TickerHound Powers NASDAQ Answers

New Web 2.0 Experience Available on Nasdaq.com Powered by TickerHound.com

NEW YORK, Apr. 9, 2009 — TickerHound.com and the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NDAQ) today introduced NASDAQ Answers on Nasdaq.com.This new, real-time Question & Answers platform provides Nasdaq.com users with unbiased, community-powered education for the individual investor.

“We’re very excited that NASDAQ, which has a long history of technological innovation in finance, has chosen TickerHound as one of its first social media offerings,” said Wayne Mulligan, TickerHound’s CEO. “NASDAQ’s implementation of TickerHound is a strong endorsement of our brand. We welcome Nasdaq.com’s support in fulfilling our mission of educating and empowering individual investors.”

“NASDAQ Answers provides an intuitive way for individual investors to ask questions and get answers from other users,” said Bruce Hashim, Vice President, NASDAQ OMX Interactive Services. “TickerHound made it easy to integrate their robust software suite and we’re confident these social media features will significantly improve the NASDAQ.com user experience.”

Now live on Nasdaq.com, Nasdaq Answers allows users to freely browse questions and answers across a variety of investment-related categories. Free registration with a valid email address is required for users to post or respond to questions. Visit http://answers.nasdaq.com to participate in the discussion.

For more information on NASDAQ Answers, visit http://answers.nasdaq.com.

About TickerHound:

TickerHound is a community-powered education website for individual investors. Launched in 2007 the company has focused on creating a scalable and extensible Q&A platform and partnering with top-tier financial media brands. TickerHound’s goal is to provide unbiased, community-powered education for the individual investor. TickerHound provides its partners with a turnkey solution that will allow them to create, customize and quickly deploy their very own Q&A Community. The company plans to announce more white-label community-powered education features on other websites in the near future. For more information, visit www.tickerhound.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that are made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about NASDAQ Market Pathfinders and NASDAQ OMX Group’s other products and offerings. We caution that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other factors beyond NASDAQ OMX Group’s control. These factors include, but are not limited to factors detailed in NASDAQ OMX Group’s annual report on Form 10-K, and periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to release any revisions to any forward-looking statements.

Happy Birthday TickerHound!

I can hardly believe it’s been a whole year! But WOW, what a year it has been!

12 months ago to the day, George Zhao and I pulled back the curtain and broughtTickerHound.com to life…

…and within 15 minutes the site crashed.

Needless to say we’ve come a long way since then.

Instead of the single cheap-o box we were running on when we launched, the site is now 100% hosted “in the cloud” on Amazon’s EC2/S3 platform.

Thousands of investors have asked thousands of questions and submitted thousands of answers to the site. Our members are the best in the world - and I can say that because I’ve personally met and had drinks (alcoholic and non) with dozens of them this year.

We’ve forged partnerships with a handful of financial media companies such as Investor Place Media, Agora Financial Publishing, Business Financial Publishing, Tycoon Publishing and the list goes on.

And the best part is, we’re just getting started!

We made our 3rd hire only 2 short months ago – welcome aboard Lou!

We have our largest partnership to date launching in a few weeks — you won’t want to miss this one — which is why we’ve been absent from most of the NY Tech events for the last 2 months.

So it goes without saying that we’re VERY excited about TickerHound’s prospects for 2009.

But this won’t be an easy year. Then again, when is it ever easy running a start-up? :)

Our country is entering one of the most challenging economic times we’ve ever faced. The crisis before us started in the financial markets, so for a financial-tech company like TickerHound the impact of these tumultuous times becomes apparent very quickly.

We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in the financial services industry and I’m excited to be a part of it, but at the same token it’s certainly added a level of complexity to our business that we hadn’t aticipated when we first launched. However, the important thing to remember is that in times like these we’re presented with once in a lifetime opportunities to really make in impact on our market. Some of today’s greatest companies were forged in the fires of the last downturn.

I firmly believe that now, more than ever, individual investors need to become better educated investors. Relying on stock brokers and money managers (and even $50 billion-dollar-stealing hedge fund managers) has to become a thing of the past.

