The Form S-20 Files Dataset is a complete EDGAR-era corpus of Securities Act registration statements for standardized options, comprising every Form S-20 (original registration under 17 CFR 239.20) and Form S-20/A (amendment, including post-effective amendments) submitted to the SEC from September 1996 to the present. Each record is one full EDGAR accession — a metadata.json filing descriptor plus the EDGAR-SGML-wrapped primary form document and any accompanying exhibits — packaged in monthly ZIP containers and distributed as TXT, JSON, and HTML files. The filer population is narrow: clearing agencies that issue, clear, guarantee, or accept the option contracts being registered, principally The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation (CDCC). Because Form S-20 file numbers persist across decades of amendments against a single underlying registration, the dataset functions as a longitudinal record of how standardized-options registration has been written and re-confirmed under the Securities Act of 1933, with the Rule 9b-1 options-disclosure-document undertaking as its defining legal anchor.
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Dataset Index JSON API
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Form S-20 is the registration statement prescribed by 17 CFR 239.20 for the registration of standardized options under the Securities Act of 1933. It is a specialized, narrow-purpose form that may be used only when the issuer — typically a derivatives clearing organization that issues and is the primary obligor on every outstanding option contract of a given class — undertakes not to issue, clear, guarantee, or accept any option registered on the form unless a definitive options disclosure document (ODD) satisfying Rule 9b-1 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is available to investors. The form thus embodies a hybrid disclosure model: a thin issuer-level prospectus describing the clearing agency, the option product, and the back-up clearing system, paired with a separate ODD that broker-dealers furnish to option investors at account opening and update periodically. Form S-20/A is used to amend a pending or effective S-20, including periodic post-effective amendments that refresh financial statements, raise the number of registered Put and Call contracts, and re-affirm the Rule 9b-1 undertaking.
The dataset captures the full population of Form S-20 and Form S-20/A submissions on EDGAR beginning with the earliest electronic filing in September 1996. Pre-EDGAR paper filings (Form S-20 has existed since the early 1980s) are not included. For each accession, the dataset provides a metadata.json descriptor and every text-format document that accompanied the original EDGAR submission, with the EDGAR SGML document wrapper preserved. Image files (graphics, scanned signature pages, JPEG/GIF figures) are excluded by design, and Form S-20 carries no XBRL or iXBRL exhibits, so dataFiles is consistently empty and linkToXbrl is unpopulated. The dataset's file-type set is TXT, JSON, and HTML; in practice, the primary form and its exhibits are overwhelmingly delivered as .txt files inside the EDGAR SGML envelope, with HTML admissible but uncommon for this form. Containers are distributed as monthly ZIP archives partitioned by year and month (for example 2006/2006-03.zip).
A single record is one complete EDGAR submission of either Form S-20 or Form S-20/A. Each accession is materialized as its own folder, named after the EDGAR accession number with the dashes removed and placed under a monthly partition such as 2006-03/. Inside the accession folder are exactly one metadata.json descriptor and one or more EDGAR-SGML-wrapped document files corresponding to the primary form and its accompanying exhibits.
The record unit is the filing, not the issuer and not an extracted section. Because Form S-20 file numbers persist across decades of amendments against the same underlying registration, the dataset captures each amendment cycle as a discrete record rather than collapsing them into an issuer-level history. Joining records by fileNo reconstructs a registrant's amendment lineage; joining by accessionNo keeps each amendment as an isolated observation.
A decompressed accession folder contains:
metadata.json — one per record, encoding filing-level descriptors and a per-document inventory.<TYPE>S-20 or <TYPE>S-20/A in the document header.<TYPE>EX-N headers (most commonly EX-5 legality opinion and EX-23.1 auditor consent, but other exhibits drawn from the EX-1 through EX-99 vocabulary may appear).A representative tree:
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2006-03/
2
000116923206001778/
3
metadata.json (filing-level metadata)
4
d67507_s-20a.txt (Post-Effective Amendment / Form S-20/A primary document)
5
d67507_ex5.txt (Exhibit 5 - legality opinion)
6
d67507_ex23-1.txt (Exhibit 23.1 - auditor consent)
Every payload document file is enclosed in EDGAR's standard SGML wrapper, with five header tags surrounding the body:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>S-20/A
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<SEQUENCE>1
4
<FILENAME>d67507_s-20a.txt
5
<DESCRIPTION>AMENDMENT TO FORM S-20
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<TEXT>
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... document body ...
