q or 10K filings? I like to use nasdaq.com. As soon as the financial statements are filed with the SEC, the filings become available at the nasdaq site. There are many different kinds of filings (other than 10Qs and 10Ks) for a company. To access the company SEC filings, go to nasdaq.com, input your stock symbol and once the stock page comes up, scroll down the links on the left side and select “SEC Filings.” A second page will open and it will show the twenty most recent company filings (note that you can page back to see earlier filings; there are twenty to a page). Now, find the most recent financial statement filing. It will either be a 10Q (quarterly) or the 10K (annual), depending on when you are checking relative to the company’s fiscal year.

The actual filings at nasdaq are not as user friendly, in my view, as a source for efficient extraction of numbers needed for scoring stocks because the financial statements are couched amidst extensive financial disclosure notes required by the SEC to accompany the statements. However, after fishing for stocks (finviz) and scoring them with secondary source information (like from Google Finance or Yahoo Finance), it is a useful endeavor to check out the most recent company financial statement filing at nasdaq.com with regard to a company that has captured your interest as a potentially attractive investment choice.