Information Links
General Investing Information
Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letters (www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters) What else can we say? 34 years of Warren Buffett's wisdom.
Insights by T. Rowe Price (www.troweprice.com>Investment Planning> Publications): Overview of everything from financial planning to derivatives.
Path to Investing (www.pathtoinvesting.org): Good beginning level overview of the investing process. Covers everything from how stock trades happen to tips on choosing mutual funds and individual stocks.
Advice & Tips
CXO Advisory Group’s Guru Grades (www.cxoadvisory.com): Tabulates the market forecasts of major market commentators and tabulates how many times each guru got it right.
Financial Sense (www.financialsense.com): A collection of market analysis articles contributed by dozens of different contributors, some more qualified than others.
Hulbert Financial Digest (www.marketwatch.com): Mark Hulbert’s “Hulbert Financial Digest,” tracks the performance of more than 160 stock market investment newsletters. You have to pay for the newsletter but columns by Hulbert and financial writer Peter Brimelow often include summaries of both the top performing newsletters’ advice, and of their performance, along with insights drawn from their newsletter-tracking database, and from other market research.
Motley Fool CAPS (caps.fool.com): Individual investors predict whether specific stocks will outperform or underperform the S&P 500 and over what time frame this will happen. You can see the ratings on any stock, or lists of the highest and lowest rated stocks. The system rates the raters, so you can follow the advice of the most successful players.
PaceSetters Database (www.prars.com): a monthly portfolio of recommended stocks, has outperformed the Nasdaq, and even better, without the huge downdrafts. Since its inception in March 1988, the PaceSetters portfolio has rocketed 973 percent, compared to 926 percent for the Nasdaq, and more than double the S&P 500 Index’s 472 percent gain.
Standard & Poor's Stock Picks & Pans (www.businessweek.com): features S&P analysts’ comments on stocks that made news that day. It’s an interesting read.
Analyst’s Ratings & Forecasts
Earnings Whispers (www.earningswhispers.com): whisper numbers are the earnings those in the know expect a company to report. Here’s where to find them.
MarketWatch (www.marketwatch.com): displays summaries of major brokerage’s analysts’ ratings changes going back to November 2000. MarketWatch lists the date, broker, new and old recommendations, and a short synopsis of the analysts’ comments for each ratings change listed (Get a quote and then click on Analyst). Here's a sample.
Reuters Investor Analyst Estimates (www.investor.reuters.com): one of only two resources that I know of for both earnings and revenue forecasts. Click here for an example.
NewRatings
Yahoo! (finance.yahoo.com): The second of only two sites that displays both revenue (sales) and earnings forecasts. Click here for example.
Blogs, etc.
Blogs are like diaries, a person's stream-of-consciousness musings about whatever happens to be on his or her mind. But you may not know that some Bloggers are highly qualified financial experts who post valuable information on their Blogs, just for fun. New Blogs are coming online almost daily. Please tell me tell me about your favorites.
Bespoke Investment Group (bespokeinvest.typepad.com/bespoke): Combination Blog and premium site. These guys are the ultimate quants. They'll analyze just about anything to determine its predictive value; the price of gold, the value of the U.S. dollar, new highs vs. new lows, yield spreads, the month of the year, you name it.
Daily Speculations (www.dailyspeculations.com): run by Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner, offers insights that you won’t find anywhere else. Niederhoffer, who once worked for legendary investor George Soros, authored the best seller, Education of a Speculator. Kenner was chief U.S. stock market editor at Bloomberg News. The erudite articles, sometimes penned by others besides Niederhoffer and Kenner, cover almost any topic, some unrelated to stocks.
Herb Greenberg's Market Blog (blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg): Greenberg, a MarketWatch columnist, is one of those “glass is half-empty” types. He mostly talks about stocks that he thinks are due for a fall as soon as the market catches on to the dubious tactics that management has employed to keep the share price up. Greenberg is often wrong, but he’s right enough of the time that you should take his remarks seriously and do extra due diligence if he’s down on one of your stocks.
