"As far as we know, this time is not available on any publicly available database. We initially obtained these times using real time “scrapes” of the SEC EDGAR site. We subsequently used a collection of these times made available by the Tier 1 subscriber. Given that this entity’s business model depends, at least in part, on obtaining and disseminating these filings in the most timely manner possible, they have strong incentives to collect accurate information about when filings become available on the SEC website."

Basically, clock skew is not accounted for at all and timings are potentially done from disparate and non-common observation points. It's quite possible that the delays they observe are strictly due to noise.

Even more concerning, is that they map news events to market data using non-synchronized market data timestamps. It appears to be TAQ data. The timing aspect of the entire article is very poorly described but yet is fundamental to the claim they are making.

There are no public prices and you need to email some company for more details. With most businesses this means you contact a salesperson who will play an extended game of "how much you got?" and the pricing AND the level of service provided will vary widely depending upon your negotiating power.

The dearth of information about this 'product' sold by a 3rd party suggests something shady is probably going on.

>The paper is written by economists and not technologists, and so there is no mention of CDNs or web caches

Caching is a pretty poor excuse. Caches can be invalidated. And CDN basically means caching by another name.

It makes much more sense (both economically and technically) that they simply crippled the free feed. Especially since it is provided by a private third party who makes bank on the people who purchase the premium edition.

http://contracts.onecle.com/edgar-online/trw.svc.1998.09.11....

    A.   Broadcast Service Subscription Charge
    This charge will be set on October 1, 1998 based on the number of signed
    contracts received by that date. The table below contains a 14-month price at
    various subscription levels:

    SUBSCRIBERS AS OF
    OCTOBER 1, 1998                PRICE
                          
    1 to 8                        $152,172
    9 to 15                         92,967
    16 to 25                        55,346
    25+                             42,179

At the limit, the slice of pie pricing is completely continuous and each incremental subscriber lowers the cost for everyone. This one may be coarser grained.

Nothing inherently shady or anticompetitive about such a scheme. It also tends to arise where governments (like SEC, or like county clerk offices) have a dual mission of providing public access while offsetting costs, and need/want to outsource it to a for profit service provider.

Edit: downvoting does not change this fact either.

Also, note that you are paying to receive an electronic feed of a company's public SEC filings, which include filings detailing purchase and sale of stock by the company's employees, which are called "insiders" in this context.

The phrase "insider data" conjures images of insider trading, which relies on trading on material non-public information, and something quite different.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/fast-traders-are-getting-data... (paywall, Google the title to bypass)

There are two very detailed documents on the linked website that have both business and technical details along with specifications for the service.

There is nothing shady going on here.

Even the contracts to run private prisons don't give this much opportunity to gouge.

Were this service run on an at-cost basis would maybe cost $80 or so per month. $200 at most.

The number of firms that can profit from trading off realtime access to fundamentals is not large. It's a market where viable real products need to have customer lifetime values in the many millions.

Off the top of my head - distribute encrypted blob ahead of time, then broadcast the key using longwave radio from the South Pole.

For instance, how would you feel if you heard the SEC invested in a bespoke technology for doing this just to mitigate a document timing issue only interesting to a very small number of market participants? I'd be upset about the waste of my tax dollars personally.

Sort of like GPS - maintained by one party, useful for the whole world - but much simpler to implement.

This is SpaceX's killer app.

The only creatures who are disadvantaged by this scheme are polar bears and others living way north of the stock exchange - they also get their data late, but can't compensate by shorter distance to exchange.