With tools out there like Covestor, StockTwits and Wikinvest, an individual investor can level the playing field and manage their money as they see fit. They have unprecedented access to data, stock ideas and educational material that was once trapped behind high-priced pay walls.

Times they are a changin‘ and I’m proud and honored to be playing a small part in it.

Here’s to another 12 months of sleepless nights, tumultuous markets and some of the most exciting times of my life!

Happy Birthday TickerHound!

TickerHound’s on Twitter!

I’ve personally been a Twitter user for about a year now and have really come to enjoy the service. I’ve found a lot of personal value in it and I’ve always thought there’d be a lot of commercial value in it at some point as well.

We’ve always wanted to integrate TickerHound with Twitter in some way but just couldn’t figure out how. Then along came StockTwits…

StockTwits is the brainchild of Howard Lindzon and Soren Macbeth. It ties directly into Twitter and allows users to extract real-time stock-based conversations going on within the Twitter community. I think it’s fantastic and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to get TickerHound involved.

Hopefully we’ll be able to have a deeper level of integration at some point in the near future but for now this is how it works…

Anytime a TickerHound member asks a question and “Tags” it with a stock symbol, we’ll automatically pump that question into the TickerHound Twitter account.

Then we link to the question on TickerHound’s site using another amazing service, Bit.ly. This helps us keep the links shorter, track click-throughs and include more of the actual question in the Twitter message.

As I said, I hope we can do more with Twitter and StockTwits in the near future, but for now we all felt that this was a good start.

I hope everybody in Twitter-land enjoys reading and hopefully answering some of the questions that come out of the TickerHound community.

P.S. Anyone who might be interested in building a Twitter-bot (for cash) for us so we can start importing some of the answers that come through Twitter please drop us a line at contact at TickerHound dot com.

Let’s Get Rich!

I’ve had just about enough of all the “gloom and doom” talk that’s been running rampant in today’s financial media.

Just look at the headlines from some of the major financial media sites:

“Fresh Tumult as Signs of Recession Go Global”

“How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch “

“Where Have All the Safe Stocks Gone?”

And the television networks are even worse. All the talking heads on CNBC are retards and they’re simply looking to cash in on people’s fears in order to keep driving advertising dollars. Forget these jokers!

Let’s focus on something important – better yet, someone important: my main man, Warren Buffett.

For the first time in a long time, Mr. Buffett has cracked open his personal trading account and started buying plain vanilla stocks again.

In his recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Buffett flat out says,

“I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds.”

Not if that’s not an endorsement for picking your head up out of your pillow, wiping away the tears and beginning to look for bargains in the market, then I don’t know what is!

So this week, I’m going to do something you might consider insane. Something I can almost guarantee none of TickerHound’s competitors are doing…

I’m going to tell you the next stock I’m going to add to my personal portfolio this very week!

Obviously this stock could go down further, but given the price, financial performance and risk-reward ratio, I’m fairly comfortable stepping up to the plate and buying me some shares this week.

Dollar Tree (Nasdaq: DLTR)

I love this discount (dollar store) retailer that operates in 48 states with over 3,400 locations.

In tough times people are going to be forced to look for bargains out there. Going to the local convenience store might no longer be an option. Dollar stores are more than a viable alternative, for many families they’ll soon become an outright necessity.

Just check out how well this company performed during the last downturn! DLTR handily beat out the Dow by double digit percentage points during the 2001 – 2003 bear market. Given the fact that this economy looks to be much worse than it has been for a good long time, I think it’s fair to conclude that DLTR has a high probability of having a repeat performance.

The potential risk here is that folks curtail all nonessential spending and Dollar Tree takes a hit in sales. But even if that were the case, then companies like this one would the first to turn around when consumer spending does pick back up again.

You might notice that the stock has dropped off with the market over the last few months, but not nearly by the same amount as the Dow. Year to date the stock is up almost 30% while the rest of the market is down by nearly 40%.

