There are many ways to research a company nowadays, especially with the rise of the internet as a research tool which is both 24 hours available and omnipresent. DoItInvest has applied these sources constantly and has found that some investing research properly done in advance of buying anything might really help. We at doitinvest had a lot of experiene with both the accademic / MBA-like research tools for investing (which are often associated with professional investing) and with the less usual methods of research (often the unconventional investing can be the most effective, as I’m sure you’ve experienced before). So here we go with the list of potential investment research methods, from the easier ones to the more difficult:
1. Company’s own website
Very often the company’s website can be the most useful method of research. Companies use to tune their websites as to sell themselves to the potential share investors, so there you can find quickly the good news…or their side of the story on the bad news. Most of the company’s publish on their websites the breakthrough news (usually prohjects which will increase the revenue stream), their strategic decisions, their share prices with full evolution in time and even the names of the directors (with their biographies – this might be interesting too!). So keep on checking regularly the companies in your shares portfolio of investments, with one single mention though: the news are produced by the company itself so there is a natural bias to present the things in the brighter possible light. However, even so you can find out about disasters which you did not have a clue before!
2. Check the press
Nowadays you can do it yourself easily online, going to the pages of most respectable journals. Usually the nation-wide business press gives you a full coverage if not of the company, at least of the business environment which it is operating in. DoItInvest.com reccomends using not only the national newspapers and business magazines for research (e.g. in the US Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Forbes etc.). You might try also the local news papers which often will give you more research insight for your do-it-yourself investments than any other news source (Washington Post, New York TImes etc). Find out the address of the company and see which is the most read newspaper in the local area!
3. Talk to the company itself
As with their websites, most of the companies keep a public relations department which is very active towards the investors. So if you have questions why not subscribing to their newsletters or giving them a phone? An investing activity is often about keeping in contact with your investments, so give them a phone call from time to time and find out the good or the bad news by yourself.
4. Professional research sources
I know, I know… We at doitinvest.com know that paying for professional research services for your investments is neither cheap nor 100% relaible. Still, the people at the research companies (Thomson Research, Forbes research etc) are there to do a thorough job and they probably have more time and/or experience in the industry sector or company you are “investment-researching” than yourself, so just give it a try (most if the investing research companies have a trial period so you could really go on with the above mentioned reccomendation for free, at least for a while). Again, with the mention that the investing professionals might have a bias, since many of them are acting on behalf of their own clients.
We hope that these investing advices and research techniques are simple enough (for doitinvest.com they proved to be quite efficient). So just do it, invest, and we are looking forward to hearing from you your success stories.