The Kirk Report (www.thekirkreport.com): Charles Kirk, who has a law degree, but has never practiced law, produces a daily report full of stock ideas, views about what’s happening in the market and the overall economy, market experts' stock tips, and information about other useful sites. It reminds me of the daily morning briefing U.S. presidents get from top advisors. Information like this should be expensive, but Kirk gives it away.
Retail Detail with Margaret Brennan (www.cnbc.com): Brennan covers retail store stocks for CNBC. Her Blogs, posted daily, more or less, are interesting and full of insights about the stores that she covers. A fun read, even if you don't own retail stocks.
Seeking Alpha (www.seekingalpha.com): Seeking Alpha features dozens of new articles daily from dozens of market experts covering a wide range of topics. The content is divided into sections such as China, India, Energy, Media, Retail and more. Seeking Alpha also offers written transcripts of quarterly report conference calls for many widely followed stocks. You can skim through a transcript in 5 minutes compared to spending an hour or more listening to the call.
Tech Check with Jim Goldman (www.cnbc.com): Goldman covers Silicon Valley for CNBC. He's good at reporting the rumors likely to move tech stocks before they hit news. A worthwhile read if you're a tech investor.
TraderFeed (traderfeed.blogspot.com): run by Brett Steenbarger, psychologist, and author of The Psychology of Trading, covers the market from a technical (charting) perspective. His daily posts attempt to divine what happens next by analyzing recent market and individual stock price action employing a variety of technical indicators. He also offers links to other like-minded sites. Given his background, it’s not surprising that Steenbarger also includes articles about how to prevent your emotions from hurting your trading results.
Trader Talk with Bob Pisani (www.cnbc.com): Pisani reports from the floor of the NYSE for CNBC. He writes two or three short, but insightful squibs each day giving his take on what's moving, and why. He's very good at spotting which market sectors are taking off, and which are sinking.
ZachStocks (www.zachstocks.com): Hedge fund portfolio manager Zachary Scheidt posts his take on stocks that his fund is considering buying or selling short. The write-ups are lengthy and go into considerable detail, often quoting stock analyst’ reports. Scheidt, himself a Chartered Financial Analyst, sometimes gets it wrong. But that’s not a problem because he gladly posts dissenting opinions following each article. Thankfully, these reader comments are nothing like the sophomoric posts found on Yahoo's message boards. Instead, they are well-reasoned, thoughtful arguments, often posted by readers with considerable insights on the topic.
Bonds &
Preferred Stocks
InvestinginBonds.com (www.investinginbonds.com): Operated by the Bond Market Association, the site offers data on recent bond trades, plus news on bond-related topics. This is also a good place to learn the basics about investing in bonds.
QuantumOnline (www.quantumonline.com): In contrast to common stock, information on preferred stocks is hard to find on the Web. Private investment manager Quantum Investment is about as good as it gets for preferreds. Quantum lists the maturity and redemption dates, the payouts, links to current quotes, and more for 1,100 plus preferreds.
Yahoo (bonds.yahoo.com): Good list of U.S. Treasury, municipal, and corporate bond yields, both current and one-month back.
Charts
Prophet Finance's Java Charts (www.prophetfinance.com): By far the largest selection of technical indicators that you'll find on the Web.
Stock Charts' Historical Charts (www.stockcharts.com): This is the place to see a chart of the DJ Industrial Index going back to 1900, or a chart of the S&P 500 back to 1960. You can also see historical charts for the Nasdaq, 30-year Treasuries, and for gold prices. Stock Charts is a good resource for Point & Figure and candlestick charts.
Company Research
MSN Money's Stock Scouter (money.msn.com): uses a sophisticated formula to analyze four attributes of each stock: Fundamental, Ownership, Valuation, and Technical, to come up with a total score representing the expected stock price appreciation during the next six months. From MSN Money's homepage, select Investing (top menu) and then click on Stock Ratings in the Stocks section (left menu).
