Stock Research
Books at the Library
Value Line Reference 332.6 VAL (located at the front desk) Deleteyourbroker.com
Byron, Christopher. 332.64 BYRON Lynch, Peter. 332.6 LYNCH
Hibbing Public Library 218 262-1038
hibbing.lib.mn.us
Beating the street. Use the news.
Bartiromo, Maria. 332.6 BARTI
Stocks to Study
ORCL
Oracle Technology
Dun and Bradstreet guide to your investments.
332.6 DUN
The Wall Street Journal interactive edition’s guide.
Pettit, Dave. 332.64 PETTI
CSCO
Cisco Technology
PEP
Pepsi Beverages
The Motley Fool Investment Guide.
Gardner, David and Tom. 332.6 GARDN
Investing Online for Dummies, 4rd edition
Sindell, Kathleen. 332.63 SINDE 2000
MCD
McDonalds Restaurants
The Warren Buffett Way.
Hagstrom, Jr., Robert G 332.6 HAGST
KKD
Krispy Crème Donuts
The street.com Guide to Smart Investing in the Internet era:
332.63 KANSA 2001 Kangas, Dave. Get your slice of the stock market
TGT
Target Consumer
WMT
Wal-Mart Consumer
What to look for on stock websites
News, quotes, stock history, estimates, investment strategies, schools for beginners, charts, portfolio trackers, value stocks, technical analysis, stock screening, message boards, and e-brokers.
Created by Cheryl Gillis, for the Hibbing Public Library. Funding provided by IRRRA Do I.T. Community Technology Awareness Program. Created February 2003. This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike Licensed. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/ or send a letter to creative commons, 559 North Abbott Way Stanford California 94305, USA
Online Brokers
Some online broker web sites worth looking at are listed below. Prices per stock transaction vary. All sites offer some research, analysis, commentary and chat sites. Carefully check for all costs of stock purchase. Some websites have a minimum amount of money necessary to place orders.
Merrill Lynch Datek online E*Trade Group Ameritrade
www.mldirect.com www.datek.com www.etrade.com www.ameritrade.com www.waterhouse.com
Waterhouse securities Quick & Reilly www.quickandreilly.com Firstrade www.firstrade.com
Money grows with regular investing.
Online Scams
Investing scams have been around as long as investing; these scams are easier to pull off on the Internet. Investing over the Internet and finding financial data from Web sites and chat rooms means you could get caught in a cyber rip off.
1. Spam or junk e-mail can be disseminated to thousands of people with little effort. A spam might contain an invitation to invest in fraudulent ventures. 2. Bogus investment letters may promote companies that pay for recommendations given by so called experts to get you to invest in their schemes. 3. Cyber smear campaigns will discredit certain companies or stocks often an unscrupulous investor who is betting that a stock will decline in value so they load up internet message boards or chat rooms with negative information about a company which can send stocks plummeting.
Many of the tools used by advisers to help guide their clients are available online for free.
Message boards
People who participate in chat rooms and message boards about stock often have useful information to share. Online message boards are another tool for investors to decide whether to buy a stock and when to sell a stock. The boards are also a favorite hangout for stock promoters and con artists. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine what is factual and what is not. Some of the popular message boards are:
Silicon Investor
www.siliconinvestor.com
Morningstar.
www.morningstar.com Use for fund and bond talk. Morningstar fund analysts moderate the boards, so there’s less chance of the chat straying off course.
Find an explosion of investment information on the Internet.
Investor Websites
• • • • • • •
www.fool.com www.quicken.com moneycentral.msn.com finance.yahoo.com www.smartmoney.com www.valueline.com www.sec.gov
• • • • • • •
www.cbs.marketwatch.com www.better-investing.org www.business.com www.individual.com www.kiplinger.com www.netstockdirect.com www.dripinvestor.com
Technical Analysis
Stock screens
Choose a strategy such as stocks that have a dividend in a certain industry; small, medium, or large company stocks;undervalued stocks; blue chip stocks; cyclical stocks; or stocks in certain industries. The stock picker fills out an online form to identify the characteristics he or she finds important and the site brings up a list meeting your criteria. www.quicken.com offers some of the best screening tools, geared toward beginners and the advanced. The screens allow investors to examine up to 33 variables including price to book and price to earnings ratios and growth rates over extended periods. After you have a list of companies, you can compare up to 12 data measures in 30 companies.
Charts
Computer automation makes charting easier for the average investor and free on many web sites today. Look at Big Charts (www.bigcharts.com) and (www.quicken.com).
Portfolio Tracking Websites
Choose one of the following websites to track your portfolio:
Fool.com Quicken.com Msn MoneyCentral CBS MarketWatch Forbes Morningstar
www.fool.com www.quicken.com moneycentral.msn.com cbs.marketwatch.com www.forbes.com/investing www.morningstar.com
S&P 500 Index An Index of 500 of the biggest publicly traded companies in the United States and thought the best measure of the overall U.S. Stock Market. Nasdaq 100 Index An index that includes the Nasdaq’s 100 largest companies and is heavily focused on technology.
Online Portfolios
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Select a web site. List your stocks by name and symbol. When were they purchased? How many shares did you buy? Cost of commission. What was the cost per share?
Decide what portfolio will show:
1. Symbol 2. Current price 3. Daily price change 4. Cost per share 5. Number of shares 6. Total cost 7. Current value 8. Total gain 9. Dividends 10. 52 week high and low 11. PE ratio You can set up several portfolios at one time to track different information of interest to you or your club.
Glossary of Financial Terms
Annual Report
The corporate financial statement that are required by the SEC regulations. Read the financial section.
EPS or Earnings Per Share
company’s earnings divided by the number of shares outstanding.
Beta
Price To Book Ratio
Measure of the stock’s volatility as compared to the volatility of the entire market (usually measured by the S&P 500 index.) A beta above 1 shows greater volatility than the overall market, and a beta below 1 is less volatile.
Shareholders equity divided by the number of shares of stock outstanding.
PE or Price To Earnings Ratio PEG
The share price of a stock, divided by its per share earnings over the past year. PE over earnings growth rate. 1 is fairly valued. Less than 1 is undervalued and over 1 is overvalued.
Book Value
Company’s assets minus any liabilities and intangible assets.
Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Cost-of-Living Index
ROE or Return On Equity
An inflation tracker that measures the price change in consumer goods and services.
DRIP or Dividend Reinvestment Plan
The automatic investment of shareholder dividends into additional shares of the company’s stock.
A measure by percentage of how much in earnings a company generates in four quarters compared to its shareholders’ equity. Some use ROE as a screen to find companies that can generate large profits with little in the way of capital investment.