Benjamin

I'm building FastFS now, so we'll have an alternative to our soon-gone beloved QuickFS. Play with it: fastfs.org This is day 3 of building. So far doing 10 years of filings data and derived ratios for US companies on NYSE and Nasdaq. All data coming from the SEC (which is a problem, kinda). Next: quarterly data and price metrics. Goal: by day 10 make it good enough to fill the QuickFS-shaped hole in your heart. If you spot bad data or have ideas, hit me up. PS: Complete Twitter greenhorn, so bear with me if things get weird.

@crabcapitalist Yea.. it sucks. Still at it though whenever I can, will mention here if there’s a win

@ebert_io Bummer- I do not know of any type of source for this info for even a highly motivated individual. This looked like a ray of hope at first after stumbling across it! Only way to access standardized financial statements is to be an institution...I guess???😔

Day 72 building FastFS Couple things: - Added 11 new exchanges to the site: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria. Now covering 24 exchanges and 40,000+ companies. - Mobile experience improved: faster loads, search bar that stays where it should, modals you can close, back-to-search shortcut - The usual pile of smaller fixes and polish. Also: stopped the pipeline effort to source the data to power the API. Initial results were good but issues never stopped. Getting it to reliably do thousands of companies across countries and decades will take me until ripe old age. So no API, Excel add-in, bulk downloads for now. Apologies to those who expressed interest. GuruFocus is probably the best way to cover those use cases. Next: implementing user feedback, fixing issues as they come up. Let me know what other countries you want to see. Kinda wrapping up here with the regular tweeting. Hasn't been that regular lately anyway. I'll do occasional updates when there's something worth mentioning. Thanks for following along guys <3

@CompoundingLab Hi, thanks. Have to decline for now, too many things going already. Best of luck!

@ebert_io Hi there Benjamin. Impressive work on fastfs. I want to recreate quickfs. Are you willing to help me like a consultant?

@GoxhajShkelzen For now yes. It would need to be rebuilt on top of a new data provider who will differ in format, quality etc. Possible but a lot of work. Would be great to relaunch eventually but no plans at the moment. Can’t prioritize it now unfortunately.

@ebert_io Is the project fully down aside from the GuruFocus API old keys? Any plans for a future relaunch?

@cobraale_ Thanks for the heads up! It’s true but programmatic redistribution via API, excel addin etc is still not covered as per the license agreement. That’s why I ended up dropping it

@ebert_io Hello, I would like to point out to you that GuruFocus changed its policies and now it allows data redistribution under the "commercial license" gurufocus.com/data-api/prici…

@BestOfAllTylers Thanks, good ideas. Onto my list they go. I'll DM you on the referral to understand what you have in mind.

@ebert_io - Referral program - Per Share Growth Rate section - Dynamic Key Statistics -- 10-Y & 5-Y if data available. 3-Y & 1-Y if 10-Y data is unavailable. - Insurance Companies (PGR): Combined, Expense, Loss Ratios, Net Written Premium - Site Dictionary detailing core calculations

Day 36 building FastFS Bunch of things happened: - Ted - Mr. QuickFS - Cooper gave a quote for the landing page! How cool is that. I placed it such that you will. not. miss it. - Subscriptions kept losing money, so I flipped the model yet again. Now pay as you go. Casual use stays free. #pricing" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">fastfs.org/#pricing. May finally start to sustain the site. - ... and soon, hopefully, because quite a bunch of new users came on! I am happy. - Building the pipeline to source data directly from SEC filings. Problem after problem after problem but that's what we signed up for. Think it's gonna work eventually. Another month or two for the first version. If you want API, Excel add-in, or bulk downloads, please enlighten me: - What data do you need. Any particular index / exchange / geography? - Annual only, or quarterly too? - 10, 20, 30 years of history? Tell me: benjamin@fastfs.org Next: Build a full 30-year sample dataset for one company, and put it on the site along with API docs, so you can play with it.

@PaAmstad GF is fine for the website so that stays, coverage unchanged. Just can't use it to source data for the API etc, due to license limitations. Tried to self-source but normalization is precisely what i couldn't crack reliably. So moving on for now.

@ebert_io For my understanding: "Building the pipeline to source data directly from SEC filings" That means you no longer plan to source the data from gurufocus? Meaning you will only cover us stocks? (no longer european stocks). How do you plan to handle data normalization?

@mark_aleks Thanks! I do plan on adding them, just didn’t get to it yet.

@ebert_io Job well done. I used QuickFS for years too. Will you eventually have REITS and MLP stocks? Looking up a few I noticed aren't on there yet.

@GnanchandC Great suggestion, thanks

@ebert_io If you can take screener.in (Indian stock screener) as an inspiration to build FastFS it would be great. I beseech you to look at the wide variety of stock screens that can be created by using almost all of the fundamental ratios - screener.in/explore/

@Speedwell_LLC which book is this?

If you are business because you want to make money, you will save money by getting out of business. You are in business without sufficient reason. The reason must be to supply a human need or want, and such a business is bound to prosper.

@tylerwhatsg00d Looks promising! Thanks for sharing, I’ll check it out

@ebert_io hey thx for all your hard work not sure if you're looking but this project is quite helpful when getting filings data (i've dealt with edgar straight from sec site and i feel your pain) github.com/dgunning/edgar…

@sundaystockpick @jpauldaly @FocusedCompound Thanks for sharing! Still building, let me know if you face any issues.

@jpauldaly @FocusedCompound I just learned there is someone who has built a better paid for quickfs clone @ebert_io fastfs.org

For those who miss QuickFS, I created code for SEC filing companies to display all historical financials based on xbrl filings. I do not want to host it so I put it on github for you to download locally and use. I do not have any microphone on x so I will tag people I have seen use it in case they find it useful. @FocusedCompound, @TreyHenninger, @DeepValueStonks, @david_katunaric github.com/Dolventures/qu…

Day 24 building FastFS Done with the API! But things got derailed. GuruFocus licensing forbids granting API access. It only allows for the data to be displayed on the website. Ted cleared that up for me, probably saving me a lot of pain. I should have known it, but I naively had assumed that it's alright since I had bought the proper license. So that sucks a little now. But the mission isn't dead yet I think. It just means we need a new data source. And to avoid any similar issues in the future, I'm gonna source the data myself, from the original public filings, the actual PDFs. That's a big task and I probably wouldn't have started in the first place, had I known this was coming. But now here we are, there are users, there's an API fully built out, are we gonna stop now or what. No. So that's the new focus now. The initial version won't have data as extensive as the website (which still uses GuruFocus), but it'll be enough to be useful, and expand over time. People who need API: tell me how you're gonna use it, number of daily requests, how many tickers, single fields vs whole statements, usecase... info like that helps speed it up. Email me: benjamin@fastfs.org

Day 23 building FastFS Changed the free tier's behavior. You now start with 20 Pro searches to explore everything. After that, it's 5 free normal searches per day. So no longer locked out after the initial 20. People kept asking for it, as QuickFS had free usage too. I agree it was one of the coolest things about it. So I think that's a better way now. Casual users probably don't need Pro, but you'll still want to look things up every now and then. I'll keep experimenting and flipflopping around, based on your feedback, to find the best approach. Likely enabling more free usage over time. Also: 1. Historic valuation ratios are in. P/E, P/B, P/S now show year by year in Key Ratios, and in Excel and CSV exports too. You can now stare at how expensive MSFT has been for 20 years straight and wonder why that is. Let me know if you want more ratios to be added. 2. Dividend data were off for some companies, especially in quarterly view. Fixed. fastfs.org Next: wrap up the first version of the API, get it ready for you to test.