Resources

I'm always open for suggestions on new resources. Please feel free to contact me with your thoughts, and I'm glad to include it here if I find it useful in my own process. 

Screening Tools


FINVIZ.com 

I've used FinViz.com for a few years now as a free charts and screening tool, using it in on a daily basis to monitor new lows, biggest losers, etc. 

Yahoo Earnings Surprise Report

Earnings surprises can lead to overreaction, both positive and negative. I've come to incorporate negative surprises as an important part of the "Schleifer Effect" process. I visit this Yahoo report frequently to watch how company earnings compare to market expectations and whether disparities between the two lead to investment opportunities. 

Valuation Tools


The Wall Street Journal Market Data Center - P/Es & Yields on Indexes

We can use the P/E ratio of the entire S&P 500 index as a proxy for the market as a whole. Based on its earnings, is Mr. Market being pricey or cheap? By translating the P/E ratio into an earnings yield, we get a vague sense for the sort of returns being offered. At a P/E of 14 we say the index is offering a yield slightly better than 7 percent. How does that compare to your own return requirements? How do your investment ideas stack up against the current market valuation?

For a variety of excellent market valuation tools, see Greg Speicher's links here.   

Continuous Learning


Damodaran Online

NYU Stern School finance professor Aswath Damodaran, guru of valuation methods, provides full access to his class lectures complete with handouts, excel models, and his how-to publications on various methodologies.

You may or may not agree with all of his specific methods. That's irrelevant. Serious students of investing need to study and understand his thinking on how to value a business and decide what pieces they can use to improve their own process. He is providing an invaluable service by opening up his class to anyone with an internet connection.

Watch each session from his Valuation class for Stern MBA students. Approach it as if you're a student. You won't get credit for the semester-long class, but you won't have to pay tuition either.

It's also worth perusing his book, The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock & Profit.


Study Hacks by Cal Newport

Well before he was an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University, Cal Newport was developing his bona fides as a guru of improving ones skills through disciplined practice and continuous learning. While his area of focus has been academics (i.e., how to improve ones study skills), the ideas are universal to any craft or career.

Though his books are, ostensibly at least, about studying, the principles apply equally as well to the craft of investing. His blog, Study Hacks, is worth reading from start to finish.


blog maverick by Mark Cuban

You may know him as the demonstrable owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Or perhaps you know him as the guy with great timing to sell his business to Yahoo before the bubble burst and parlay those hundreds of millions into more than a billion in net worth. Or perhaps you know him as Turtle's erstwhile business partner in the last two seasons of Entourage.

Mark Cuban is all those things and an insightful blogger to boot. I subscribe to his irreverent thoughts on blog maverick. He posts irregularly, but everything he writes I read religiously.