To me this says we have a company that’s in a fantastic competitive position and will continue to outperform the market. And at a P/E of 15, I’m going to feel pretty comfortable taking a position in the stock this week!

Keep Your Head Up!

So there you have it – it might sound crazy, but it’s the truth. The US economy is not going out of business, the stock market is not going to zero and one day you’ll probably wake up and kick yourself for not buying great companies while they were cheap.

Lucky for us this economy hasn’t bottomed out yet and we’ll still have plenty of opportunities to buy stocks at fire-sale prices!

I hope you have a great week and please, do your best to ignore the media right now.

TickerHound’s Got More Horsepower!

You might’ve noticed that the site was down for the better part of the weekend – we apologize for an inconvenience this may have caused. But I’m proud to say that TickerHound is packing some extra power today!

We did a massive upgrade to our servers and moved to a new web hosting service.

What does that mean to you?

Well, for starters I think you’ll immediately see a dramatic improvement in the overall speed of the site. As our tech team is fond of saying, the site is pretty “snappy” now.

This also means that we have the proper foundation to begin rolling out some exciting new functionality and partnerships without having to worry about how our servers will “scale”.

For you that’ll mean a faster and more reliable experience on TickerHound.

Please be patient this week as we continue to work out some of the kinks with our new hosting service. The site is 99% back to normal but there are still a few tiny wrinkles we’ll be ironing out.

As always, if you find any problems then please drop us a line at feedback@tickerhound.com.

A Simple Explanation of the Current Financial Mess

The whirlwind of news surrounding the current financial mess we’re in has my head spinning.

First it’s foreclosures, then it’s Fannie and Freddie and then it’s Merril Lynch and AIG - when will it stop?

But more importantly than that, this rapid destruction of the American financial system has many people wondering how it got started to begin with?

That’s why I decided to write this week’s article in response to this question on TickerHound:

How did this financial mess get started in the first place? So let’s go through it step-by-step, from the beginning until this weekend when the Government announced a $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry. It’s our tax dollars that will be financing this bailout so I think it’s important that we all understand how and why it happened.

I. It all started in the housing and mortgage market:

Basically, lenders were loaning money to whoever wanted to buy a home. Credit score, income and assets became irrelevant terms as brokers and local lenders rushed to issue new mortgages.

It seemed like a relatively “low risk” strategy at the time to many banks. Reason being, they figured that even if people stopped paying their mortgages, the housing market was doing so well that folks could just sell the house for a profit and pay back the remainder of the mortgage.

And that’s really where the trouble started.

II. Then the Investment Banks Got Involved:

Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) are nothing new on Wall Street. They’re sort of like bonds, meaning there’s a “principle amount” (the amount being loaned) and interest coupons (or payments) that would be paid monthly on the loan. However, MBS’s aren’t single loans.

Instead, these loans were really thousands of individual mortgages all pooled together to create a single, tradable security.

This is another reason why many lenders were happy to keep giving out mortgages to folks (even if they didn’t qualify). Local lenders knew that they’d be able to package up all those mortgages and just sell them right to the big investment banks and not have to worry.

The banks then turned around and would trade these Mortgage Backed Securities like they would a stock or a bond - trying to pocket profits in between each trade.

III. Bubbles

The basic assumption in this whole mess was that housing prices would continue to rise each year.

In fact, that assumption turned out to be pretty accurate. According to the S&P Case-Schiller Index, home prices nearly doubled across the country from 2001 - 2006.

That’s because it was so easy to get a mortgage, everybody wanted to buy a home. Thus spurring demand and in turn driving up prices further. It sort of became a self fulfilling prophecy, which in turn became a full-fledged housing bubble.

And just like any good bubble, it eventually had to pop!

