Global filings search

Global filings search finds a word or phrase in every filing on EDGAR since 2001. Open a result and the filing opens in the reader, on the passage when there's one to land on. Search requires a free account.

How to search

Select the "Global filings search" button in the top bar. On a phone, the button sits under the three dots. Type your words and press Enter.

The "Find in filing" button (magnifier icon) in the same bar searches only the filing you have open.

What to type

Words match anywhere in the same document, in any order. Hover over the question mark in the search field with your cursor to see what you can type:

  • Words: going concern finds documents that contain both words.
  • Quotes: "going concern" finds that exact phrase.
  • OR: restructuring OR severance finds either word.
  • AND: going AND concern is the same as leaving AND out.
  • Minus or NOT: -substantial and NOT substantial both leave out documents with that word.
  • Brackets: Group a choice of words, like (restructure OR restructuring) charges. A phrase in quotes can't go inside brackets.

Only capital AND, OR, and NOT work as operators, the same as in the find bar. The search field highlights each operator as you type. Wildcards like * aren't supported, and a search can be at most 200 characters.

Select the options button at the right of the search field to turn on "Match word variations". Each plain word of four letters or more then also finds its other forms, so restructuring also finds restructure, restructured, and restructures.

Filters

The row under the search field holds seven filters:

  • Form: Any of 214 form types, in the 10 groups EDGAR uses. Select a whole group, select forms one by one, or find a form by name. A form covers its amendments, so 10-K also finds 10-K/A.
  • Period: The past week, month, year, or 5 years, or any time back to 2001. Each choice shows the dates it covers, and the past year is the default.
  • Companies: Up to 10 companies on Free, 120 on Analyst, and 250 on Pro, by name or ticker. Type several at once, separated by commas. "Favorited companies" adds every company you saved a filing from, and you can still add others or remove any one.
  • Headquarters: States and countries from the business address each filer gave EDGAR, one at a time or a whole region, like the United States, Canada, or Elsewhere.
  • Float: Under $75M, $75M to $250M, $250M to $700M, $700M to $10B, $10B or more, or None stated. See float below.
  • Exchange: NASDAQ, NYSE, CBOE, OTC, or No exchange, as the SEC's list of tickers gives them.
  • Industry: The industry EDGAR lists for each company by its SIC code, the SEC's industry code, grouped into the SIC manual's divisions. Select a whole group, select industries one by one, or find an industry by name.

Change a form, period, company, or headquarters with results on screen, and the search runs again. Select a form and leave the words empty to list every filing of that form.

EDGAR can't filter by float, exchange, or industry, so those three check the results as they arrive, with no new search. While one of the three is set, the rest of EDGAR's first 1,000 documents load on their own, so the filter covers all of them.

Select "Reset filters" (circular arrow icon) at the left of the filters to clear them all. Your words and the sorting stay as they are.

Reading the results

EDGAR indexes each document in a filing on its own, so a filing can match through its main document, an exhibit such as a press release, or both. Each row is one filing, and the row names the documents the words were found in.

The rows carry these columns:

  • Company, Exchange, and Ticker: The company the filing is about. On Forms 3, 4, and 5, that's the company whose shares traded, not the insider.
  • Form: The filing's type.
  • Documents that match: The main document, or an exhibit with its type and description, like EX-99.1 Press release.
  • Industry and Headquarters: As the filer gave them to EDGAR.
  • Float: The company's public float. See float below.
  • Period and Filed: The period the filing covers, and the day the filing was made.

Select a column header to sort by that column. Select the header again to reverse the order, and a third time to return to EDGAR's own order.

Switch the view from "Filings" to "Companies" for one row per company, with how many of its filings matched and which forms. Open a company to see its filings. The counts cover the results loaded so far.

Results arrive 100 documents at a time, and more load as you scroll, up to 1,000. A count of 10,000+ means EDGAR stopped counting, not that there were exactly that many. EDGAR doesn't report how many times a word appears inside a document, so there's no count for that.

Opening a result

Select a row and the filing opens in the reader. The filing opens on the first place your words appear when you searched one quoted phrase or one word, and the words were in the filing's main document.

Otherwise the filing opens at the top. That includes a single word of four letters or more with "Match word variations" on, and a filing that matched only in an exhibit.

Select the arrow at the end of a row to see the passages from the main document that carry your words, in the order they appear in the filing, with the words highlighted. Select a passage to open the reader at that spot.

The list shows up to 20 passages, and the count appears beside the arrow. When the filing has more, the count reads like "20 of 57 passages".

To see the rest, select "Open the filing and find" in the last row. The filing opens with your words in the find bar, which highlights every match.

The arrow shows when you searched for words and the main document matched. Passages are read from the filing when you ask, so the first look at a filing nobody has opened takes a moment. Passages don't count toward your daily allowance.

Float

Float is a company's public float, the dollar value of the shares held by non-affiliates, as stated on the cover of the company's last annual report. The value is measured on the last business day of the company's second fiscal quarter.

The figure comes from the SEC's XBRL data, checked against the shares outstanding the company reported and against the sentence on the cover itself.

Float isn't market cap. Float leaves out what insiders hold, and each figure stays until the next annual report, so a figure can be more than a year old. SECSift updates the figures every month and checks new covers every few hours.

Where there's no usable float, the column shows the filer's SEC category instead, "$700M or more" for a large accelerated filer, "$75M to $700M" for an accelerated one, "Smaller reporting", or "Not accelerated". A float the company states as zero shows as "None".

The Float filter reads the same figures. A company with only its SEC category counts when you select every range that category could fall in, so "$700M or more" needs both "$700M to $10B" and "$10B or more".

"None stated" finds the companies whose float shows as "None". A company with neither a float nor a category matches no range.

Limits

Each plan has a daily allowance of requests to EDGAR, 60 on Free, 600 on Analyst, and 1,500 on Pro. A search takes one request for each hundred results it loads, so most take one or two.

With a float, exchange, or industry filter set, a search can load all 1,000 results, which takes up to 10. A search anyone ran in the last 10 minutes is answered from memory and takes none.

Searches are also limited to 12 requests a minute on Free, 24 on Analyst, and 36 on Pro. The daily allowance resets at midnight UTC, and searches from your AI chat through the MCP server draw on the allowance too.

A link to a search is secsift.com/search?q= followed by the words.

The SECSift Chrome extension opens a search from its popup's search box and from the right-click menu.

Note: Search runs on EDGAR's own full-text index, which matches whole words and ignores case. Once a filing's open, the find bar can match case, search tables only, and skip routine text.