Where To Go on the Web
Avoid garbage on the Internet. Use these top investing sites to keep yourself informed.
By Courtney McGrath
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, September 2003
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The Internet can be an investor's best friend or worst enemy. Vast and easily accessible, the Net allows novice and experienced investors to explore a universe of information cheaply and efficiently. But because the Internet is hard to police, you often have to wade through a sea of disinformation and sensationalism to find those pearls of wisdom.
No investor should turn to the Internet for guidance without a road map. Ours describes the best the Internet has to offer: sites with clear, useful and accurate information. They range from those that provide basic news and Investing 101 course work to those that get into the complexities of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Unless otherwise mentioned, a site is free. Some sites are so useful that it's worth paying modest fees for their services.
For stock sleuths
A first stop to find information on a specific company is Yahoo! Finance. In addition to chat forums and an extensive glossary to help you cope with jargon, Yahoo! offers superior stock quotes, albeit with a delay (15 minutes for Nasdaq and 20 for New York Stock Exchange listings), and quick access to charts, company profiles and profit estimates.
For more in-depth research, head for MSN Money. Because of its partnership with CNBC, Microsoft-owned MSN delivers more news and updates than Yahoo! does. But MSN's research tools are what really give it an edge. The site offers a powerful filter that lets you screen for stocks using criteria as narrow as inventory turnover and profit margins. With the "research wizard," you can examine the financial strength of a company, identify possible catalysts for improvement, and compare it with other companies in its industry.
Pay Uncle Sam a visit, too. The Securities and Exchange Commission's Edgar Database archives the official documents that companies must file with the SEC, including quarterly and annual reports. If you frequently visit Edgar, then the commercial site, Edgar Online, makes sense. At a cost of $14.95 per month, it simplifies the process of downloading SEC documents in printable form.
One of the best sources for unbiased stock analysis is Value Line. The site offers one-page profiles -- the same ones that appear in the venerable Value Line Investment Survey -- on 1,700 stocks. Each report contains commentary by Value Line analysts and reams of data, including such hard-to-get numbers as capital spending per share and a stock's price-earnings ratio relative to the overall market for each of the past ten years. This doesn't come cheap: An online subscription costs $598 per year.
For fund fans
You can get plenty of information on individual funds from Morningstar. But if you want access to its analysts' commentaries and to its one-page summary sheets (up to 60 per year), it will cost you $109 annually for Morningstar's premium product. The paid service also offers portfolio-analysis tools, such as an "x-ray" that determines the percentage of your assets in different stock styles (or the proportion in bonds or foreign stocks). It also provides access to Morningstar's stock research, including ratings, fair-value estimates and analysis for 500 stocks.
Worried about a fund you already own? Check out FundAlarm, whose mission is to spill the beans on losers, laggards and assorted miscreants, and to recommend funds to sell. Each month, founder Roy Weitz, a certified public accountant, publishes a list of funds that have trailed their benchmarks over the past one, three and five years. He discusses questionable strategies and pokes holes in managers' explanations of why they've gone off course. The site is free but encourages contributions.
For newshounds
To keep up with day-to-day market and economic events, try TheStreet.com. The brainchild of retired hedge-fund manager and current TV host Jim Cramer, TheStreet concentrates on market news and analysis. A standout feature: George Mannes's regular column, "The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week." TheStreet offers a premium site, RealMoney, which boasts a trove of commentary and real-time chats among its contributors. After a 30-day free trial, RealMoney costs $24.95 per month, or $229.95 per year.
CBS MarketWatch deserves a look for the breadth of its coverage. MarketWatch posts dozens of stories each day on the market and individual stocks but also writes about personal-finance topics, such as the pros and cons of market timing, planning for retirement, and the ins and outs of buying a vacation home. MarketWatch doesn't charge a subscription fee for any of its content.
For fixed-income buyers
Sponsored by the Bond Market Association, a financial-services industry group, InvestinginBonds.com lets users search for and obtain price information on different kinds of bonds. Novices will appreciate the guides to bond lingo and credit ratings, and the discussions of municipal, corporate and Treasury bonds.
QuantumOnline.com provides an introduction to preferred stocks as well as preferred-like securities that go by names such as QUIPS and PINES. You can search for information on individual securities or download tables that include offering dates, call dates and credit ratings.
For other needs
Don't let the name fool you. Nuveen Investment's ETFConnect covers not only exchange-traded funds, one of Wall Street's hottest products, but also their close cousins, closed-end funds. (ETFs, which usually track an index, are designed to prevent gaps between share prices and the value of underlying assets; closed-end funds typically trade at discounts or premiums to the value of their assets.) Search for funds by various parameters, then read up on their investment objectives and top holdings, among other things.
RiskGrades helps you get a handle on the riskiness of your stocks and mutual funds by measuring their volatility -- that is, the magnitude of their price swings. You can compare individual securities with benchmark indexes and other stocks, or gauge the risk of your portfolio as a whole.
Reporter: Dave Werthan
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