Industry/Sector
Information
Analyzing a
stock requires staying on top of trends in its industry, and where your
company fits in the big picture. Here's where to find that info.
Banking,Com (banking.com):
Published by the American Bankers Association. Offers news and analysis
of banking industry trends.
Advertising
Age
(www.adage.com): Although
ostensibly about the advertising business, keeps you tuned into the ‘buzz’
about many industries.
American
Printer
(www.americanprinter.com):
Covers the traditional printing and quick print industries.
Apparel
(www.apparelmag.com):
Focuses on business and technology issues affecting the clothing
industry.
Biotech
(www.biospace.com): The
place to go for biotech industry news. Especially interesting in that
regard is the Clinical Development News
accessed from the Investors
section. I
pay most attention to Phase III section. The approval cycle for new
drugs can drag on for years. News coming out of Phase III trials (the
final phase) can signal big stock moves in either direction.
Network
Computing (networkcomputing.com/):
News about the networking infrastructure industry.
Capital Link
Marine Transportation (marine-transportation.capitallink.com):
A good place to find profiles and news headlines for all types of ocean
shipping companies including drybulk, LNG/LNG, tanker, and container
shippers. Shows current and historical charter day rates for dry-bulk
and crude oil tankers. Check the Industry Reports section for analysis reports that I haven't seen anywhere else.
Chain Drug Review (www.chaindrugreview.com):
Here's where to keep up with the drugstore industry.
Chain
Store Age
(www.chainstoreage.com): A
good place to research trends in retailing as well as firms that supply
hardware, such as computers and checkout systems, to retail stores.
Dental
Economics (de.pennet.com):
Here's where to learn about new products aimed at dentists.
DrugTopics.com
(www.drugtopics.com): The
online version of Drug Topics Magazine, although targeted to
pharmacists, is a good, easy to understand source of news about the
pharmaceutical industry.
Edmunds
Industry Center (edmunds.com/industry-center/):
The place to keep up with news about the global auto industry.
Energy
Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov):
This U.S. government agency site has all sorts of data about petroleum,
natural gas, and electricity production, supplies and usage.
Click
here for current and historical coal prices, and
here for current and historical crude oil, gasoline and heating oil
prices. Click
here for current and historical natural gas prices. Click
here for historical and forecast energy consumption figures through
2040.
Energy
Pulse (www.energypulse.net/centers/):
Dedicated to providing commentary on the global power industry.
Very good!
Farm
Industry News
(www.farmindustrynews.com):
News and views about farming and more importantly, farm equipment
suppliers.
Food
Navigator.com (www.foodnavigator-usa.com):
Best source for news about food and beverage development.
It's strongest point is its coverage of the science and nutrition
aspects of food development, which is where all the industry action is
these days.
Food
Processing Magazine (www.foodprocessing.com):
News and feature articles about food makers and grocery stores.
Health
Data Management (www.healthdatamanagement.com):
The healthcare industry is rapidly embracing information systems to
reduce paperwork and improve patient care. New systems allow a
consulting doctor anywhere in the world to view a patient’s medical
history, lab results, current condition, and treatment plans. HDM is
written for healthcare executives responsible for implementing these
types of systems. It’s a good resource for investors interested in
tech companies serving this market.
Insurance
Journal (www.insurancejournal.com):
Covers
the insurance industry and its suppliers.
Light
Reading (www.lightreading.com):
Optical networking news and analysis. They’re very good at explaining
the various technologies, and even better, naming the important players
in each sector.
Modern
Healthcare (www.modernhealthcare.com):
A good resource for investors interested in the healthcare field,
including medical equipment makers. Covers hospitals, clinics,
drugstores, and their suppliers.
National
Real Estate Investor (www.nreionline.com):
News and analysis about commercial real estate, including
retail shopping centers, multi-family,
and real estate investment trusts (REITs).
Nation’s
Restaurant News (www.nrn.com)
provides excellent coverage of the restaurant industry, especially from
an investor’s perspective. Free
registration required to read full articles.
North American
Windpower (www.nawindpower.com):
News and analysis about the wind power industry focusing on North
America.
Oil
& Gas Investor (www.oilandgasinvestor.com):
Subscription required to read full articles.
