stock research

Resources for stock research include brokerages, investment banks, independent analysts and research houses, as well as the financial press.

The broker-client relationship is an important source for top quality research.

Many brokerages have high quality research teams, and getting those research reports many times requires some kind of client relationship with the company.

The brokerage and investment bank research teams are ranked by Institutional Investor Magazine (their web site is at institutionalinvestor.com), so you can check from that source how well the team you're getting research papers from (in Asia, U.S., Latin America, and Europe) is ranked within peers (see the "Rankings" category).

If you have a broker or other contact at one of these brokerages/investment banks, you should definitely ask to get included in the mailing list of the company's analysts.

Some brokerages are able to get third party research, in case they don't have their own research department (as is the case with many online brokerages).

If you attend one of the investment seminars where these top analysts give presentations, remember to leave your business card and ask to be included in the mailing list of the analyst.

Stock Research from Online Resources

There are lots of resources for stock analysis online. Because of the nature of the web (anyone can publish their analysis), you should be very picky about which sources to rely upon.

There are a lot of online scams surrounding the financial community, with the most common sources of fraudulent investment presentations delivered through (according to the SEC):

• Online Investment Newsletters
• Bulletin Boards
• E-mail spam

To steer clear of these scams, you can take a look at some of the recent cases and background work done by some parties, including:

• sec.gov/investor/pubs/cyberfraud.htm
• ftc.gov/reports/Fraud/invest.htm
• fraudbureau.com/investor/
• dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Fraud/Investment/ (list of resources to look at)

The online resources include the many online magazines, also from primarily offline publications, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times of London.

Primarily online stock research journals include thestreet.com and fool.com.

There are also lots of resources for financial data on stocks, in case you prefer to do your own research.

For example, the required SEC filings can be found from freeedgar.com and historical stock quotes are available from, for example, bigcharts.com and finance.yahoo.com.

Stock Research Books

Understanding how stock research is done is a major part in using the analyses to your benefit.

Just getting a "buy", "sell", or some other recommendation may be enough for some, but to really get the full benefits of these research papers, you should learn as much as you can about how the analysis is conducted.

Good books on the subject of stock analysis (valuation) include:

• Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, 3rd Edition by McKinsey & Company Inc.
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset, Second Edition by Aswath Damodaran
• Valuation WorkBook: Step-by-Step Exercises and Test to Help You Master Valuation by McKinsey & Co Inc. (a companion book to the original "Valuation" book)
• and many others.

Many of the valuation models are used to value companies in corporate finance, including mergers and acquisitions and other similar transactions, but the values from these models should also be usable in valuation of exchange traded stocks.

There are, however, various additinal variables that affect exchange traded stock valuation, including, for example, the liquidity of the stock (how easy it is to trade the stock in large amounts in the exchange).


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