Morningstar’s Major Fund Owners (www.morningstar.com):To paraphrase an old saying, “you can judge a stock by the company it keeps,” in this case, the mutual funds that hold its shares. Morningstar’s Major Fund Owners section lists the 25 mutual funds with the largest holdings of a selected stock, along with Morningstar’s “Star Rating” of each of those funds. Click here for an example.
Morningstar's Grades (www.morningstar.com): How many of us have time to analyze financial statements? Now, we don't have to, because Morningstar does the heavy lifting for us. Click here for an example.
Reuters Investor (www.investor.reuters.com) : One of the best sources of fundamental data such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash-flow statements.
Newspaper Links (www.newspaperlinks.com): A company's local newspaper often has information that you won't find elsewhere. Here's a comprehensive directory of U.S. newspaper websites.
Securities & Exchange Commission Edgar Reports (sec.gov): All publicly traded company reports filed with the SEC are available in the SEC's Edgar database as soon as they are filed. The quarterly (10-q) and annual (10-k) reports contain almost everything you need to research a stock. Unfortunately, most are well over 100 pages in length.
SEC Info (www.secinfo.com): Another resource for SEC reports.
wikinvest (www.wikinvest.com): Wikipedia for stocks. A new startup (2006), wikinvest relies on users to contribute new articles, and/or modify existing articles about specific stocks. Volunteer administrators monitor the quality of the posted articles. The main difference between wikinvest and traditional financial sites like Yahoo is that wikinvest focuses on concepts and business strategies rather than numbers. While you’ll still need to access traditional sites to get the financial statistics and analyst forecasts, wikinvest adds the information you need to understand a firm’s business and future prospects.
Conference Calls
Did you ever wonder why your stock went down after the company announced great earnings ? Chances are, while you're reading that glowing earnings press release, company executives are busy revealing different news to analysts in a conference call. Here’s how to find out about them.
BestCalls.com
Company Boardroom (www.companyboardroom.com): A comprehensive listing of scheduled and previous conference calls. You can listen to archived calls for some companies going back about a year. They also list the expected date of the next earnings release, even if the conference call hasn’t been scheduled.
Seeking Alpha (seekingalpha.com): Unless you have nothing else to do, listening to many conference calls is impractical because most last at least one hour. You can save time by scanning a written transcript for the information you need. Seeking Alpha provides free transcripts of many, but nowhere near all, quarterly report conference calls.
Direct Investing
Netstock Direct (www.netstockdirect.com): the place to find companies offering Direct Stock Purchase (DSPs) and Direct Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs).
BuyandHold.com
ShareBuilder (www.sharebuilder.com) offers Direct Stock Purchase plans similar to BuyandHold.com. No minimum monthly fee makes ShareBuilder the best bet in this category.
Discussion
Board Central (www.boardcentralcom): You don't have to waste time checking out all the different message boards. Board Central lists all recent messages on 13 major investing message boards for any given stock.
Board Reader (boardreader.com): Searches many more message boards than Board Central, but they can be any type of message board, not necessarily stock boards. for any keyword that you enter (e.g. Microsoft). A great resource, but you may have to sort through some irrelevant listings. It's best to search on keyword (e.g. Microsoft) rather than ticker symbols. Be sure to select the "Message Board" option (not Forums).
Investor Village (www.investorvillage.com): These moderated forms feature thoughtful comments by serious investors. You'll find no name calling or stupid remarks here. Start here before you try the other boards.
Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com): a moderated forum, so there's no profanity here. That said, there is not much traffic compared to Investor Village and Yahoo, and the postings tend to be unsophisticated.
Silicon Investor (www.siliconinvestor.com): The Raging Bull apply to Silicon Investor as well. In the 1990s, both were the center of the universe for tech stock investors, but both remind me of faded, once-elegant hotels that have seen better days.
Yahoo! (quote.yahoo.com): Get a stock quote and then click on “Message Board” under “News & Info.” Yahoo’s boards have the most traffic of any boards. However, the discussions are mostly at 4th grade level. Also, they are not moderated, meaning that no one from Yahoo patrols the boards removing inappropriate material. So be prepared for anything.
