Fundamental Research

Mazotasan

Hi all,

Am a first time investor and am currently through the modules on informedtrades.com. I have a basic understanding of the market and will be investing some time over the next 6 months to educate myself further through the web. I'd like to look at some stocks say inside and outside of Ireland and was wondering how exactly to carry out 'fundamental research'? Is it essentially gathering every and any info possible on a particular company...past results, press releases etc? For example where do you go to dig up P&L's or balance sheets for companies quoted on the Dow or if a company is about to acquire another company where does that info surface first in the public domain? Does anyone have a particular procedure for fundamental research or is it more of a subjective process...Having never done it, my idea is to treat it like I am going for a job interview for the CEO position with a company I have never heard of! It just seems hard to know where to start!...Any thoughts, tips, advice or experiences greatly appreciated.

woodseb

you are already on the right track - fundamental analysis is fairly wide ranging from the industry the company is in to looking at the financials of the firm ie comparing ratios, p/e etc

you'll find all the published accounts on the investor relations section of the website of any quoted company

Mazotasan

Cheers, the industry a particular company is involved in is probably equally as important if not more in certain cases. Think I'll pick a few industries and see what comes up in terms of interesting companies.

ED 209

It's all about the fundamentals. This does take time and you tend to invest more with a long term focus. However, if people like us who believe in researching want to gamble we can always fly to Vegas.

I am guilty of looking at the dividend yield a bit too much. Greed is good lol.

Kanchelskis

Hey OP

Theres a couple of good sites for fundamental research which summarise the important info as well as going into detail if you wish. some of these are:
Digital Look
ADVFN
Yahoo Finance

If you are really interested in making money then you should learn to read and understand stockcharts as well as fundamentals. These are also available on these sites.

You should also learn about the importance of timing, volume, industry sectors and the big picture. Good Luck.

siobhancoyle

I did this topic last semester, we had to pick 3 stocks at start of the semester and sell them at the end & the highest gain got extra marks.... i used digital.look and i am still using yahoofinance to keep an eye on the share prices..... once you pick your companies set up a yahoo account and buy say 100 shares and it will automatically track it for you..heres a list of the websites i used:

www.digitallook.ie
www.Davos.com
www.ncb.ie
www.goodbodys.ie
www.citi.ie
www.ft.com
www.ireland.com
www.theeconomist.com
www.ecb.eu
www.rte.ie
www.ise.ie
www.yahoofinance.com and then the company websites themselves!

the rte business section gives great links to the stockbrokers daily briefings which are helpful..

but the best site was
http://www.infinancials.com......but you can only get 3days free access to this..so if you are doing a project/essay Id suggest you pick the companies you want before you resister with this site....it gives you all the financials including benchmarking against national and international competitors.

for good general company backgrounds you should try the EBSCO database under company profiles.....

once you pick your shares go onto the company website..some have a handy facility that they will automatically email you with news updates so it saves on research time.
Goodluck!:)

Mazotasan

Great advice there people and some great links. A lot of homework to be done to research the research! Thanks.