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</TEXT>
9
</DOCUMENT>
The header tags (<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>) carry the same per-document metadata that metadata.json repeats in its documentFormatFiles array, so document classification can be recovered from either source.
metadata.jsonThe metadata object is a flat record describing the filing as a whole. Top-level fields:
formType — either S-20 or S-20/A.accessionNo — the canonical hyphenated EDGAR accession number (for example 0001169232-06-001778).filedAt — the filing timestamp in ISO 8601 with timezone offset.description — the EDGAR-supplied submission description, typically Form S-20 - For standardized options or Form S-20/A - For standardized options: [Amend].linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, linkToHtml — SEC EDGAR archive URLs for the primary document, the merged submission text, and the index page. linkToXbrl is empty and dataFiles is [] because Form S-20 does not require structured financial data exhibits.documentFormatFiles — an array of per-document entries (one per submitted document plus a final entry for the merged complete-submission .txt file with a blank sequence). Each entry carries the document type, on-disk file name, EDGAR-supplied description, and document size in bytes.entities — an array of party blocks. The principal entry is the filer (the clearing agency or issuer), with companyName, cik, irsNo (000000000 for non-U.S. filers without an IRS EIN), fileNo (the persistent S-20 file number such as 002-69458), stateOfIncorporation (EDGAR state/country code; for example A6 for Quebec), sic (typically 6221 Commodity Contracts Brokers & Dealers for clearing organizations), fiscalYearEnd, act (33), filmNo, and type.id — an opaque dataset-record identifier.Inside the SGML <TEXT> block of the primary document, the substantive content follows the order prescribed by the form: cover/facing sheet, Part I prospectus, Part II information not required in prospectus, embedded audited financial statements, signatures, and an exhibit list.
The first page identifies the filing either as an original Form S-20 registration statement or, more commonly, as a Post-Effective Amendment to a long-running S-20 registration (for example "Post-Effective Amendment No. 28 to Registration No. 2-69458"). It cites the Securities Act of 1933, names the registrant and its principal executive offices, designates an agent for service of process, lists copy-to counsel, and specifies the proposed effective date under Section 8(c). When the registration is being carried forward from a predecessor form, a Rule 401(e) footnote typically appears (for example: "Pursuant to Rule 401(e) this Post-Effective Amendment on Form S-20 amends the registrant's Registration Statement on Form S-1."). On initial filings, a calculation-of-registration-fee table accompanies the facing sheet, enumerating the title and amount of securities being registered, proposed maximum offering price per unit and aggregate, and the registration fee.
Part I is the prospectus itself, organized around issuer-level disclosures that complement (rather than replace) the Rule 9b-1 ODD. Typical sub-sections, in order:
Part II carries the Items numbered by Form S-20's instructions. Recurring Items:
Item 4 — Directors and Executive Officers. A roster of directors and executive officers, followed by biographical paragraphs covering each individual's principal occupations during the prior five years.
Item 5 — Legal Proceedings. Either a recital of pending material proceedings or a simple "None."
Item 6 — Legal Opinions and Experts. Names the law firm rendering the legality opinion and the auditing firm referenced in the Experts section of the prospectus.
Item 7 — Financial Statements. A pointer to the financial statements that follow within Part II.
