⚡ A Lightning Fast Issuer and Security Lookup JSON API: Public Market Exchange Data and SEC Filings at Your Fingertips

Regulatory market participants like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and public market exchanges like the Nasdaq and NYSE house information that’s necessary for investors. However, writing code to integrate with and synchronize data with these entities is far from straightforward.

On one hand, the SEC website contains a flood of information about companies. On the other hand, their data are often not up to date, or can only be accessed through convoluted and unreliable technical backchannels.

Similarly, Nasdaq and NYSE listings must be tracked, but changes to those
listings aren’t available so easily.

Keeping all these data in sync is a necessity for any trader, and being able
to do so in an organized and timely manner will help produce alpha over
competitors who can’t do it as well.

Example partial response to retrieve and its respective securities

Enter issuerQL

To help developers have easier access to these data, we’ve launched issuerQL, which solves a common problem that many developers face when working with US public market financial data:

The SEC and exchanges have so much data, and there is no real-time (or near real-time) API that synchronizes all these data to easily prototype on top of, let alone build production workflows on.

This problem makes it difficult for developers (especially those in Fintech) to build what they want with the data out there.

We want to change that and take care of all the plumbing so you can write code to trade with and build applications on top of.

issuerQL is built on top of an Elixir & Phoenix backend, which allows the API to serve back lightning fast responses. You’ll be able to build tools to investigate US public market financial data, while also knowing that the data are up to date.

You can query an issuer by its ticker or cik, and retrieve back its
relevant information and securities.

Request:

/api/issuer?symbol=actt

Response:

{
 “cik”: “0001753706”,
 “name”: “Act II Global Acquisition Corp.”,
 “securities”: [
      {
        “exchange”: “NASDAQ”,
        “financial_status”: “Normal (Default): Issuer Is NOT Deficient, Delinquent, or Bankrupt.”,
        “is_etf”: false,
        “market_category”: “NASDAQ Capital Market”,
        “name”: “Warrant”,
        “symbol”: “ACTTW”
      },
      {
        “exchange”: “NASDAQ”,
        “financial_status”: “Normal (Default): Issuer Is NOT Deficient, Delinquent, or Bankrupt.”,
        “is_etf”: false,
        “market_category”: “NASDAQ Capital Market”,
        “name”: “Unit”,
        “symbol”: “ACTTU”
      },
      {
        “exchange”: “NASDAQ”,
        “financial_status”: “Normal (Default): Issuer Is NOT Deficient, Delinquent, or Bankrupt.”,
        “is_etf”: false,
        “market_category”: “NASDAQ Capital Market”,
        “name”: “Class A Ordinary Shares”,
        “symbol”: “ACTT”
      }
 ],
 “sic”: “2060”,
 “success”: true
}

You can also query for changes on the Nasdaq and NYSE exchanges.

Request:

/api/changes

Response:

{
 “changes”: [
      {
        “change_type”: “patch”,
        “data”: {
          “field”: “financial_status”,
          “name”: “Common Stock”,
          “new_value”: “Normal (Default): Issuer Is NOT Deficient, Delinquent, or Bankrupt.”,
          “old_value”: “Deficient: Issuer Failed to Meet NASDAQ Continued Listing Requirements”,
          “patched_at”: “2020–05–23T01:45:00.983438Z”,
          “symbol”: “MARK”
        },
        “schema_type”: “security”
      },
      {
        “change_type”: “removal”,
        “data”: {
          “name”: “Pacer Benchmark Retail Real Estate SCTR ETF”,
          “removed_at”: “2020–05–22T07:43:57.391276Z”,
          “symbol”: “RTL”
        },
        “schema_type”: “security”
      },
      {
        “change_type”: “addition”,
        “data”: {
          “added_at”: “2020–05–15T22:27:16.000000Z”,
          “name”: “Depositary Shares, Each Representing 1/1,000th Interest in a Share of 6.125% Non Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series C”,
          “symbol”: “SF$C”
        },
        “schema_type”: “security”
      },
      {
        “change_type”: “patch”,
        “data”: {
          “field”: “financial_status”,
          “name”: “Common Stock”,
          “new_value”: “Normal (Default): Issuer Is NOT Deficient, Delinquent, or Bankrupt.”,
          “old_value”: “Deficient: Issuer Failed to Meet NASDAQ Continued Listing Requirements”,
          “patched_at”: “2020–05–22T01:43:27.504667Z”,
          “symbol”: “ASTC”
        },
        “schema_type”: “security”
       }
 ],
 “success”: true
}

Additionally, we support XML to help integrate with legacy code and applications.

Why we built this

SEC filings house an incredible amount of information. Reading and parsing through SEC filings is required for investors. It’s also important to companies to understand industry and competitor dynamics. We had previously worked on an API focused solely on filings and we found that in addition to filings, synchronization of issuer and exchange data was necessary.

Now that we can provide customers with up-to-date synchronized issuer data, we’ll be making our filings endpoints public again.

What else can be built on the API?

Here are some things you could build on top of this API:

• A web-based dashboard of issuer and security information
• Statistical analyses of exchange listing changes to offer correlative predictions on future price movement
• An augment to your automated trading platform to help your system be aware of issuer and security changes
• Keep track of troublesome issuers who run the risk of getting de-listed

Conclusion

The issuerQL API will allow you build applications like you haven’t before.

Come try the API at https://issuerql.com.

Be sure to visit our blog regularly for new announcements and deep dives on how we use technology to help investors make great decisions.