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Best
Investing Sites for 2007
Since we’re starting a new year, this is a good
time to give you my take on some of the best investing sites for 2007.
Topping this year’s list is Business Week.
Business Week
Business Week’s site has been doing a good job for so long that I
often forget to mention it. Business Week magazine and Standard &
Poor’s, the stock and bond rating company, are both owned by McGraw
Hill. Thus it’s not a surprise that Standard & Poor's contributes most
of Business Week’s content pertaining to investing. There’s so much
there, that I only have room to cover the highlights.
The best way to access most of the features I’m
about to describe is to select
Investing Columns under Investing on Business Week’s homepage (www.businessweek.com).
Business Week maintains archives going back months, and sometimes years,
depending on the feature. But, while you can download the current
version of these features from other pages, the Investing Columns path
is the only way I’ve found to access the archives.
‘Picks & Pans’ features S&P’s analyst
comments on stocks they cover that made news that day. The single
paragraph commentary relates the news, the analyst’s take on the news,
and any resulting changes in the analyst’s buy/sell rating. It’s an
interesting read and you can browse through the archives going back
three or four months.
‘Focus Stock of the Week’ features a
detailed analysis of one of S&P’s five-star rated (highest rating)
companies. The analysis is a lengthy, but easy read. S&P describes the
company’s business, its competitive advantages, and why S&P thinks the
stock is going up from here without burdening you with detailed
statistics and financial statement calculations.
You can check out the performance of S&P’s previous
weekly picks by scanning though the archive listing picks going back
almost two years.
‘Industry in Focus’ is a good resource for
investing ideas. Rather than describing broad industry trends such as
pharmaceuticals, it focuses on narrower investment opportunities such as
cancer drugs.
‘Sam Stovall’s Sector Watch’ gives you a
broader industry view. Stovall, who is S&P’s chief investment strategist
for equity research services, describes S&P’s outlook for a particular
industry, say specialty retailers or banks. If the outlook is favorable,
Stovall lists S&P’s top-rated stocks in the industry. Business Week
archives Stovall’s columns going back almost two years.
Stock screeners are programs that allow you to scan
the entire market for stocks meeting your specific requirements.
Business Week’s free ‘Quick Stock Search’ and ‘Advanced Stock
Search’ programs are the only free stock screeners I know of that
show you the returns you would have received if you had run the same
screens one-year back and bought the stocks turned up by the screen back
then. Find them by clicking on Stocks in the Investing section, and then
scrolling down to the Investing Tools section.
Barchart.com
Barchart.com (www.barchart.com),
which I also highlighted last year, is still the best site for spotting
hot industries. That’s important because stocks in the same industry
usually move in the same direction, up or down. Thus picking the right
industry is often more important than picking the right stock.
While many sites track industries, in my view,
Barchart.com does it best. Barchart employs a sophisticated analysis
strategy that gives most weight to recent activity and its ratings
aren’t distorted by the action of a few cheap stocks, which often
happens on other sites. Click on
Sectors on Barchart.com’ homepage.
FundAlarm
FundAlarm’s purpose in life is tracking mutual fund manager
changes, at least in theory. Investment advisor Roy Weitz, the site’s
publisher, does a good job at that task. Once a month he updates the
site with the recent goings on at the funds, and weighs in with his take
on whether the change is more likely to help or hurt the fund’s future
performance.
But I find FundAlarm’s Discussion Board even more
interesting than the fund commentary. The boards are moderated, meaning
that only on-topic and civil messages get posted. Most of the posts are
about mutual funds or exchange-traded-funds, but sometimes cover other
investing topics. They are worthwhile reads. I’ve often learned
something I didn’t know. Find the
Discussion Board from the link on FundAlarm’s homepage (www.fundalarm.com).
Little Book Site
Magic Formula Investing, the site associated with the best
selling stock market book, “The Little Book That Beats the Market,”
written by hedge fund manager Joel Greenblatt is still going strong. As
you may recall, the Little Book describes a stock picking strategy that,
at least in theory, would have produced a 31 percent average annual
return from 1988 through 2004.
Implementing Greenblatt’s strategy doesn’t require
much time or even a calculator. You need only go to his Magic Formula
site, (www.magicformulainvesting.com).
Once your registered (it’s free), you need only pick the minimum size of
company (market capitalization) that you’re looking for and how many
stocks you want to see on your list (25, 50, or 100). That’s it until a
year later when you repeat the process.
All of the sites that I’ve mentioned are free. I
hope you enjoy a great year and maybe having these investing sites at
your disposal will make it a little more prosperous.
published 1/7/07 |