Item 8 — Undertakings. Two undertakings characteristic of Form S-20: (i) a Regulation S-X / Item 12 of Regulation S-K undertaking to file a post-effective amendment within 120 days after each subsequent fiscal year end refreshing the financial statements; and (ii) the Rule 9b-1 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 undertaking that is the regulatory basis for using the form, in standardized language along the lines of:
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The undersigned registrant hereby undertakes not to issue, clear,
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guarantee or accept any security registered herein until there is a
3
definitive options disclosure document meeting the requirements of
4
Rule 9b-1 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 with respect to the
5
class options.
This second clause is the defining undertaking authorizing use of Form S-20 under 17 CFR 239.20 and is one of the most reliable anchors for programmatic identification of Part II.
Audited consolidated financial statements of the issuer are embedded inside Part II, typically paginated as II-N. Their components:
The financial statements are presented as plain text within the SGML wrapper, using column-aligned numerics with parenthetical negatives. Form S-20 carries no XBRL or inline XBRL exhibits.
Signature blocks appear after Item 8, dated and located. Typical components:
The final substantive page of the primary document is an exhibit list cross-referencing each accompanying exhibit document by number and short description. For routine post-effective amendments this is short — frequently only Exhibit 5 and Exhibit 23.1.
Each exhibit is delivered as a separate SGML-wrapped document file in the accession folder, with <TYPE>EX-N and <DESCRIPTION> headers reflecting its role.
A letter from outside counsel addressed to the registrant, opining on (i) the corporate existence of the issuer under its jurisdiction of incorporation and (ii) the validity and binding nature of the option contracts being registered. The opinion typically quantifies the registered universe (for example a specific number of call and put option contracts to be issued in respect of named classes of underlying securities, indices or sub-indices on a specified exchange). Counsel concludes with consent to filing the opinion as an exhibit and to use of the firm name in the prospectus under "Legal Opinions."
A short consent letter from the auditor consenting to (i) use of its audit report on the embedded financial statements and (ii) reference to the firm under the "Experts" heading, identifying the registration statement by Form type and file number.
S-20 filings may also include other Item 601-style exhibits when relevant — charter documents, by-laws, material contracts, additional opinions or consents — each delivered as its own SGML-wrapped document file with the appropriate <TYPE>EX-N header.
Each accession folder includes the metadata.json filing descriptor, the primary S-20 or S-20/A document, and every text-format exhibit that accompanied the original submission with the EDGAR SGML document wrapper preserved. The merged complete-submission text file produced by EDGAR is referenced inside documentFormatFiles (with a blank sequence number) but the per-document files are the canonical artifacts inside the record.
Excluded from each record:
dataFiles is consistently empty and linkToXbrl is unpopulated.Form S-20 has been a stable form throughout the EDGAR era. Its core structural elements — the issuer-level prospectus in Part I, the standardized options description and back-up system, the Rule 9b-1 ODD pointer, the Item-numbered Part II including the dual undertakings, the embedded audited financial statements, signatures, and the exhibit list — have not undergone the kind of repeated reorganization seen in S-1 or 10-K. Disclosure evolution is incremental: refreshes to language around certificateless trading, expansion of the categories of Underlying Interests (equity options, index options, sub-index options, government-bond options), updates to state blue-sky notices, and progressive increases in the number of Put and Call contracts being registered through successive post-effective amendments.
Older underlying registrations may carry forward Rule 401(e) footnotes indicating that an S-20 amendment is being filed against a registration originally on Form S-1 — a structural artifact of the form's pre-EDGAR history rather than a content change in S-20 itself.
