How Providers Source Global Stock Prices and Financial Statements
Summary
The discussion describes common routes by which financial data providers may obtain stock prices and company financial information. For company fundamentals such as balance sheets, one answer points to the issuing company as the underlying source. For trading data, it identifies exchanges as primary sources, with providers acquiring and redistributing information, sometimes through intermediaries connected to multiple exchanges. It also notes that some U.S. financial filings and price data may be available directly from public agencies or exchanges.
The replies contrast these arrangements with Australia, where one contributor describes historical exchange data as more restricted and costly. These are informal, anecdotal explanations rather than a systematic survey of vendors, licensing terms, or current market rules. Availability, fees, coverage, and permitted reuse vary by jurisdiction and dataset, so the examples should not be treated as universal or up-to-date sourcing guidance.
Key ideas
- Company-issued financial statements are one primary source for fundamental data.
- Exchanges generate trading data that vendors may license and redistribute.
- Intermediaries can help providers collect data across multiple exchanges.
- Data access and historical coverage can vary substantially by jurisdiction.
- The replies are anecdotal and do not establish current terms for every market.
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Full text
# Historical data for global stocks # Historical data for global stocks Where are companies like finnhub.io or finance portals getting their data from? Do they fetch the historical stock quotes from the exchanges directly? If so, the have to collect the data from a lot of different exchanges over the world, which must be quite expensive because if the prices the exchanges charge. And where do they get all the financial data like balance sheets from? ## Answer by develarist (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/54490 i would've said to email them, but the link you provided is a domain for sale. anyway, if a company wants to be supplied something, they go to the source. who could possibly be generating balance sheets for a "global stock". well, the company that issued that global stock. The data provider takes the financial data from the source (paid or by some other deal) and puts it on display to their own (possibly wider) audience. as for trading data, stock exchanges have to track all that info, so the data provider, you guessed it, once again goes to the source for that dataset (paid or by other deals, possibly with some telecom intermediary that has ties to multiple international stock exchanges) and re-distributes it. it wouldn't be hard for a site to replicate financial data from another site that's online though, using some sort of automated macro API that copies and pastes. ## Answer by Con Fluentsy (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/55280 American companies financials is generally straight from the securities authority responsible for free, it is easy to create your own api for USA stuff free and easily available, the share price data is also freely available from the exchanges direct, Nasdaq , NYSE etc.Not so Australia, the ASX has a strangle hold on all data and charges like a wounded bull for Historical access greater than 2 years, you can get 5 years on some sites but you have to sign up and you will be bombarded with spam forever. They are the only sites I visit, I abandoned Australia as a lost cause because of their complete lack of transparency. It is shocking. You could be buying a chocolate coated turd on the ASX you would have no real accurate way of knowing without coughing up large sums of cash.
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