| Article: Online trading offers high risks, high rewards, and a big gamble from The Detroit News, March 22, 1999 | |
| Online resources (reprinted from above Detroit News article): | |
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* Wall Street Guru (www.wallstreetguru.com): Provides insights and ideas from top stock market analysts and editors from publications such as Barron's, Forbes and Smart Money.
* Beartracker (www.beartracker.com): Research and editorial content for investors seeking short-sell investment options. * YourFunds.com (www.yourfunds.com): Editorial coverage of the mutual fund industry and a searchable database of detailed data on over 7,000 mutual funds. * News Vest (www.newsvest.com): Live and archived news from UPI, Business Wire, PR Newswire and 20 other sources. * Mr. Edgar (www.mredgar.com): Provides access to company SEC filings. Content provided by Partes Corp. * Bull Mart (www.bullmart.com): Financial Web's online store. Purchase investment products, services and related merchandise online, often at discounted prices. * Financial Web University (www.fwuniversity.com): Glossary of almost 500 commonly used investment terms. * Financial Web (www.financialweb.com): A collection of 18 sites offering investment-related news and information. * Rapid Research (www.rapidresearch.com): Two screening modules and detailed fundamental reports for about 8,000 listed securities. * Stock Tools (www.stocktools.com): Provides a stock graphing tool that allows uses to plot a stock's price and volume. * The Small Cap Investor (www.smallcapinvestor.com): Spotlights of a small-cap companies thought to be undervalued. * Quote Central (www.quotecentral.com): Free real-time and delayed quotes for all stocks on U.S. exchanges and the OTC Bulletin Board and for stocks on Canadian exchanges. Source: American Association of Individual Investors. |
Much (but not all) of the remainder of this site was derived from newspaper articles, including USA Today
EDGAR, the SEC's corporate information database
The Securities and Exchange Commission The SEC site also provides other useful information, including recent rule proposals and enforcement actions.
The American Association of Individual Investors Contains a useful reference guide to mutual fund directories and other investment books. It provides phone numbers for checking a broker's disciplinary history and filing a complaint. It also includes a comprehensive list of IRS tax publications for investors.
The Treasury Department Provides results of recent Treasury bond and note auctions and other information about the Treasury Department.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a must-visit for anyone interested in government bonds and notes. The site provides dates for government auctions, selected interest rates, foreign exchange rates and daily quotes for government securities. It also tells you how to buy Treasury bills, notes and bonds directly from the Treasury.
InfoManage International provides a handy road map to other financial Web sites where you can find information about international stocks, currency rates, bonds, futures and technology stocks.
Hoovers Reports provides comprehensive profiles of public companies. Some of the information on this site is available only to members, but you can find a lot of interesting free stuff: stock charts, Edgar filings, historical information and locator maps.
The good news is that navigating Edgar gets easier with practice. Some tips for getting around: Be specific: The Edgar archives function will let you do a keyword search of all documents filed by a company or mutual fund. But unless you know the exact name of the company or fund -- including whether its a Co., Corp. or an Inc. -- you'll drown in data.
For example, if you type "Intel" in the keyword box, you'll get a list of documents filed by Intel, IntelCom Group, Intellicall and Intelligent Electronics. If you type "Intel Corp.," that's all you'll get.
Look it up: If you're not sure of a company's name, look up its Central Index Key number. Click forward to the "Edgar CIK and Ticker Lookup" function and type in as much of the company's name as you know.
You'll get a list of companies or funds and CIK numbers for each one. When you've found your company's number, flip back to the archives and type the number in the keyword box.
This won't work for all companies and funds: Some haven't been assigned CIK numbers yet.
Learn the names of forms: If you don't know the difference between an 8-K and a 10-Q, the list of forms you get on Edgar will be meaningless. Fortunately, you can click on "Edgar Form Definitions" for a brief description of the various documents companies and funds file.
The shortcut tools: Once you've familiarized yourself with the forms, use the shortcuts suggested by the SEC. These, called filing retrieval tools, are frequently updated.
They're also a good way to find the most recent filings. For example, "Current Events Analysis" lets you scan 10-Ks or quarterly reports filed the past few days (remember the system has a 24-hour delay).
Be flexible: Sometimes you have to wander around to find what you want. For example, the SEC's custom retrieval tools make it easy to find recent mutual-fund prospectuses, but not N-30Ds, the annual and semiannual reports mutual funds send to their shareholders.
To get that information, you have to go back to the Edgar archive, key in the name or CIK number of a fund and scan a list of filings.
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Last updated June 2000