Oil
& Gas Journal (ogj.pennnet.com):
Full of news and research about all facets of the oil and gas industry
including exploration, drilling, production and processing.
Outsourcing Center (www.outsourcing-center.com)
Monitors outsourcing, the practice of reducing costs by farming out
tasks such as manufacturing or customer support call centers to third
parties. The site covers both sides of outsourcing; the third-party
contractors as well as the firms that are farming out the work.
Outsourcing is one of the fastest growing business trends and as an
investor you can benefit by spotting companies that are improving their
competitive position by outsourcing as well as by pinpointing publicly
traded contractors benefiting from the trend.
The
Register (www.theregister.co.uk):
This
U.K. based site’s logo “Biting the hand that feeds it,” describes
its intentionally provocative approach. The Register covers technology
with mostly original stories.
It’s
not a techie magazine, it focuses on the business side of the industry. The Register
is always interesting, but sometimes they get it wrong.
RFID
Journal (www.rfidjournal.com):
RFID (radio frequency identification) is the new technology that
may
someday replace the ubiquitous barcode systems. This free magazine has
everything you'd want to know about RFID, including the scoop on what
all the industry players are doing.
Security Info Watch
(www.securityinfowatch.com):
covers the security industry from drones to access
control systems and everything in-between. The site features
dozens of recent news stories and feature articles that may give you
some good investing ideas. You can also use the site to find companies
active in a particular sector such as facial recognition systems.
SolarBuzz (www.solarbuzz.com):
The place for news and commentary about the solar energy industry.
SteelGuru (www.steelguru.com):
Although mostly targeted to people working in the steel industry,
SteelGuru is a good source for industry news.
TechNewsWorld.com
(www.technewsworld.com):
A good resource for
analysis of happenings in the tech world.
Tech
Web (www.techweb.com): News and
features covers a wide range of computer and communications sectors.
Telecommunications
Online (www.telecommagazine.com):
Oriented to industry professionals,
sometimes goes into more detail than you want to know.
Transport
Topics (www.ttnews.com): The
place to keep up with happenings in the trucking industry.
Yahoo’s Industry Center
(finance.yahoo.com): A good
place to start your industry analysis. For each major industry, Yahoo
lists the top five companies by market capitalization, recent news
stories, a calendar of upcoming earnings reports, and a list of recent
analyst upgrades and downgrades for firms within the industry. Especially
valuable are the industry profiles from accessed from a link at the
bottom of each Industry overview page.
Wards
Auto
World (www.wardsdealer.com):
Covers the automobile industry, mostly from the
dealer's perspective.
Waste
Age
(www.wasteage.com): News and
analysis about the recycling and waste removal industries.
Wind Power Monthly
(windpower-monthly.com):
News and analysis about the wind power industry from a global
perspective.
WorldOil.com
(www.worldoil.com): News,
in-depth reports, current prices, forecasts—it’s hard to imagine
what you’d want to know about the oil industry that you couldn’t
find here.
Industry/Sector
Selection
Strategies
index
“Stocks
like sheep, move in herds. If you want your sheep to move north, you
better pick a sheep in a herd moving north.” That pithy advice from
technical analyst John Bollinger explains why many professional
investors believe stock picking success depends more on picking the
right industry group than the right stock.
Big Charts (www.bigcharts.com
>
Industries):
Big Charts 10 best and 10 worst industry group ratings are easy to use. Click
on a group name to see the 10 best and 10 worst performing stocks within
the group for the same period. You can select time spans ranging from
one-week to five years.
John
Bollinger’s Equity Trader (www.equitytrader.com
> Structure):
Bollinger divides the market into sectors and divides those sectors into
industry groups containing stocks that exhibit similar historical
trading patterns. Bollinger calculates “performance” and “potential”
ratings for each sector, each industry group, and for each stock within
a group.
What's Hot Now (DividendDetective.com/scoreboard):
Dividend Detective's exhaustive list of hot and cold high-dividend
industries.
Insider
Trading
index
Would
you want to buy a stock if the CEO is dumping all of his shares? I
didn't think so. So check on what the important insiders (CEO ad CFO)
are up to before you make that trade.
Insider Cow
(www.insidercow.com):
Detailed display of insider transactions by company going back at least
four years.
Yahoo! Insider Trading
(finance.yahoo.com): Yahoo! displays
the insider trading information in understandable English sentences.
