Scraping EDGAR with Python

This article presents Python codes that can be used to extract data from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. The Python program web crawls to obtain URL paths for company filings of required reports, such as Form 10-K. The program then performs a textual analysis and counts the number of occurrences of words in the filing that reflect, for example, uncertainty (or any other quality specified by the researcher). The program can be easily modified to conduct other searches by changing the word list, company names, or SEC filings. The Python program could be used in an introductory graduate data analytics course in finance that has a web crawling or textual analysis component.