Will Real-time Financial Reporting Kill The 10-Q?

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Accountants are not given enough credit for their senses of humor.The Big Four firms, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and Ernst & Young, have suggested that corporations release a large portion of their financial and operating data in real-time. The technology for doing this, Extensible Business Reporting Language, already exists. The accounting firms are further suggesting that companies offer other key operational numbers like employee turnover and customer retention as well.The proposed system may sound insane, but why should corporate reporting be different from any other form of information. Software and the internet have made vast quantities of data and news information at the touch of a figure.Investing is a dicey business. Executives at public companies always know more than investors. Some investors believe that securities analysts get more information than the general public. Investment bankers and corporate customers often have insights into a public company’s progress that investors may not see for months.You can order a car and groceries online. Why not up-to-date financial reports on your investment?

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618