IV. The “After-Pop”

So after the housing market finally started to tumble, the financial services industry went into a year-long death spiral. Here’s the basic sequence of events:

1. People couldn’t afford their mortgages anymore.
2. They couldn’t sell their homes for more than they paid due to falling prices
3. So they defaulted on their loans - this happened to millions of people!
4. The big investment banks which now owned all the mortgages suddenly realized that these “assets” were virtually becoming worthless in a very short period of time.
5. So the banks had to take massive write-downs on these loans. The way this works is the banks were considering these baskets of mortgages as assets on their balance sheets. Once the assets went from being worth $100 to $1, the banks basically lost 99% of their value.
6. When that happened it made it very difficult for the banks to get loans themselves (imagine applying for a loan when all you have is a pack of bubble gum and the clothes on your back - it’s not likely to happen).
7. When the banks couldn’t get their own loans they were either going to be forced into bankruptcy (Lehman Brothers) or had to be swallowed up by healthier firms (Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, etc.)

V. How the Government Got Involved

Ever since Bear Stearns went under the government has played a fairly prominent role in this whole mess.

But it wasn’t until we almost saw the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the government really made its presence felt.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sort of like “buyers of last resort” in the mortgage market. They were established to maintain liquidity in these markets in the event of the large banks being unable to trade their Mortgage Backed Securities.

So in the end, Freddie and Fannie were sitting on trillions of dollars in bad home loans.

And while these companies were private organizations they were however government sponsored organizations. So if the government had let either one of these companies fail then it might’ve made it very difficult for the United States to keep selling debt to big foreign buyers, like China. Remember, it’s our ability to sell our debt to other countries that has been funding our country’s operations (e.g. wars, etc.) for the last several years.

VI. How AIG and Insurance Fit In

AIG came into the picture when it began selling “insurance” to the big banks.

This technically wasn’t insurance, but that was mainly due to clever wording on the part of AIG management. Because for all intents and purposes, they were basically insuring the mortgages held by the banks - this type of insurance was called a “Credit Default Swap”, or a CDS.

Basically, the banks would pay AIG a monthly fee and in turn AIG would promise to make the bank whole on any mortgages that defaulted (sure sounds like insurance to me).

At the time I’m sure this sounded like a good idea because everybody assumed housing prices would continue to rise.

Well we all know how that turned out and that’s why in the end AIG was left holding the bag for billions of dollars in bad loans.

VII. The Bailout

So that brings us to where we are today: On the eve of the largest government bailout of the private sector in the history of this country.

The implications for these actions are vast and complex.

On the one hand, the government has to do this; the alternatives are too disastrous to even comprehend. On the other hand, what type of message does this send to the banks going forward? That it’s ok to engage in risky, reckless behavior and they’ll always get bailed out in the end?

I think I’ll save the rest of my commentary for another post.

I hope this gives you a clear picture of why and how we got into our current predicament.

If you have any other questions on this topic feel free to go to TickerHound for the answers!

What Would Buffett Do?

There have been many times throughout my investing career when I’ve second guessed myself. There have been times, especially when the market has gone against me for a while, when I have had some self doubt.

I’m sure you can relate - especially after the last few weeks.

But don’t feel bad about it, getting a little worried in tough times is pretty much par for the course.

The Dow and the Nasdaq have both taken a hit, and foreign equity markets aren’t doing much better.

I’m sure you’ve seen many of your profits go up in smoke - or even worse, many of your positions are now showing significant losses.

Sometimes I’m sure it almost makes you sick to your stomach.

We’ve all been there.

What helps get me through tough times like that and stick to my guns is to sit back and ask myself, “What Would Buffett Do?”

Warren Buffett is a man who operates a company that has generated more revenue per employee than any company on the face of the earth.

But yet, the company doesn’t produce a single product. Heck, “Corporate Headquarters” only has about 13 people in it!

Basically, Berkshire uses Buffett’s brain to generate massive amounts of wealth - all through investing in the stock market.

Would Buffett Get Nervous Now?

Now that the market has been going down the tubes since January, do you think Warren Buffett is starting to sweat? Do you think he sits up at night panicking about the stocks he owns?

Definitely not!

This is a man who has been investing for over 50 years. He’s been through countless Bull and Bear market cycles … do you really think a soft market makes this man lose sleep?

I can promise you it doesn’t.

So the real question is, “WHY doesn’t he get nervous? Is it because he’s been doing this for so long? Is it because he knows this is only a temporary ‘blip’ on the radar?”

