The practice owner that you met at a networking event sounded gung-ho about wanting to…
Charles Morris
Morris Investment Counsel
Atlanta, GA
We all are willing to subscribe to research services that help us with our normal, year-round projects. However, what about getting the information required to handle the random assignments on topics that may occur but once every few years. What’s needed is an inventory of no-cost resources that offer timely, accurate information to enable you to present a quality product to your client without breaking the research budget.
The Internet is certainly the place to start looking, but searches may be unproductive or take much too long. So we are listing a few websites that we have found to be very informative, and should be welcome additions to your ‘Favorites’ tab.
Fitch Ratings site – www.fitchratings.com – much information on a wide variety of topics, although you may need to register the first time to view the free reports. There are reports on many industries and financial sectors, and they are archived back several years. Industries reviewed include banking, insurance, homebuilding, telecom, automobile, chemicals, paper and forest products, etc. There are also reports on many sectors of the financial and credit markets.
FDIC site – www.fdic.gov – a wealth of information on the economy and the banking world. You will find current and archived reports on not just the overall economy, but for every state, and you can even drill down for data on individual cities. The information and report-generating capabilities on the banking industry is, in a word, awesome! You can not only look at data on individual banks, but you can generate reports on a national, regional, statewide basis, or create your own peer group. There is also a listing of archived press releases, and a listing of FDIC-sponsored conferences with summaries included.
Speaking of banking, not so much for basic data, but for candid, independent research on the banking sector, go to www.bankstocks.com. Eric Miller’s columns ‘Random Gleanings’ are an added bonus.
CFA Institute members have a great resource in the ‘www.cfainstitute.org’ site. Members can search for documents from CFA Institute publications (including the Financial Analysts Journal, Conference Proceedings, etc.). Have you needed help on such topics as in-process R&D, valuation of bankrupt firms, real options, franchise valuation, warrants, Black-Scholes model? If so, be sure to check it out in the Members Services section.
For housing, mortgage and more economic reports, be sure to visit www.freddiemac.com and www.mbaa.org.
Also, for the office – go to www.pcworld.com for articles, reviews and Top 10 listings for computer and related products, and to http://ptech.wsj.com for The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg’s reviews.
Let’s not leave out some ‘fun stuff’ – ‘Astronomy Picture of the Day – go to http://antwrp.gsc.nasa.gov – and view the photo of the day. Go to ‘archives’ to see many great pics. To put one of the photos on your computer screen – right click, select ‘Set as Background’.”