Economic Analysis
Bureau of Labor Statistics (stats.bls.gov): best source for U.S. employment, consumer spending, and inflation data.
Chain Store Age (www.chainstoreage.com): source for chain store sales data. The site is free, but registrations is required.
Conference Board (www.conference-board.org): source of consumer confidence survey information.
Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov): a good source for detailed U.S. economic data including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), personal income, corporate profits, balance of payments, and more.
The Dismal Scientist (www.dismal.com): filled with the latest economic trends and reports. Originally a free site, Dismal now requires a subscription, which, starting at $60/mo, isn't very economic.
Economagic.com (www.economagic.com): Provides a huge assortment of economic data, and even better, allows you to graph all of them.
Economic Cycle Research Institute (www.businesscycle.com): home of the Weekly Leading Index (WLI), developed by Geoffrey Moore, who according to the site, originally developed the monthly Index of Leading Economic Indicators for the U.S. Commerce Department. Since Moore’s new WLI uses fresher data, is should react faster, and a historical chart on the site (click on "view other charts") seems to bear that out. Another formerly free site that now requires a subscription, which costs $20/month for individual investors.
EconomicIndicators.gov (www.economicindicators.gov): features next release dates and links to the latest reports for 18 or so economic indicators such as new residential construction or retail e-commerce sales that are compiled by U.S. Government agencies. You can also signup to receive the reports by e-mail the day they are released.
Federal Reserve (www.federalreserve.gov): Here it is, the center of the economic universe. Click here to see the minutes of the discount rate meetings going back to 1996. Click here to see the legendary Beige Book reports describing economic conditions in each of the 12 Federal Reserve districts.
FedStats (www.fedstats.gov): a directory of where to find economic statistics collected by more than 100 U.S. Government agencies. A good place to start your search for the amazing amount of data collected by the Feds. It’s fun to just poke around.
Financial Forecast Center (forecasts.org): computer generated forecasts of interest rates, stock market indexes, retail sales, and much more. The six-month forecasts are free, but longer forecasts require a subscription.
Financial Trend Forecaster (www.fintrend.com): home of the Moore Inflation Predictor which claims a 90% accuracy rate for predicting the inflation rate one-year into the future.
Gallup (www.galluppoll.com): Gallup measures investor optimism monthly. Many analysts use investor optimism as a contrary indicator. That is, high optimism levels suggest that the market is headed for a fall, and vice versa.
InflationData.com (inflation.data.com): the place to go if you need monthly inflation data going back to 1914.
Martin Capital Financial Newsletters (www.martincapital.com): monthly and quarterly market newsletters covering market and overall economic conditions.
National Association of Home Builders (www.nahb.com): monthly housing market forecasts, plus the Housing Market Index. Check out the "Traffic of Prospective Buyers" component of the index for a look into the future.
Stock Chart's Sector Rotation Model (www.stockcharts.com): displays the returns of nine major S&P sectors along with S&P's Sector Rotation Model that predicts which sectors should outperform in each phase of the economic cycle. Use the slider below the chart to go back in time up to three years. Click here for links to charts of just about any market, sector, country, or industry index.
U.S. Courts (www.uscourts.gov) all bankruptcies must be filed in a Federal court. This is the place to find U.S. quarterly bankruptcy statistics.
U.S. Department of Labor (www.ows.doleta.gov): get the weekly unemployment reports here.
White House Economic Briefing Room (www.whitehouse.gov): the latest statistics released by the U.S. Government covering all economic sectors. Excellent, well-displayed information, but the last time that I checked, the data wasn't being updated on a timely basis.
Financial Bond Analysts
Stock analysts’ advice may not be worth much, but there is one type of analyst—those that rate corporate debt—that shouldn’t be ignored. While stock analysts are mostly interested in growth prospects, bond analysts focus on a company’s financial health, and you should too! Each rating service’s grades vary somewhat, but “AAA” always indicates the highest quality, and any grade starting with “A” signifies reasonably high quality debt. Three letter ratings starting with “B” such as BAA or BBB indicate lower quality debt than “A” ratings, but don’t signal significant risk. Two letter “B” grades and lower signify “non-investment grade” securities.