Well, that’s only part of it.

The main reason Buffett isn’t sweating bullets now is that he only buys certain types of stocks. He only buys stock in companies that have certain characteristics. We’ll call them the “won’t keep you up at night characteristics.” The man only buys stock in companies that:

1. Have businesses that are simple and understandable
2. Have little to no debt
3. Have a strong brand name
4. Are leaders in their industry
5. And throw off a lot of free cash flow

Companies that have these characteristics run very little risk of going out of business, running into any regulatory issues, or having a new competitor come along and steal the market away from them.

The biggest point to take away from this is that Buffett goes out of his way to avoid investments that require him to jump over “9-foot hurdles.” He waits for opportunities where he can walk over “1 foot hurdles.”

Now what if you had a portfolio full of businesses like this?

Regardless of which way the stocks were going, you would know, in your gut, that you still owned a piece of a great company.

It’s at times like this when you can truly appreciate this approach to investing.

So What Would Buffett Do?

Well, I’ll tell you what he wouldn’t do.

He would not be nervous.

He would not lose sleep.

And he certainly wouldn’t be taking any unnecessary risks.

That means stay away from any speculative plays. There’s no need to take extra risk at times like these - regardless of your risk tolerance.

You need to find companies that are leaders in their markets, have strong financial characteristics, and are trading near their lows.

Buying companies like that will allow you to sleep at night. It’s like having an airbag in your car when it crashes.

Even if this market goes lower, holding onto stocks like these will put you in a great position when the market turns positive again. The strongest companies are always the first to turn.

Remember: In the short term, the stock market is a voting machine - over the long term, it’s a weighing machine. The stronger companies will ALWAYS outweigh the weaker ones.

Stay cool and stick to the game plan and the market will take care of itself.

Until next time …

How to Evaluate a 529 Plan

I know most of the people who come to TickerHound are here looking for advice on specific trades or investments, but there’s definitely been a growing “personal finance” theme on the site lately.

A number of the TickerHound’s out there have been hounding for answers on topics ranging from retirement planning to the best savings accounts.

Coincidentally one of my close friends called me the other day and asked me to help him set up a 529 plan for his daughter. He knew what they were and why they were a great way to plan and save for her college education but he just didn’t quite know how to find and evaluate different plans.

And to be quite honest, I’ve never set up a 529 plan in my life (no children for me…yet) so I wasn’t quite sure what the process was either. But being that this was a dear friend, I decided to spend my Friday night on the web, hunting down information on 529 plans.

So if you have children, grandchildren or even close friends with children, then I highly encourage you to read this article carefully. It will definitely come in handy as you start to get the “next generation” ready for college, no matter how far away that may be.

Step 1 – Go Solo or Use a Financial Advisor?

The first thing you need to decide when setting up a 529 plan is if you’re going to use a financial advisor or do it on your own via a direct-sold 529 plan administrator.

If you use a financial advisor you’ll either pay money in the form of a sales commission or a flat fee when you setup your 529 plan. If you go with a direct-sold plan, you’ll avoid the commission.

But be forewarned, some of the larger 529 plans cannot be purchased directly, they can only be bought through a broker.

Ultimately, you could be successful going in either direction but here are some of the potential pitfalls you should watch out for:

• If you decide to not use a broker, you’ll be left to do all of the homework on your own. It could be quite daunting to sift through paper work and prospectuses on several different funds.
• If you end up using a broker be forewarned that you won’t be getting access to the entire universe of 529 plans. Brokers typically have existing relationships with a few select 529 plan administrators and while they might give you “options”, your options are pretty limited.
• No matter what you do, make sure you read the rest of this article so that even if you go for it on your own or with a broker, you at least ask the right questions.

Step 2 – States Make a Difference

Before you pick any 529 plan, first check to see if the State you reside in offers any type of tax deductions for 529 plan contributions.

If you’re contributing on a regular basis this could mean some extra tax savings come April each year.

