02/19/2004 - #313 - How to Get $100,000 Worth of Research a Year - For Free
The Investment U E-Letter
Thursday, February 19, 2004 * * * * * * * [Editor's Note: Not many people make more money in a year from their investments than from their other sources of income. Still fewer do that before their 30th birthday. Brian Hunt, the Vice President of Investment U and the editor of Microcap Moonshots, did just that last year. I've asked Brian to share with us one of his specialties: finding invaluable investing tools that are absolutely free… ~Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, President, Investment U] How to Get $100,000 Worth of Research a Year - For Free
By Brian Hunt
Vice President, Investment U "We use Ned Davis Research, which costs tens of thousands of dollars a year. All of our analysts have access to a Bloomberg terminal-- another $16,000 a year… each. And Datastream, which is even more expensive. Between these services and other reports, charting packages, subscriptions, and services we receive, our research costs are hundreds of thousands of dollars a year." ~Typical fund management company Can you believe it? Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in computers and subscriptions… just to decide what stocks to pick. When you're managing billions, hundreds of thousands must be pocket change. The managers of big mutual funds and hedge funds can afford to spend that money. However, if you're willing to dig around a bit, you can run your own money with nearly all their tools, for next to nothing. In today's letter, I'll show you where to find the best stock research, software, and financial journals available to manage your investments… stuff that would have cost you thousands of dollars a few years ago, but thanks to the Internet is free, or close to it. The Best Research Isn't the Most Expensive… It's Free For stock research, I like to use MSN Money and Yahoo! Finance. They're both free or close to it (my #1 criterion) and easy to use (#2). You can check out insider trades, institutional ownership, and the financial results for just about any stock out there. MSN's Deluxe Stock Screener is one of the best screens available. (My friend Dan Ferris, editor of Extreme Value, cautions against taking the numbers on MSN and Yahoo! as gospel. Dan likes to check out the company's own filings at www.SEC.gov) That covers stocks. For commodities, I go to www.barchart.com to look at daily, weekly, or monthly charts of commodities like oil, copper, or soybeans. It's amazing that all of this stuff is now available for free. Less than a decade ago, you'd have had to pay up to $20,000 a year for the data and charting programs, and you'd have paid the phone company to run ISDN cable to your home. Now it's all free! Investment Software Even I Can Use! I find that most of the fancy investment analysis software out there is time-consuming to figure out and hard to use (and expensive). If you're like me, you'd rather jot down your investments on a piece of paper than go through a two-inch-thick software manual every 10 minutes, or sit on hold for a half-hour on a tech-support call. Fortunately, Investment U President Steve Sjuggerud showed me a nifty little Excel companion program called XLQ to keep track of my investments--and using XLQ is a breeze. It's cheap, fast, and easy to use (see a theme here?). You can check it out at www.qmatix.com. It's a great deal for $45, if you're willing to do a little work. (You can download the full version of the software for FREE and try it for 45 days before you buy.) Let me explain how it works… Let's say you're looking for stocks to buy in the brewing business. You can make up a list of brewing companies, then use XLQ to download stuff like price-to-earnings, market cap, and 52-week highs to help you pick the best brewing stocks to buy. And you won't be waiting long. You can get data for an entire sector in seconds with a broadband connection. (A detailed list of price-to-earnings, market caps, and 52-week highs would have taken you all day to put together five years ago.) I'm sure some of the high-priced software available out there is great… but it's not necessary for great investment analysis and performance. Ultimately, 45 bucks and some skills on Microsoft Excel are all you need. More Free Stuff: Your Local Library I save myself a ton of money by just going to my local library a few times a month. I can check out thousands of dollars worth of information for free at the library. Most libraries carry some of the best independent research in the world… the Value Line Investment Survey and S&P research reports. If you're unfamiliar with Value Line and S&P research, it's great stuff, but pretty expensive for a single investor to subscribe to. (Value Line's Investment Survey is $600 a year.) Most libraries also carry the best financial newspapers and magazines. You can stop in to read the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, Barron's, etc. at the library…all for free. The cheap investment tools out there are incredible - and in most cases, all you'll ever need to be a successful investor. Good investing, Brian Back to Archive | 