A.M. Best (www.ambest.com): Not a bond rating service, Best rates the financial strength of insurance companies only. Best uses single letter grades and companies rated B or less are considered “financially vulnerable to adverse changes in underwriting and economic conditions.”
Moodys.com (www.moodys.com) is the easiest place to find bond and corporate credit ratings because you can look up the ratings using the corporation’s stock ticker symbol. Use the Quick Search box (upper-right) and scroll past the Research Links to the Current Rating List.
Standard & Poor’s (www.standardandpoors.com) is often the best source for analysts’ detailed reports. Unfortunately, the reports are hard to locate. I’ve had the most success finding reports using the “Search” tab at the top-right of S&P’s homepage.
Forecasting Future Market Direction
Comstock Partners (www.comstockfunds.com): Who predicted the top and ensuing plunge back when the markets were soaring in early 2000? Charlie Minter and Marty Weiner, co-managers of the Comstock Partners value funds did. Check their widely-followed Daily Comment for their current take on the market. After reading the current column, you can peruse the archives to see earlier predictions.
Financial Forecast Center (www.forecasts.org): The center, run by Texas-based Applied Reasoning, Inc., uses computer models to predict the direction of most market indexes, interest rates, oil prices, currency exchange rates, and a variety of other economic factors.The center charges for its long-range forecasts, but you can see its month-end forecasts, going out six months for free.
Martin Capital Composite Indicator (www.martincapital.com): Click on Stock Market Analysis, then click on Composite Indicator): predicts market direction based on a combination of technical and economic indicators. Martin also has charts of popular market indicators.
Fraud
Stock Patrol (www.stockpatrol.com): It's mission is to inform investors about stocks that look suspiciously like they’re being pumped. Stock Patrol does the best job in this category.
Citron Research a.k.a. Stock Lemon (www.citronresearch.com) has been publishing columns for over 10 years, making it one of the longest-running online stock commentary websites. With over 150 reports, Citron has amassed a track record identifying fraud and terminal business models second to none among any published source.
Fundamental Analysis Tips
MSN Money Ownership Report (moneycentral.msn.com/investor): Here’s the place to find the names of everyone holding five percent or more of a firm’s shares. Also lists top institutional and mutual fund holders.
Prudent Bear (www.prudentbear.com): supposedly oriented for bears and short sellers, but everyone should read the information here (all investors should learn how to analyze stocks the way short sellers do).
Industry and Sector Information
Analyzing a stock requires staying on top of trends in its industry, and where your company fits in the big picture. Here's where to find that info.
ABA Banking Online (www.banking.com/aba): Published by the American Bankers Association. Offers news and analysis of banking industry trends.
Access Control &Security Systems (www.securitysolutions.com): covers the security industry including access control systems, identification systems, intrusion detection and the like. The site features dozens of recent news stories and feature articles that may give you some good investing ideas. You can also use the site to look find companies active in a particular sector such as facial recognition systems. Do that by selecting Research & Tools, then click on Supplier Directory and then select Security.
Advertising Age (www.adage.com): Although ostensibly about the advertising business, keeps you tuned into the ‘buzz’ about many industries.
American Printer (www.americanprinter.com): Covers the traditional printing and quick print industries.
Apparel (www.apparelmag.com): Focuses on business and technology issues affecting the clothing industry.
Biotech (www.biospace.com): The place to go for biotech industry news. Especially interesting in that regard is the Clinical Development News accessed from the Investors section. I pay most attention to Phase III section. The approval cycle for new drugs can drag on for years. News coming out of Phase III trials (the final phase) can signal big stock moves in either direction.
Byte and Switch (www.byteandswitch.com): News about the storage networking industry.
Capital Link Shipping (shipping.capitallink.com): A good place to find profiles and news headlines for all types of ocean shipping companies including drybulk, LNG/LNG, tanker, and container shippers. Shows current and historical charter day rates for dry-bulk and crude oil tankers. Check the Industry Reports section for analysis reports that I haven't seen anywhere else.
