US and international companies with publicly traded stock on US stock exchanges are required to file documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These SEC documents are the source for financial information found in the resources listed below.
Use Mergent Market Atlas to search for publicly traded companies based on name, location, industry, financial data etc. and create custom lists. Company information includes financial statements, ratios, sustainability, SEC filings, annual reports, independent research and company reports.
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Ratio sourcebooks contain financial and operating ratios, and composite balance sheet and income statements for specific industries, usually arranged by SIC or NAICS numbers. They can be used to provide guidance when putting together the financial section of your business plan. These historic volumes are all available in print at 2 North Reference.
Fundamental to conducting industry research is the classification of economic activity. The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system is widely used to classify US economic activity. This system was developed by the Office of Management and Budget and is still used by the SEC as well as in some business information publications.
In 1997, a new system of classification was instituted incorporating Canada, Mexico and the United States and was called the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS, pronounced "nakes" which rhymes with "snakes"). Today NAICS is used by the Census Bureau's Economic Census and in many business publications.
A ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular company. You can find these in many of the business databases or you can use free financial websites such as Yahoo! Finance.