Form S-20 documents are predominantly delivered as plain ASCII text inside the EDGAR SGML submission envelope, with each document delimited by <DOCUMENT> / </DOCUMENT> and the body inside <TEXT>. HTML-format documents are admissible and are reflected in the dataset's overall file-type set, but typical S-20 records are built around .txt documents wearing the EDGAR SGML wrapper. Form S-20 has never carried XBRL or inline XBRL data, so no transition through standalone XBRL or iXBRL applies to records in this dataset.
fileNo in entities is the stable identifier that links amendments to a single underlying registration, while accessionNo separates them as discrete observations.irsNo of 000000000, a non-U.S. stateOfIncorporation code, a U.S. authorized representative signature block, and a U.S. GAAP reconciliation note in the financial statements — all worth preserving when normalizing across records.<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>) duplicate the per-document fields in metadata.json, providing a redundant document-classification path that is useful when one source is unavailable or ambiguous.<TYPE> rather than by sequence position.Each record is filed on EDGAR by the issuer or guarantor of standardized options — in practice, a clearing organization that issues, clears, guarantees, or accepts the option contracts being registered. The filer is the entity standing behind the contracts, not the exchange that lists them and not the broker-dealer that sells them. Examples seen in this corpus include The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation (CDCC).
Form S-20 is restricted to issuers whose registered securities consist of standardized options. The eligible population is essentially:
Operating companies, investment companies, BDCs, and asset-backed issuers cannot use Form S-20; they register on S-1, S-3, F-series, or N-series forms. Conversely, standardized option contracts are not registered on those general-purpose forms. The total population is small, with only tens of EDGAR submissions across the entire corpus since September 1996.
A record is created in one of two situations:
S-20 filings are not transaction-driven. The dominant rhythm is set by the registrant's own undertakings under Form S-20:
A single registration can persist for decades through serial amendments — CDCC has been amending file number 2-69458 since 1980 (Post-Effective Amendment No. 28 was filed in 2006).
Form S-20 sits at the intersection of Securities Act registration, Exchange Act options disclosure, and clearing-agency reporting. It is neither a general-purpose registration form nor the options disclosure document itself. Its closest neighbors fall into four groups: other Section 6 registration forms (S-1, S-3, S-6, N-1A, N-2), the Rule 9b-1 / Form 19b-4 options disclosure regime, periodic Exchange Act reports of clearing agencies (10-K, 10-Q), and Section 12 class registration on Form 8-A. Exchange-published product circulars share subject matter but are not SEC filings.
S-1 is the default long-form registration for issuers that do not qualify for a specialized form; S-3 is its short-form shelf cousin for seasoned reporters. Both center on issuer-level disclosure (business, MD&A, risk factors, executive compensation, audited financials).
Standardized options cannot be registered on either, because the economic "issuer" is the clearing agency that stands behind every contract and the security is a fungible contract type whose terms are fixed by exchange rules. S-20 was created precisely to replace the S-1 model for this product, delegating ongoing investor disclosure to the Rule 9b-1 ODD instead of a conventional prospectus. The result is a much narrower filer population (effectively OCC and CDCC), narrower subject matter (standardized options), and a structurally lighter document.
S-6 (unit investment trusts), N-1A (open-end funds and most ETFs), and N-2 (closed-end funds) resemble S-20 only in that each is a product-specific Securities Act form that displaces the S-1 model. The substantive overlap stops there: fund forms register pooled investment vehicles and disclose investment objectives, fees, portfolio composition, and NAV-driven financials. S-20 registers a derivative contract type cleared through a CCP. There is no portfolio, no management fee, no NAV, and the disclosure carrier is the ODD rather than a statutory prospectus.
This is the most important distinction. The ODD ("Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options" and its supplements) is the Exchange Act document that actually carries product and risk disclosure to options investors. Form 19b-4 is how SROs file proposed rule changes that authorize new options classes, strike intervals, expirations, and trading mechanics.
S-20 is the Securities Act registration shell; the ODD is the Exchange Act disclosure document; 19b-4 carries the rule-level product authorizations. The S-20 undertaking ("not to issue, clear, guarantee or accept any security registered herein until there is a definitive options disclosure document meeting the requirements of Rule 9b-1") is the bridge that makes this division of labor lawful. A dataset of S-20 filings will not contain ODD text or rule-change content; users who want product-feature or risk-factor language must go to the ODD and 19b-4 filings, while users who want the registration record must use S-20.