Chain Drug Review (www.chaindrugreview.com): Here's where to keep up with the drugstore industry.
Chain Store Age (www.chainstoreage.com): A good place to research trends in retailing as well as firms that supply hardware, such as computers and checkout systems, to retail stores.
Dental Economics (de.pennet.com): Here's where to learn about new products aimed at dentists.
DrugTopics.com (www.drugtopics.com): The online version of Drug Topics Magazine, although targeted to pharmacists, is a good, easy to understand source of news about the pharmaceutical industry.
Edmunds AutoObserver (www.autoobserver.com): The place to keep up with news about the global auto industry.
Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov): This U.S. government agency site has all sorts of data about petroleum, natural gas, and electricity production, supplies and usage. Click here for current and historical coal prices, and here for current and historical crude oil, gasoline and heating oil prices and here for global crude oil prices. Click here for current and historical natural gas prices. Click here for historical and forecast energy consumption figures through 2030. Click here for crude oil price forecasts.
Energy Pulse (www.energypulse.net/centers/): Dedicated to providing commentary on the global power industry. Very good!
Farm Industry News (www.farmindustrynews.com): News and views about farming and more importantly, farm equipment suppliers.
Food Navigator.com (www.foodnavigator-usa.com): Best source for news about food and beverage development. It's strongest point is its coverage of the science and nutrition aspects of food development, which is where all the industry action is these days.
Food Processing Magazine (www.foodprocessing.com): News and feature articles about food makers and grocery stores.
Health Data Management (www.healthdatamanagement.com): The healthcare industry is rapidly embracing information systems to reduce paperwork and improve patient care. New systems allow a consulting doctor anywhere in the world to view a patient’s medical history, lab results, current condition, and treatment plans. HDM is written for healthcare executives responsible for implementing these types of systems. It’s a good resource for investors interested in tech companies serving this market.
Insurance Journal (www.insurancejournal.com): Covers the insurance industry and its suppliers.
Light Reading (www.lightreading.com): Optical networking news and analysis. They’re very good at explaining the various technologies, and even better, naming the important players in each sector.
Modern Healthcare (www.modernhealthcare.com): A good resource for investors interested in the healthcare field, including medical equipment makers. Covers hospitals, clinics, drugstores, and their suppliers.
National Real Estate Investor (www.nreionline.com): News and analysis about commercial real estate, including multi-family, and real estate investment trusts (REITs).
Nation’s Restaurant News (www.nrn.com) provides excellent coverage of the restaurant industry, especially from an investor’s perspective.
News Directory (www.newsdirectory.com): A good resource for finding trade magazines. Click on Industry Trade Publications under Browse Magazines to see a list of more than 70 U.S.-based trade magazines.
North American Windpower (www.nawindpower.com): News and analysis about the wind power industry focusing on North America.
Oil & Gas Investor (www.oilandgasinvestor.com): Primarily a subscription magazine, but it offers a considerable amount of free information.
Oil & Gas Journal (ogj.pennnet.com): Full of news and research about all facets of the oil and gas industry including exploration, drilling, production and processing.
Outsourcing Center (www.outsourcing-center.com) Monitors outsourcing, the practice of reducing costs by farming out tasks such as manufacturing or customer support call centers to third parties. The site covers both sides of outsourcing; the third-party contractors as well as the firms that are farming out the work. Outsourcing is one of the fastest growing business trends and as an investor you can benefit by spotting companies that are improving their competitive position by outsourcing as well as by pinpointing publicly traded contractors benefiting from the trend.
The Register (www.theregister.co.uk): This U.K. based site’s logo “Biting the hand that feeds it,” describes its intentionally provocative approach. The Register covers technology with mostly original stories. It’s not a techie magazine, it focuses on the business side of the industry. The Register is always interesting, but sometimes they get it wrong.
Retail Traffic (www.retailtrafficmag.com): Covers trends affecting retail chains and large shopping malls. RTM’s focus on interpretation, rather than just presenting news, makes it especially useful for investors interested in shopping center REITs (real estate investment trusts).