Also, some 529 plans offer other “home state” benefits. Some include matching contributions, state financial aid assistance, etc. Here’s a great resource provided by Bankrate.com for evaluating 529 plans on a state-by-state basis:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/saving4college/brm_sfcsearch.asp

Step 3 – Look Below the Surface

Not all 529 plans are created equal. Reason being, a 529 plan administrator doesn’t just take your money and drop it into government bonds, they invest your money into a basket of mutual funds.

And as we all know, mutual funds have wildly different track records, expense ratios and fees associated with them.

So look before you leap!

Here are a few steps you can take to dig into the 529 plans you’re evaluating:

1. Get a list of all the mutual funds they invest in
2. Go to Morningstar.com and look up each mutual fund
3. See if the mutual funds match your own investing style
4. Then check their long term track records – and ALWAYS look at that track record relative to the S&P 500.
5. Finally, you’ll want to check out the mutual fund’s expense ratio relative to comparable funds. Is this fund charging exorbitant fees? Are they load or no load funds? You get the idea

Basically, you’ll want to find the 529 plan with the best mutual funds (low expenses, solid long term returns, etc.).

Some Tools to Help You With Your Research

Again, if you’re going to use a financial advisor, I hope this article has at least given you enough information so you can ask your advisor the right questions. And if you do decide to go it alone, here are some sites and tools that can definitely help you on your journey:

Bankrate’s 529 Plan Directory
Bankrate.com’s 529 Plan Checklist
Morningstar.com’s Mutual Fund Research Page

Good luck and remember, if you have any questions go to TickerHound.com to get the answers!

We’re Looking for Alpha Testers!

Here’s what we’re doing…

We’re about to roll out a suite of widgets for investing related blogs and web sites.

So if you own a site or a blog and are interested in becoming one of the early users of these tools then please read on.

TickerHound Technology for Your Site

We know that there are many TickerHound members that have their own finance related web sites and blogs.

So early on in the development of TickerHoud we knew that we wanted to do something to help the financial publishing community. After a lot of discussion and brainstorming we decided to launch a suite of tools that would allow site owners to:

• Use TickerHound’s proprietary Q&A technology to connect with their community in a new way
• Drive new, targeted traffic back to their site
• Manage their site and community more effectively

We think we’ve done a decent job of accomplishing those objectives with our latest creation: The Knowledge Exchange Widget.(You can see a sample at www.optionszone.com - scroll to the middle of the page and check out the “You be the Expert” section)

But it’s not perfect yet, and that’s why I’m looking for your help.

As always, we’re looking to get as much feedback on our technology as possible. That’s why we’re looking for qualified TickerHound members to “test drive” one of our new widgets.

By getting in on our Widget Partner Program early on, you’ll get access to prime real estate on the TickerHound site and we’ll work directly with you (or your IT Team) to make the widgets picture perfect for your web site.

So if you’re interested in getting in on the action early, then please send an e-mail to contact@tickerhound.com and include the following information:

• Your name
• The URL to your web site
• And p lease indicate who maintains your site (you or another IT person)

We look forward to hearing from you!

The Web’s Best Investing Tools

There have been quite a few questions over the last week or two that have all revolved around the same topic:

How to properly research and find information on stocks on the web?

I’ve discussed the topic a bit in previous newsletters and blog articles, but I guess it might make sense to revisit the topic again.

In fact, it makes a lot of sense to do it now because since we launched TickerHound 7 month ago, I’ve learned about so many new websites and resources through some of the answers on the site that it’s time I shared them with you.

So here are some of the tools, sites and resources that I personally use when I’m researching a potential investment:

I. Charts

I’m not much of a technical analyst but I do use charts as an additional tool to help me to decide whether or not it’s the “right time” to buy a stock.

For example, I may have found a fantastic company that’s being dramatically undervalued by the market and I’m just itching to buy as many shares as possible, but then I take a look at the chart and see that it’s in a solid downtrend.

That’s definitely not a stock I’d buy right now – but after the trend reverses I’ll definitely be a big buyer.

So I like my charts to be clear, simple and easily customizable. My favorite charting system is BigCharts.com.

