thats true; i have yet to see structured financial data for cheap. although depending on the targeted audience, that 'structure' varies. equity analysts might be concerned about operational performance, top line growth, margins, and stock buyback programs. debt/credit analysts might be concerned about cash flows, revolver draws, commercial paper programs, etc. there are many niche markets and existing services out there may have already provided these structures (albeit not cheaply and they may be proprietary if at a firm).
building a retail brokerage firm around structured market information i think is harder than it sounds. unless the transaction costs for each trade reflect the value-add of having a 'free' service structure financial data. currently, transaction costs reflect the quality of investment reports prepared by (usually) CFA investment professionals. i'm not sure if the free structured investment information would yield a transaction fee material enough to warrant a sustainable business model.
I have thought about the targeted audience portion of your comment. That is fully addressable through the use of templates. My daily work is in the interest rate risk space for a bank. As part of keeping up on the space, I read the financials of other banks. There are certain things I look for in these financials. If there was a way to create a template that was automatically populated with the information I am looking for, then that would be an improvement over the method I currently use. With that said, I'm not a computer scientist. My programming skills are limited to the more mathematical side of finance. I don't know how difficult it would be to provide such a thing given the challenges of parsing natural language.
As for the pay wrapper, I will admit that operating a brokerage firm at a large enough scale and a low enough price to attract a significant portion of the market share while somehow turning a profit would certainly be a challenge; however, I am not ready to abandon this line of thinking yet.
building a retail brokerage firm around structured market information i think is harder than it sounds. unless the transaction costs for each trade reflect the value-add of having a 'free' service structure financial data. currently, transaction costs reflect the quality of investment reports prepared by (usually) CFA investment professionals. i'm not sure if the free structured investment information would yield a transaction fee material enough to warrant a sustainable business model.