Stock Investment Research and Books

IntelligentInvestor said: "HI, I'm new to stock market investing, but have been reading about it for a few months now. I was wondering where you guys find useful investment sources online (stock screens, analysts reports, stock ratios) for free on the Internet. I will make use of the ValueLine Investment Survey at the library, as it seems to include solid data and has been suggested by investing legends Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett. What books should I read to broaden my investment knowledge and give me a good chance of being a successful long-term investor. I plan on reading books regarding Lynch and Buffett and books that the two of them recommend as we all know about their well publicized successes.. So what books do you guys suggest?? Thanks for your help and assistance in adcance. :)"

sp0om said: "Investopedia.com is the best free resource I've come across. The library is also a great place to get books related to the stock market for free. Those two should be enough for anyone :)"

trickynick said: "I agree that investopedia.com is an excellent site with lots of good information. In addition to that, finance.yahoo.com is a good place to get basic information on publicly traded companies. Every publicly traded company has it's own page on [B]finance.yahoo.com[/B] which includes all key statistics, identifies competitors, news, links to regulatory filings, financial statements, you name it. The only drawback is that it is not always as current as it could be. Peter Lynch's [I]One up on Wall Street[/I] is the only book I recommend everyone read. Lynch's way of thinking is closer to my own than any of the other whiz-bang investing guys. Some things have changed since the time Lynch wrote that but all of the fundamental principles still apply. [B]bigcharts.marketwatch.com[/B] is extremely valuable. Their "interactive charting" feature, which is accessible through a button at the top of the main page enables you to track a variety of statistics on a particular stock all the way back through 1986. How you do it is you click "interactive charting" and you hit one of the "lower indicator" buttons and select "all data" for a time frame. You can adust it by compressing the time frame or changing the frequency to make the data more useful and/or easy to interpret. I mostly use this for comparing current P/E ratios for a particular stock to its historic levels (you'll understand why that's important to do when you read Lynch's book). [b]sec.freeedgar.com[/b] is a free source of regulatory filings provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, the "investor relations" page of a company's website is always worth a look."

alhamid said: "if you get an online brokerage account you get much free research tools"

IntelligentInvestor said: "Thanks for all the tips yo... For libraries it depends.. The 2 libraries closest to my home aren't very good.. LOL... One has really old books but I did manage to find the Warren Buffett Way 2nd edition audio CD there today so I snatched it right out.. One library is quite new so it isn't quite established.. So what broker do you guys use for your own trading? What broker is good if I have a long-term investment horizon and plan to hold stocks for like 6 months to 2 years??"

alhamid said: "I have used Ameritrade for 3 years. they are quite good"

IntelligentInvestor said: "That might be good for me... I looked at online application for Canadians, and I don't think I can even apply for ScottTrade or ShareBuilder just cause I live up north... But it's all good I guess.... I'll probably go for Ameritrade...."