Article written by Sherin Dev; Follow me in Twitter or Facebook
A comment under the article “BICII – Nestle”, Brijesh, one of our readers asked about the database I am using to get information about a company to take investment decisions. I have replied to the comment with the information he have asked, but thought It would be good for our readers to understand some of the vital information sources about any company.
As I have mentioned in various articles, creation of a list of possible investment candidates must be the first step of any investor. But, how many companies an investor goes to monitor when there are thousands of companies listed in the stock market? Monitoring all those companies is a great task and it is virtually impossible by any individual. Making a list of some very good companies would help an investor to make straight and correct investment decisions. Some of the vital elements to consider a company would be product or service status in the market, management quality, financial quality and investors’ rewards. Once identified and added, the next step would be a long wait to get the stocks in a right price to purchase. During this period, good investors should not miss any kind of information comes out from the company. Not only had that, but vital information always helped investors to understand when the investment is possible.When looking for information, investors should rely only trusted sources. What are those trusted sources, here is a clear list of sources you can take a look to retrieve information about any company that have added to your investment candidates list.
Company Websites – Investor Relations SectionAny listed companies should have a registered website where a particular section named ‘investor relations’ to provide all necessary information to investors. This area generally have present and previous annual reports, company and stock performance information, quarterly updates, any information for investors, shareholder information, investors contacts, previous documents archives, news for investors etc.. In my personal view, company websites are the best source for investors to get all necessary information. I particularly look into all annual reports to understand what management said in each year and its result in the subsequent year. This would expose the management quality of any company.
Stock Exchange Websites
Stock exchanges have a section for public to read information about company and time to time news’s and happenings in the company. This is certainly a good place for investors to get fail proof company information. All financial information, investments, product and service information, shareholder information, bulk buy and sell details all should be available in such sites.
Business Newspapers
Reading business newspaper regularly would help investors to get day to day, updated information about companies. Generally all happenings inside and outside of any company would appear in business newspapers. Major investments, information about profit and lose, financial reports, company product launches, debt information, all would appear in business news papers for public. Any investor, who is serious in investments, should read financial newspapers daily and regularly.
Business and finance magazines
Business and finance magazines are best to get detailed report about the company. This would help investors and readers to know more about the company very specifically in detail. However, whether or not, such features always provided by internal desk or guest writers, investors should ensure the authenticity of such reports.
Financial Websites
Financial websites are good to receive information that requires by investors. Such websites generally have excellent archives of financial and annual reports, company news updates etc.. An additional advantage would be, such sites provide historical and present stock price information, valuations and competitor comparisons to know more about the company. This also has historical financial data about the company that highly accessed and used by technical analysts. Yahoo finance is my favorite website where I can even create my own portfolio of my listed companies to track always.
Google Alerts
I have configured number of Google alerts on almost all the companies that I have added to my investment list. This is a best way to receive information that may sometime not available in any or all of the above sources or an investor miss incidentally. Google alerts generally deliver news whenever it added anywhere in the internet in any site or blog listed in Google. Google alerts can be configured to deliver directly to the email box or to the hand held devices depends of how investors want to receive the alerts. Another advantage is, this service is totally free for anyone to use.
Financial blogs – Authenticity should be confirmed
Blogs are famous to give information about companies time to time. However, investors required to ensure the authenticity of news that appears in the blogs. Some of the bloggers would really do their homework and researches, but most of them not. So confirm the authenticity of information before take the news from any blog to support any of the investment decisions.