|
| |
Investor Tools
Useful Investment Sites
At times, too much information can be worse than not having enough. When
picking stocks, focusing on a few companies is more efficient than
trying to evaluate many.
Below are sites that provide useful information to investors. They
are free but links may be moved or removed, or the services may eventually be provided
for a fee. This page will be kept as current as possible.
Individual Stocks
www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
Securities and Exchange Commission web site. This is the Federal agency
that regulates all publicly traded companies. In the Edgar database,
enter the company name, and the filings of that company will be listed.
The 10-Q report shows the quarterly report, and the 10-K is the annual
report. Being able to read financial income statements and balance
sheets is very important.
biz.yahoo.com/p/s_peeu.html
Industry Browser on Yahoo Finance. You can drill down by
specific industry to the company level. It is useful to click on specific columns
and sort
it by industry or by company in a single industry for comparison reasons (by
P/E or dividend yield for example).
finance.yahoo.com/q/ao?s=IBM
Yahoo Finance page of Analyst Earnings Estimates and History for
IBM. To access a different company, enter the symbol and then click on
Analyst
Estimates in the left margin (or type over
the IBM symbol in your browser address bar). It is extremely useful to
view the earnings history for a company and also the forecast of what analysts
think a company will earn. When a company misses the analysts average
estimate, it's often referred to as an earnings surprise, either positive
or negative.
finance.yahoo.com/q/ao?s=IBM
Yahoo Finance page of Analyst Ratings and History for IBM.
To access a different company, enter the symbol and then click on Analyst
Opinion in the left margin (or type over the IBM symbol in
your browser address bar). It is useful to view the analyst ratings
history for a company, but remember they often act like schools of fish
(recommending high flying stocks at the same time, regardless of
rational valuation of a company).
moneycentral.msn.com/investor/market/earncalendar
MSN Earnings Calendar. The page shows the planned release date
for that day, and if you enter a stock symbol, the planned release date for
that company for the current quarter will appear.
www.fulldisclosure.com/dividend.asp
Thomson Investments Dividend Calendar that shows companies going
X-Dividend for that day. There is also a tab to search by company.
Industry or
Economic Related
moneycentral.msn.com/investor/calendar/econ/current.asp
MSN Economic Indicator Calendar. Quite often, if economic data
varies a lot from Wall Street expectations, the stock market can go up
or down significantly on that day.
www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html
Bloomberg energy futures page. It is useful if you own
energy stocks, or are thinking of buying energy stocks / mutual funds / ETFs.
www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/hist.html
The Federal Deficit of the United States (requires Microsoft Excel).
It's about $1.5 billion a day right now (gross amount, before raiding
the Social Security surplus). Tables 1.1, 1.2, and 7.1
are most useful to see the gross total deficit, and as a percent of GDP.
Mutual Funds
finance.yahoo.com/funds
Mutual Fund portal on Yahoo Finance. The fund screener, located
in the left margin, is a useful tool for evaluating mutual funds.
finance.yahoo.com/etf
ETF portal on Yahoo Finance. A good site to learn about
Exchange Traded Mutual Funds.
Please email
peter@celebrateboston.com
if you would like to suggest a useful site to this listing. |
|
|
|
|
|
Return to Stock
Market 101 Page |
|
|
|
|
| | |
