It’s a series of tubes

The Internet is pretty cool.  Can’t remember who was Secretary of State under Calvin Coolidge?  Wondering how Lindsay Lohan’s doing in the slammer?  You’re covered.

You can also get good information on the business and finance world, even on sites that are free.  For example, there are many websites that offer, in front of their paywall (if they even have one), information on IPOs.  Prominent among these are Yahoo Business, Hoover’s, IPO Monitor, and Renaissance Capital.

Now, these are all legitimate and well-established providers  — no straw men here.   Still, something interesting happens if we search for recent IPOs  — those filed in the last two weeks — on each of these four sites.  We get four different lists.  Yahoo’s list shows the most results at 28, but still lacks a number of records that appear on some of the other lists.  This is not an indictment of these providers, but a cautionary reminder.  Given the volume and complexity of securities filing data, inconsistencies and omissions are almost inevitable.

On the Knowledge Mosaic website, we don’t currently tag IPOs as such.  But using our SEC Filings page, you can locate all the IPOs cited in those four lists.  You can also find several (Lisboa Leisure, OICco Acquisition III, Inc., Seven Arts Pictures PLC) that aren’t.