Some of the most important information to the investor can be found on EDGAR, a free web site run by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Every publicly traded company is required by law to file detailed financial statements to the SEC including annual financial statements (form 10-K), quarterly financial statements (form 10-Q), and other forms dealing with the inside transactions of a company's management.

All of these statements are freely available on EDGAR. A quick tutorial on using EDGAR is available on the home page. I'll go through a quick overview in finding the most recent annual report for Disney. From the EDGAR home page, click on the ?Search for Company Filings? link. From this page you can see there is a lot of information available for company filers. One could go about several ways to find Disney's latest yearly financial statement; I'm going to click on ?Companies & Other Filers?. In this entry box we could search by Company name, CIK (ticker symbol), file number, state, or SIC (Standard Industrial Classification). As you can see, a lot of information is available here at the click of a button. You could find all the financial statements filed from companies incorporated in the state of Arkansas by typing AR in the State/Country box. But I digress; let's get back to finding Disney's yearly statement. I'll type Disney in the ?Company name:? box and click ?Find Companies?.

In the results page there are several returns under the name Disney. I can see that there are two listings for Disney Enterprises Inc. I click on the CIK link next to the first one and find that it deals with older filings before 1996. I'm interested in the most recent 10-K filing so I'll go back to the results page and click on the CIK link next to the second Disney Enterprises Inc. listing.

Finally, I've arrived at the results page. Another search form is available to further drill down the results. I'm looking for form 10-K, so I'll type that in the box and click ?Retrieve Filings.? Now I have only the results I desire ? form 10-K from 2006 and years prior. Disney's fiscal year ends 9/30 so they'll be due to file another 10-K within 60 days of that date.