Get a stock quote and than click on Insider
Transactions. Here's a
sample.
International
Investing
index
ADR.com
(www.adr.com): The best site for
information on ADRs. Select "Industry" on the top menu to see
a list of all industry sectors represented by ADRs, the best way to
track down worthwhile prospects.
Mergers
& Acquisitions
index
The Online Investor
(www.theonlineinvestor.com/mergers):
A list of recently announced mergers and acquisitions going back two or
three months.
Mutual
Funds,
Closed-End
Funds
&
ETFs
index
Closed-End Fund
Association (www.cefa.com):
good resource for educational information and lists of closed-end funds. Closed-end funds are a special type of mutual fund
that trades on the open market instead of via the fund sponsor, as is
the case for mutual funds.
CEF
Connect (www.cefconnect.com):
sponsored by Nuveen
Closed-End Funds, CEF Connect is a good resource
for information on all closed-end funds, whether sponsored by Nuveen or
not. Provides extensive
information about each fund, including portfolio holdings and
performance statistics. Also offers a
flexible CEF screener.
ETF Investment
Outlook (www.etfinvestmentoutlook.com):
uses technical indicators to ranks ETFs based on various price and
volume indicators. Also provides a price chart including various moving
averages and advance/decline line for each tracked ETF. A good resource
if you want to follow a "what's hot?" approach to picking ETFs.
Morningstar's
Exchange-Traded
Funds (www.morningstar.com):
ETF commentaries, tutorials, and a list of all ETFs that you can sort by
name, category, returns, etc. Shows considerable information about most
ETFs including sector breakdowns and top 25 holdings, but strangely,
Morningstar doesn't describe the fund's investment objective.
Morningstar
(www.morningstar.com):
Best source for mutual fund data. Also has good stock info.
Mutual
Fund Observer (mutualfundobserver.com/):
mutual fund performance depends on the manager. All bets are off if the
manager leaves. How do you know when a manager leaves, and what will be
the effect on performance? Find out here.
News
index
Experienced
investors keep up with the news about stocks they’re following. News
consists of press releases, commentaries, and hard news stories. Most
sites archive the stories for only two or three months and then
discard it. However,
MarketWatch archives stories going
back several years.
MarketWatch (marketwatch.com)
carries news from several services including the Associated Press
and the New York Times, but its own staff pens many of the stories that
it runs. It archives its homegrown stories the longest,
well over a year.
Journalist
Express (www.journalistexpress.com):
links to a 100 or so resources for news and reference information.
Yahoo!
(finance.yahoo.com): Many major
news sources. A good overall source for news.
Retirement
Planning
Tools
index
Financial
Engines (www.financialengines.com):
Founded by Nobel Prize winner William F. Sharp, FE analyzes your current
investment portfolio to assess your chances of achieving your retirement
goals.
Socially
Responsible
Investing
index
Do
you want to invest in socially responsible companies?
Mutual fund operator Calvert (www.calvertgroup.com)
maintains the Calvert Social Index, a list of firms meeting its social
responsibility criteria. Another
way of finding qualifying companies is to find socially responsible
mutual funds, and then use Morningstar (www.morningstar.com)
to see a list of their 25 biggest holdings. Two places to find lists of
socially responsible funds are: Social Investment Forum (www.socialinvest.org)
and SocialFunds.com (www.socialfunds.com).
Screening
index
FINFIZ (http://finviz.com):
User friendly and one of the most powerful free screeners around.
Morningstar's
Mutual Fund Screener (www.morningstar.com):
A user-friendly fund screener that lets you search for funds based
on Morningstar's Star ratings.
Morningstar’s Stock Screener
(www.morningstar.com):
Although a limited selection of screening parameters,
you can search for stocks based on
Morningstar's
proprietary “stock grades.” Morningstar grades stocks from A to F in
three categories: growth, profitability, and financial health. So you
could, for example, look for stocks with A grades in all three
categories. Also unique to Morningstar, you can search for stocks based
on its stock type definitions such as “speculative growth,” “slow
growth,” or “high yield.”
Portfolio123 (www.portfolio123.com):
One of the most powerful screeners available. Includes extensive
backtesting features. Requires a subscription.