It’s a Dow Jones property and I find that their interactive charts are as good as any I’ve seen. It’s free, quick and convenient and has become an indispensible part of my investing arsenal.

II. Financials

Since I’m more of a fundamental analysts/value investor, this is an area I’m extremely passionate (read: picky) about.

Certain sites that claim to have financial data/analysis on companies usually fall far short of my expectations. I don’t mean to sound like a “finance snob” but it’s true. So I’ve personally compiled this list over the last several years.

Each site offers easy access to financial data and helps to quickly size up the company.

Google Finance – I find Google’s financial data to be fantastic for a getting a quick read on a company’s financial statements. Simply punch in the ticker symbol, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on any of the links to the financial statements for the company (Income, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow).

Here’s a link to Google’s balance sheet.

From here you can break down the data on a quarterly or annual basis and quickly switch between financial statements.

I find this area of the site to be extremely easy to use and definitely worth checking out.

Value Line – This is a service you have to shell out some money for, but I couldn’t live without it.

Not only does it give me great analysis on the company and its business performance, but I also get a quick snapshot of current (and historical) financial performance. What makes Value Line unique is that it distills all of this information into a single printable page.

That means I don’t have to click around or flip through 20 pages of information – I can simply pull up a single page on a company and immediately know how well they’re doing.

Value Line also calculates industry-specific metrics (like “Same Store Sales” for retailers) for you, which always makes it easier to size up a company relative to its industry.

This is an invaluable service for investors.

EDGAR – When you want to dig a little deeper, there’s no place better than going right to a company’s annual reports.

The SEC provides a handy utility for quickly pulling up a company’s most recent filings: EDGAR. Click here to check it out.

It’s a little difficult to use at first, but once you get the hang out of it, you’ll have a treasure trove of financial material at your fingertips. This is a “must have” for all investors.

III. News and Analysis

Digging through charts and financial statements is one thing, but numbers only tell so much of a story. There comes a point where you need to find out about the reason why a company’s stock took a dive 3 months ago or why its profits recently got cut in half.

And that information can only be found by scouring various news sources and the blogosphere.

So when I want to learn about the back story to a company’s financial and stock performance I’ll typically use the following site’s for my research:

SeekingAlpha – This is a great site that aggregates, filters and edits blog posts from across the financial web. You can find news and analysis on companies, ETFs, commodities, etc. from over a thousand different sources.

Many of the articles you’ll find here can’t be found in the mainstream press and it really helps get a glimpse behind the curtains on certain stories.

Google News – This is one of my favorite news search engines. You can filter by date, topic and even news source.

Your best bet is to use Google Finance and then track news on their interactive stock charts. That’ll give you a fairly clear snapshot of how a particular event impacted a company’s stock price.

IV. Stock Screeners

Here are a few of the services that some members have recommended for screening stocks – one of which I’ve also begun to use – that can help you find and discover new stocks to invest in:

MagicFormulaInvesting – This site dead simple. It’s the companion site to the book, The Little Book that Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt, and it’s mainly for value oriented investors.

Basically, you tell the site what your minimum market cap is, and then it’ll use a preset stock screen based on a company’s Earnings Yield and Return on Equity to return a list of companies.

TIP: The list is in alphabetical order. If you’re looking to sort the list in a different way (e.g. highest earnings yield) then copy and paste everything directly into Microsoft Excel. From there you can slice and dice the list as you see fit.

CNBC Stock Screener – Here’s a stock screener that I had never even heard of before but now find myself using it all of the time (thanks to NYInvestor for the great recommendation)!

The interface is super simple to use, you can filter by almost any criteria (sector, P/E, profit margins, etc.) and it’ll give you a comprehensive list of companies on the fly.

It’s quick, easy and I can’t recommend it enough.

Click here to give it a try now.

Which Tools Do YOU Use?

So there you have it. That’s my personal list of investing tools and resources from across the web. It’s not the most comprehensive list you’ll find, but for the most part, it’ll get the job done.

And if you have any additions you’d like to make to this list, then please, click here to submit them now and share your best investing tools with everybody here at TickerHound!