Get out your red SharpiesTM, Fools, and mark your calendars -- Aug. 11, 2005, was the day the music died.
More precisely, it was a day on which individual investors received yet another lesson in the law of "no free lunches." Whilst researching past financial performance for a column discussing the H1 2005 results for garage operator Standard Parking
In essence, what I found upon pulling up anumati's site was an ad from GoDaddy.com, offering to sell me the anumati.com domain name and announcing that: "This domain name expired on 08/01/05 and is pending renewal or deletion." Sigh.
It's just a continuation of the trend of free, easy-to-use financial information websites either going extinct (anumati), reformatting themselves to become less user-friendly and more "quit looking at our free data and buy our premium stuff"-ey (Dun & Bradstreet
Worst of all are the sites that can certainly afford to provide free financial data and that still do so, but simply put less effort into making sure that that data's accurate because, well, there's no money in it (Yahoo! Finance).
Speaking of which, for years, we at the Fool have pointed Fool community members toward Yahoo!'s
Of course, it isn't true. But to confirm that for free, you most likely need to visit the SEC's official website and wade through the company's actual filings. The truth is in there, but it may take you some time to find it. Best bring a bagged lunch.
Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of either of the companies mentioned in this article.