Where a clearing agency or option issuer is itself an Exchange Act reporting company, its 10-K and 10-Q deliver entity-level audited annual and unaudited quarterly financials, MD&A, and risk disclosure on a fixed cadence. S-20 captures clearing-agency financial statements only as exhibits supporting the registration moment, and only because the clearing agency's credit backs the contracts (the CDCC sample embeds full audited Canadian-GAAP financials with a U.S.-GAAP reconciliation, but only as Part II content). For continuous financial history, periodic reports are the correct source; S-20 is event-driven (initial registration plus S-20/A amendments, including the post-effective annual financial-refresh amendment required by the form's own undertaking).
8-A registers a class of securities under Section 12(b) or Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act, typically tied to exchange listing. It is a short, mechanical Exchange Act form aimed at bringing a class into the reporting and listing regime. S-20 operates under the Securities Act and registers options as securities being offered and sold. The two are not substitutes; they engage different statutes for different legal effects, and confusion between them usually reflects confusion between Securities Act registration of an offering and Exchange Act registration of a class.
Cboe, NYSE Arca Options, Nasdaq ISE, MIAX and similar venues publish product circulars and contract specs describing strike intervals, expirations, settlement, and trading rules for individual series. These are operational references, not SEC filings: no EDGAR presence, no accession numbers, no Securities Act effect. They overlap with S-20 only on subject matter.
Form S-20 is the Securities Act registration anchor for standardized options, distinguished from every neighbor by a narrow filer population (clearing agencies and option issuers), a product-class subject matter, an undertaking that ties ongoing disclosure to the Rule 9b-1 ODD, and a purely event-driven cadence. It complements but does not substitute for the ODD, 19b-4 rule filings, clearing-agency periodic reports, fund and operating-company registration forms, 8-A class registrations, or exchange product circulars. The dataset's value is in capturing this registration anchor and its amendments; substantive product, risk, rule, and continuous-financial detail live in the adjacent regimes.
Because Form S-20 is a narrow regime that registers standardized options issued by central counterparty clearing agencies under the Securities Act, paired with the Rule 9b-1 ODD, the audience is small and specialized. The roles below each anchor on different pieces of the record.
External and in-house counsel for clearing agencies and listed-options issuers use the corpus to draft and benchmark new S-20/A post-effective amendments. They focus on the Item 8 undertakings (especially the "no issuance until a definitive ODD is in place" clause), the Part I prospectus describing exercise style, settlement, certificateless trading, and clearing-member back-up, and the EX-5 legality opinion that quantifies the Calls and Puts covered. Prior amendments serve as the precedent library for refreshing put/call counts and re-confirming the Rule 9b-1 link.
Product and regulatory staff at options exchanges check the Part I description of registered option classes and underlying interests before launching new contracts to confirm proposed listings fit the issuer's S-20 scope and the ODD. The Item 6 "Legal Opinions and Experts" entry and EX-5 confirm which counsel and which contract counts cover a given listing cycle.
In-house disclosure and SEC-reporting staff at the issuing clearing agency reference the prior file (one S-20 file number is amended for decades, for example 2-69458 since 1980) when preparing the next post-effective amendment within the 120-day annual undertaking. They reuse precedent for Item 4 director/officer biographies, the Item 8 undertakings, the audited consolidated financial statements (balance sheet, earnings, cash flows, clearing-fund and margin notes, capital and standby-credit disclosures), and the matching EX-23.1 auditor consent.
Reviewers in Corp Fin and Trading and Markets, plus Commission economists, use the corpus to study compliance with 17 CFR 239.20 and Rule 9b-1: undertaking language, exhibit completeness, amendment cadence, and how registered contract counts have evolved. The dataset supports rulemaking and ODD-modernization work.
Scholars working on the listed-options market, the Shad-Johnson Accord, and integrated disclosure use S-20/A amendment chains as a longitudinal record of how disclosure for centrally cleared options has been written from 1996 to present. The prospectus narrative, undertakings, and Part II structure support citation-grade scholarship.