StockTables.com (www.stocktables.com):
A specialized, easy-to-use screener designed to pinpoint momentum
candidates. Momentum investors look for stocks with strong recent
earnings growth and strong relative strength, meaning that they have
already outperformed the overall market. StockTables is a pay site but I included it
here because it offers a free 14-day trial. You don’t need a credit card
for the trial; all that’s required is an e-mail address and password.
Yahoo's Basic Screener (finance.yahoo.com):
If you want a very simple screener, Yahoo’s Basic Stock Screener
fits the bill. You can limit your search to stocks within a particular
industry and/or a member of a particular index such as the S&P 500. Then
you can choose from 13 additional selection factors such as
price/earnings ratio, expected earnings growth, or dividend yield.
Find it from Yahoo's main finance page by selecting
Screener in the Stock Research section and then clicking on Launch HTML
Screener.
Validea (www.nasdaq.com):
Pre-made screens for picking stocks by emulating the published
strategies of famous market gurus such as Benjamin Graham or Peter
Lynch. Use of Validea's site
(www.validea.com)
requires a subscription, but you run stock searches based on
Validea’s guru selection formulas free on the Nasdaq stock exchange
site.
Zacks
(zacks.com/screening/):
Zacks compiles the analysts’ earnings forecasts and buy/sell
recommendations you see everywhere. Zacks’ screening program lets you
search for recent rating upgrades or downgrades, changes in quarterly
earnings forecasts or long-term earnings growth rates, stocks likely to
spring a big surprise on report date, and more. You can use their
Predefined
Premium Screens or design your own
free screens using their
Custom
Screener.
Selection
Strategies
index
Selection
strategies, a.k.a. models, are formulas for selecting stocks based upon
screening criteria that has been found to work in the past.
Dogs
of the Dow (www.dogsofthedow.com):
Dogs of the Dow is a conservative value strategy for selecting members
of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. You don’t have to calculate
anything. They do it all for you right here.
Magic Formula Investing
(www.magicformulainvesting.com):
the site associated with the best
selling stock market book, “The Little Book That Beats the Market,”
written by hedge fund manager Joel Greenblatt. Once
registered, pick the minimum market capitalization
that you’re looking for and how many stocks you want to see
and the site gives you a list of corresponding Magic Formula stocks.
Spy
on Mutual
Fund Managers
index
Why
waste time screening and researching if we can get mutual fund managers
to do the work for us. They
spend all day researching and analyzing investment opportunities, have
access to more information than we’ll ever see, and often have a full
time research staff. Here are my favorite sites for spying on
fund manager's trading.
American
Funds (www.americanfunds.com):
American displays the top ten holdings of
each
of its two dozen or so funds by around the 10th of the following
month.
Buffalo
Funds (www.buffalofunds.com):
Buffalo makes the top ten holdings of each of their six funds available
by about the 10th of the following month. Be sure to check out the
five-star rated Small Cap fund and their new Science and Technology
fund.
John
Hancock Funds: (jhinvestments.com/Fund/):
Displays each fund's top ten holdings about a week after the end of each
month. Hancock's Large Cap Value and Small Cap Value funds are both
rated five stars by Morningstar. Select Open End Funds to see a list of
all John Hancock funds.
Munder
Funds (www.munder.com): Munder runs more than 20 funds in a variety of sectors.
Its
monthly commentary for each fund lists all of the transactions for the
previous month, and the rationale for each trade. You can also see the
top 10 holdings for each fund. Both are posted by the 15th of the
following month. Use the
Fund
Quick Find link to locate funds.
Stock
Splits/Dividends
index
Nasdaq (nasdaq.com/markets/upcoming-splits.aspx): Shows
stocks scheduled to split over the next four weeks.
Technical
Analysis
index
Technical
analysts, or chartists, believe that you can forecast a stock’s future
direction solely from information imbedded in its price chart. That’s an
appealing concept, because if true, you could pick stocks in minutes
instead of spending hours analyzing financial statements and other
fundamental data. Here's where to learn about TA.
Metastock
(www.metastock.com): the
maker of the popular Metastock charting program, offers “Technical
Analysis From A to Z.” a free downloadable textbook on TA, including a
detailed definition and tutorial describing the use of just about
every technical indicator. You don't have to register,
simply click
here.
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