Product Comparison: Fundamentals vs. Market Data

If you're building a financial application, one of the first decisions you'll make is whether you need fundamental data, market data, or both.

While these product categories often work together, they answer very different questions:

• Fundamentals tell you what a company is worth and how it is performing financially.
• Market Data tells you how the market is currently valuing that company.

Understanding the difference will help you choose the right datasets for your application.

What Are Fundamentals?

Fundamental data comes from a company's financial statements and regulatory filings. It describes the financial health and operating performance of a business rather than its stock price.

Typical use cases include:

• Financial analysis
• Company screening
• Valuation models
• Long-term investing
• Accounting research
• Corporate finance

Examples of fundamental data include:

• Revenue
• Net Income
• EBITDA
• Earnings Per Share (EPS)
• Cash Flow
• Assets and Liabilities
• Shareholders' Equity
• Profit Margins
• Debt Ratios
• Institutional Holdings
• Insider Transactions

Intrinio's US Fundamentals dataset also includes:

• As-reported SEC financials
• Standardized financial statements
• Company reference data
• More than 130 financial metrics and ratios
• Quarterly and annual financial history
• XBRL-derived data from SEC filings

New SEC filings are processed quickly, with initial metrics generally available within minutes and standardized financials shortly thereafter.

What Is Market Data?

Market data reflects what is happening in the market as securities trade.

Instead of describing the company itself, market data describes investor activity and price movement.

Common applications include:

• Trading platforms
• Portfolio monitoring
• Charting
• Quantitative strategies
• Real-time alerts
• Technical analysis

Examples include:

• Last trade price
• Bid and ask prices
• Open, High, Low, Close (OHLC)
• Volume
• Trade timestamps
• Quotes
• Order flow
• Tick-by-tick trades

Depending on your needs, Intrinio offers multiple types of market data, including:

• EquitiesEdge (real-time derived stock pricing)
• OptionsEdge (real-time derived options analytics)
• End-of-day stock prices
• Historical stock prices
• End-of-day options data
• Tick-level market data
• Delayed market data
• WebSocket streaming for real-time applications

These products provide both REST APIs and, where applicable, WebSocket streaming.

Fundamentals vs. Market Data

When Should You Use Fundamentals?

Choose fundamentals when your application needs to answer questions like:

• Is this company profitable?
• How much revenue does it generate?
• What is its debt level?
• Has earnings grown over time?
• What are its financial ratios?
• Who owns the company's shares?

Examples include:

• Stock screeners
• Investment research platforms
• Valuation models
• Financial dashboards
• Academic research
• Corporate analysis

When Should You Use Market Data?

Choose market data when you need to answer questions like:

• What is the current stock price?
• What was today's trading volume?
• What is the bid/ask spread?
• How much has the stock moved today?
• What are today's option prices?
• What trades just occurred?

Examples include:

• Trading applications
• Real-time dashboards
• Portfolio trackers
• Alerting systems
• Charting software
• Algorithmic trading

Most Applications Use Both

Many financial applications combine fundamentals and market data to provide a more complete picture.

For example, an investment dashboard might display:

• Current stock price
• Daily price change
• Market capitalization
• Revenue
• EPS
• Price-to-Earnings ratio
• Historical price chart
• Quarterly financial statements

By combining both datasets, users can understand not only how the market is pricing a company today, but also why.

Which Intrinio Products Provide Each Type of Data?

These products are included as part of the Intrinio plan packages, making it easy to combine financial statement data with historical and market pricing in a single platform.

Still Not Sure Which You Need?

A simple rule of thumb:

• If you're analyzing the business, you need Fundamentals.
• If you're analyzing the stock, you need Market Data.
• If you're building an investing or trading application, you'll likely want both.

If you're unsure which products best fit your use case, the Intrinio MCP Server can recommend the datasets and API endpoints available with your subscription, helping you get started more quickly.