Researchers studying CCP resilience and post-trade infrastructure mine the audited financials of the issuing clearing agency, clearing-fund mechanics, margin-deposit disclosures, lien provisions, minimum-capital language, and standby-credit facilities described in Part I. The corpus is one of the few primary-source views of the legal-financial backing of standardized options issuance.
Professional-practice groups at audit firms and analytics teams studying registration-statement consents use EX-23.1 letters together with the audited financials they cover to track auditor-issuer continuity, consent wording, and dating across S-20/A cycles.
Counsel structuring defined-outcome ETFs, structured notes, and platforms intermediating cleared option flow check the Part I scope and Rule 9b-1 undertaking to confirm that the standardized options referenced in their offering documents are covered by an effective registration and ODD.
ML engineers assembling complete Securities Act form taxonomies (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, S-20) include this dataset for coverage. The metadata.json (formType, accessionNo, filer CIK/SIC/file number, per-document inventory) and the SGML-wrapped primary and exhibit files plug cleanly into form classifiers, exhibit extractors, and retrieval systems for securities-law research.
Reporters covering derivatives-market structure or anniversaries in options history use the prospectus, undertakings, and amendment history as primary sources to explain what the ODD and S-20 framework actually are in legal terms.
The dataset is load-bearing for a tight community: clearing-agency and exchange counsel and staff, SEC reviewers, CCP and legal-academic researchers, audit-methodology teams, product counsel, registration-corpus engineers, and specialist journalists. Each anchors on a specific slice — the Rule 9b-1 undertaking, the Part I option-class and clearing description, Item 4 officers, EX-5 legality opinions, EX-23.1 consents, and the audited clearing-agency financials — that together document how standardized options are registered under the Securities Act.
The Form S-20 Files Dataset supports a small set of concrete workflows tied to standardized-options registration, the Rule 9b-1 undertaking, and clearing-agency disclosure.
Drafting the next post-effective amendment. Clearing-agency outside counsel (for example, for OCC or CDCC) join records by fileNo (such as 002-69458) to retrieve every prior S-20/A in lineage, then reuse the cover-page Section 8(c) language, Item 8 dual undertakings, and the EX-5 quantification of registered Calls and Puts as a template for the upcoming amendment cycle.
Tracking registered contract counts over time. Analysts at exchanges and clearing agencies parse EX-5 legality-opinion text across amendments to extract the number of Call and Put contracts covered (for example, "3,600,000 Calls and 2,400,000 Puts") and the named Underlying Interests, producing a longitudinal table of how each clearing agency has expanded its registered universe through successive S-20/A filings.
Verifying Rule 9b-1 undertaking compliance. SEC Corporation Finance and Trading and Markets reviewers and CCP regulatory staff use the highly stereotyped Item 8 undertaking ("not to issue, clear, guarantee or accept any security registered herein until there is a definitive options disclosure document...") as an anchor string to confirm every record carries the defining Form S-20 language and to flag any amendment that drifts from it.
Mining clearing-agency audited financials. Market-structure researchers extract the Part II embedded financial statements — balance sheets, clearing-fund and members' margin deposits (often in the multi-billion range), standby credit facilities, minimum-capital disclosures, and the Canadian-to-U.S. GAAP reconciliation note — to build a primary-source dataset on CCP capital and liquidity backing for centrally cleared options.
Auditor and counsel continuity tracking. Audit-methodology and legal-analytics teams pair each EX-23.1 consent with the Item 6 "Legal Opinions and Experts" entry across the amendment chain to track issuer-auditor and issuer-counsel continuity (for example, KPMG LLP and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP for CDCC) and to compare consent-letter wording, dating, and engagement transitions.
Building a registration-form classifier corpus. ML engineers assembling Securities Act form taxonomies use the dataset's metadata.json (formType, CIK, SIC 6221, file number) and SGML-wrapped primary and exhibit files as labeled training data for form-type classifiers and exhibit extractors, with <TYPE> headers and documentFormatFiles providing redundant labels for each document.
