Why Fundamental Data Matters – and How viaNexus Makes It Better
Even as a lapsed financial analyst, I still deeply value high-quality company fundamental data. It’s at the bedrock of securities research and investing – the foundation for analyzing business performance, valuing companies, and pricing securities. But as they say: garbage in, garbage out.
In this post we talk about the flavors of fundamental data, and with your free viaNexus token you can use a handy excel sheet that pull in financials, and displays it ready for analysis! You can see definitions and calculations too.
New Constructs is our partner and provider of US Normalized Financial Data. Check them out at: https://www.newconstructs.com/
What Makes Good Fundamental Data?
Here's what I believe separates high quality from low quality in fundamental data:
|
Quality Attribute |
Why It Matters |
|
Consistency (Through Time) |
Adjustments must be handled consistently over time. Staff
"judgement calls" shouldn't cause drift. |
|
Normalization |
Standardized reporting across companies and time periods. |
|
Completeness |
Full balance sheet, income statement, and cashflow
available. |
|
Timeliness |
Fast availability after press releases and filings. |
Isn't US Filing Data Already Standardized?
You'd think so. Firms file using XBRL tagging, and post to EDGAR — the official SEC filing site (free to access, by the way — beware of impostor sites charging fees).
But reality is messier:
|
Assumed |
Reality |
|
XBRL enforces consistency |
XBRL was made too flexible; companies extend and rename
fields (e.g., IBM reports "Sales", Microsoft reports
"Revenue"). |
|
EDGAR ensures structure |
EDGAR hosts filings but does not guarantee normalized,
comparable data. |
|
Enforcement is strict |
Enforcement of filing consistency has been "flexible"
at best. |
Result: there's an entire ecosystem of intermediaries trying to clean this up — some better than others.
The Three Flavors of Fundamental Data
|
Version |
Description |
Pros |
Cons |
|
1) As-Reported Financials |
Raw scrape of SEC filings (warts and all). |
Fast, authentic. |
Inconsistent, hard to model or display cleanly. |
|
2) Normalized Financials |
Reclassified and mapped to a standard schema. |
Easier to use in models; more consistency. |
Risk of inconsistency over time if humans make too many
judgement calls. |
|
3) Normalized + Adjusted Financials |
Deep normalization plus footnote adjustments (e.g.,
deferred revenue, pension liabilities). |
Best for serious analysis. Most consistent. |
Less common, more expensive, requires expertise. |
How viaNexus Solves This
viaNexus provides both as-reported and best-in-class normalized fundamental data:
|
Dataset |
Source |
What's Included |
Key Features |
|
Reported Fundamentals |
viaNexus CORE |
Parsed EDGAR filings |
Quarters, Annuals, TTM. 10-Q, 10-K, 20-F. Filing links
included. |
|
Normalized Fundamentals |
New Constructs via Nexus Edge |
Full normalized financials + adjustments |
20 years history, quarterly/annual/TTM, coverage of 3000+
US equities. |
|
Bonus Derived Data |
viaNexus CORE |
Pre-calculated items |
Revenue, EBITDA, Net Income, P/E ratios, EV/EBITDA ratios. |
Why viaNexus Fundamentals Are Different
|
Feature |
viaNexus Advantage |
|
Quality |
Personally tested — and it passes! |
|
History Depth |
20 years+ essential for backtesting and serious modeling. |
|
Professional Licensing |
Licensed for professional and redistribution use (unlike
Yahoo Finance, which is "personal use only" — check the fine
print). |
|
Affordability |
Priced for both commercial and personal users, scalable to
your universe size. |
Try It Yourself
We've made it easy to test:
- Download our Excel workbook (configured for the free tier: 30 stocks):
- Link: fundies_via_Nexus
- Built with PowerQuery to pull live API data.
- Pulls fundamentals, dividends, and prices — plus includes handy valuation and performance metrics.
- Just register, grab your viaNexus API token, and plug it into the Settings tab.
➡️ Bonus: We’re working on a full Excel Add-In for even easier integration!
In Closing
Fundamental data is too important to cut corners.
We invite you to put viaNexus to the test — and let us know what you think.
Your feedback will help us make it even better.