RFID Journal (www.rfidjournal.com): RFID (radio frequency identification) is the new technology that may someday replace the ubiquitous barcode systems. This free magazine has everything you'd want to know about RFID, including the scoop on what all the industry players are doing.
SolarBuzz (www.solarbuzz.com): The place for news and commentary about the solar energy industry.
SteelGuru (www.steelguru.com): Although mostly targeted to people working in the steel industry, SteelGuru is a good source for industry news.
TechNewsWorld.com (www.technewsworld.com): A good resource for analysis of happenings in the tech world.
Tech Web (www.techweb.com): News and features covers a wide range of computer and communications sectors.
Telecommunications Online (www.telecommagazine.com): Oriented to industry professionals, sometimes goes into more detail than you want to know.
TortoWheaton Research (tortowheatonresearch.com): TWR is a research outfit specializing in office and industrial real estate. Most of their reports cost big bucks, but TWR’s weekly About Real Estate column is free, and very informative.
Transport Topics (www.ttnews.com): The place to keep up with happenings in the trucking industry.
VerticalNet (www.verticalnet.com): Links to more than 60 separate sites, each covering a different industry. The thrust here is facilitating ecommerce between industry players, but the sites are a good source of industry news. Each offers a free e-mail newsletter.
Yahoo’s Industry Center (finance.yahoo.com): A good place to start your industry analysis. For each major industry, Yahoo lists the top 10 companies by market capitalization, recent news stories, a calendar of upcoming earnings reports, and a list of recent analyst upgrades and downgrades for firms within the industry. Especially valuable are the industry profiles from accessed from a link at the bottom of each Industry overview page.
Wards Auto World (www.wardsdealer.com): Covers the automobile industry, mostly from the dealer's perspective.
Waste Age (www.wasteage.com): News and analysis about the recycling and waste removal industries.
Wind Power Monthly (windpower-monthly.com): News and analysis about the wind power industry from a global perspective.
WorldOil.com (www.worldoil.com): News, in-depth reports, current prices, forecasts—it’s hard to imagine what you’d want to know about the oil industry that you couldn’t find here.
General Investing Information
Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letters (www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters) What else can we say? 34 years of Warren Buffett's wisdom.
Insights by T. Rowe Price (www.troweprice.com>Investment Planning> Publications): Overview of everything from financial planning to derivatives.
Path to Investing (www.pathtoinvesting.org): Good beginning level overview of the investing process. Covers everything from how stock trades happen to tips on choosing mutual funds and individual stocks.
Industry/Sector Selection Strategies
“Stocks like sheep, move in herds. If you want your sheep to move north, you better pick a sheep in a herd moving north.” That pithy advice from technical analyst John Bollinger explains why many professional investors believe stock picking success depends more on picking the right industry group than the right stock.
Big Charts (www.bigcharts.com > Industries): Big Charts 10 best and 10 worst industry group ratings are easy to use. Click on a group name to see the 10 best and 10 worst performing stocks within the group for the same period. You can select time spans ranging from one-week to five years.
John Bollinger’s Equity Trader (www.equitytrader.com > Structure): Bollinger divides the market into sectors and divides those sectors into industry groups containing stocks that exhibit similar historical trading patterns. Bollinger calculates “performance” and “potential” ratings for each sector, each industry group, and for each stock within a group.
Prophet.net (www.prophet.net): a useful resource for tracking recent industry performance. Click on Explore and then Industry Rankings to see a list of the top performing industries over the past six months. In addition to showing the current rank, Prophet also shows the change in rank over the timeframe displayed.
Insider Trading
Would you want to buy a stock if the CEO is dumping all of his shares? I didn't think so. So check on what the important insiders (CEO ad CFO) are up to before you make that trade.
Insider Cow (www.insidercow.com): Detailed display of insider transactions by company going back at least four years.
Yahoo! Insider Trading (finance.yahoo.com): Yahoo! displays the insider trading information in understandable English sentences.