Reconstructing amendment lineage from EDGAR. Securities-law historians and journalists join records by fileNo and read the cover-page Rule 401(e) footnotes plus the post-effective-amendment number to reconstruct registration histories that stretch back to pre-EDGAR S-1 originals (for example 2-69458, amended since 1980), producing a chronological narrative of how a single registration has been refreshed for decades.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s20-files.json
The dataset index endpoint returns the dataset metadata and the list of container files that together make up the full dataset. Returned fields include the dataset name, description, last update timestamp, earliest sample date, total record and size counts, covered form types (S-20, S-20/A), the container format (ZIP), the contained file types (TXT, JSON, HTML), the download URL for the full archive, and an array of containers. Each container entry includes its key, file size, record count, last updated timestamp, and a direct download URL. This endpoint is useful for monitoring which containers were touched in the most recent refresh run, so downstream pipelines can decide on a daily basis which containers to re-download. This endpoint does not require an API key.
Example response:
1
{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a6e-b672-e7749ed2d066",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https:/api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s20-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form S-20 Files Dataset",
5
"updatedAt": "2026-05-05T02:51:19.000Z",
6
"earliestSampleDate": "1996-09-01",
7
"totalRecords": 39,
8
"totalSize": 534562,
9
"formTypes": ["S-20", "S-20/A"],
10
"containerFormat": "ZIP",
11
"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https:/api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s20-files/2006/2006-03.zip",
15
"key": "2006/2006-03.zip",
16
"size": 42183,
17
"records": 3,
18
"updatedAt": "2026-05-05T02:51:19.000Z"
19
}
20
]
21
}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s20-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the full dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container. Use this when you want a one-shot bulk copy of all S-20 and S-20/A filing files. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s20-files/2006/2006-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one individual container, organized by year and month, instead of the full archive. This is useful for incremental syncs where only specific months need to be fetched based on the updatedAt values returned by the dataset index. This endpoint requires an API key.
The Form S-20 Files Dataset covers Form S-20 (the original Securities Act registration statement for standardized options under 17 CFR 239.20) and Form S-20/A (any amendment, including post-effective amendments, to such a registration statement).
One record is a single complete EDGAR submission of Form S-20 or Form S-20/A. Each accession is materialized as its own folder containing one metadata.json filing descriptor and one or more EDGAR-SGML-wrapped document files for the primary form and its exhibits.
Form S-20 is restricted to issuers whose registered securities consist of standardized options — in practice, clearing organizations that issue, clear, guarantee, or accept the option contracts. Active filers in this corpus include The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation (CDCC). Operating companies, investment companies, BDCs, and asset-backed issuers cannot use Form S-20.
The dataset begins with the earliest EDGAR-era electronic submission on September 1, 1996 and continues to the present. Form S-20 has existed since the early 1980s, but pre-EDGAR paper filings are not included.
Filings are event-driven rather than scheduled, but each active registrant produces a recurring annual post-effective amendment within 120 days of fiscal year-end (the explicit Item 8 undertaking that refreshes financial statements). Additional amendments are filed when the registrant adds option contracts, expands underlying interests, reconfirms the Rule 9b-1 undertaking, or addresses corporate or exhibit changes.
The dataset's file-type set is TXT, JSON, and HTML, packaged in monthly ZIP containers. In practice, each accession folder contains one metadata.json and one or more .txt documents wearing the EDGAR SGML wrapper (<DOCUMENT> / <TYPE> / <TEXT>). Image files are excluded by design, and Form S-20 carries no XBRL or iXBRL exhibits.
Form S-20 is the Securities Act registration shell filed on EDGAR by the clearing-agency issuer; the ODD ("Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options") is the Exchange Act customer-facing disclosure document delivered to investors through brokers. The ODD is not part of an S-20 EDGAR submission — its existence is a precondition to using Form S-20, captured in the registrant's Item 8 "no issuance until a definitive ODD is in place" undertaking.