International Investing
ADR.com (www.adr.com): The best site for information on ADRs. Select "Industry" on the top menu to see a list of all industry sectors represented by ADRs, the best way to track down worthwhile prospects.
Mergers & Acquisitions
The Online Investor (www.investhelp.com): A list of recently announced mergers and acquisitions going back two or three months.
Mutual Funds and ETFs
Closed-End Fund Association (www.cefa.com): good resource for educational information and lists of closed-end funds. Closed-end funds are a special type of mutual fund that trades on the open market instead of via the fund sponsor, as is the case for mutual funds.
CEF Connect (www.cefconnect.com): sponsored by Nuveen Closed-End Funds, CEF Connect is a good resource for information on all closed-end funds, whether sponsored by Nuveen or not. Provides extensive information about each fund, including portfolio holdings and performance statistics. Also offers a flexible CEF screener.
ETF Investment Outlook (www.etfinvestmentoutlook.com): uses technical indicators to ranks ETFs based on various price and volume indicators. Also provides a price chart including various moving averages and advance/decline line for each tracked ETF. A good resource if you want to follow a "what's hot?" approach to picking ETFs.
Morningstar's Exchange-Traded Funds (www.morningstar.com): ETF commentaries, tutorials, and a list of all ETFs that you can sort by name, category, returns, etc. Shows considerable information about most ETFs including sector breakdowns and top 25 holdings, but strangely, Morningstar doesn't describe the fund's investment objective.
Fund Alarm (www.fundalarm.com): mutual fund performance depends on the manager. All bets are off if the manager leaves. How do you know when a manager leaves, and what will be the effect on performance? Find out here.
Morningstar (www.morningstar.com): Best source for mutual fund data. Also has good stock info.
News
Experienced investors keep up with the news about stocks they’re following. News consists of press releases, commentaries, and hard news stories. Most sites archive the stories for only two or three months and then discard it. However, MarketWatch archives stories going back several years.
MarketWatch (marketwatch.com) carries news from several services including the Associated Press and the New York Times, but its own staff pens many of the stories that it runs. It archives its homegrown stories the longest, some as far back as 1998, but it also archives stories from some of its outside wire services for at least a year.
Journalist Express (www.journalistexpress.com): links to a 100 or so resources for news and reference information.
Yahoo! (finance.yahoo.com): Many major news sources. A good overall source for news.
Retirement Planning Tools
Financial Engines (www.financialengines.com): Founded by Nobel Prize winner William F. Sharp, FE analyzes your current investment portfolio to assess your chances of achieving your retirement goals.
Socially Responsible Investing
Do you want to invest in socially responsible companies?
Mutual fund operator Calvert (www.calvertgroup.com) maintains the Calvert Social Index, a list of firms meeting its social responsibility criteria.
Another way of finding qualifying companies is to find socially responsible mutual funds, and then use Morningstar (www.morningstar.com) to see a list of their 25 biggest holdings.
Two places to find lists of socially responsible funds are: Social Investment Forum (www.socialinvest.org) and SocialFunds.com (www.socialfunds.com).
Screening
Morningstar's Mutual Fund Screener (www.morningstar.com): A user-friendly fund screener that lets you search for funds based on Morningstar's Star ratings.
Morningstar’s Stock Screener (www.morningstar.com): Although a limited selection of screening parameters, you can search for stocks based on Morningstar's proprietary “stock grades.” Morningstar grades stocks from A to F in three categories: growth, profitability, and financial health. So you could, for example, look for stocks with A grades in all three categories. Also unique to Morningstar, you can search for stocks based on its stock type definitions such as “speculative growth,” “slow growth,” or “high yield.”
StockTables.com (www.stocktables.com): A specialized, easy-to-use screener designed to pinpoint momentum candidates. Momentum investors look for stocks with strong recent earnings growth and strong relative strength, meaning that they have already outperformed the overall market. StockTables is a pay site but I included it here because it offers a free 14-day trial. You don’t need a credit card for the trial; all that’s required is an e-mail address and password.