Financial Information

Dobromir Risov May 2025

Easier access = Better investment decisions? No.

Intro

I talk today about dealing with financial information. I write first about how I came up with this topic. Then I continue by painting the landscape of finance information. Last I present how I group the websites offering such information. In part 2 +3 on Financial Information I go in more detail on selected sites.

Main

I saw the other day a commercial in the internet. A retired footballer was promoting a trading platform. I thought to myself: it must be challenging for people with no experience in investing to invest. I want to elaborate my thought. Some steps are easy: like the pure process of trading, I push the button “buy”. When I want to sell I push the button “sell” and the stock is sold. That´s it. That´s not challenging at all. What is challenging though are the steps prior to pushing the “buy” button. That is selecting data and decision making.

Let me paint a picture of the landscape in terms of securities: I think of the tens of thousands of publicly traded stocks. Add to this publicly traded bonds. Third, add investment funds. I don´t mention structured products like stock options. In terms of information there´s more than enough of it - companies are required by law to publish a lot of information such as annual, semi-annual and quarterly financial statements. In addition, analysts use the raw data to prepare their own reports. Then they come up with a recommendation whether to buy or sell the stock. And, those recommendations change later on. (I will publish a blog on forecasting.)

There´s a ton of securities to invest in and also a ton of information on those securities. You can access information on the company´s website, or on the stock exchange web site. So how dealing with the available information & selecting? A private investor has usually scarce time & motivation to tackle the information available. Considering these circumstances individual investors often resort to procrastinating or waiting for a recommendation from friends or receiving some info from their bank. But here it´s about doing it on your own with a smart approach. I do present 2 approaches in my course on personal investment. THe next info is for those who want to do it entirely on their own.

Let´s get started: Financial information websites provide limited information for free. If you want access to more info, you need to subscribe. Depending on the website, several different subscription models are at offer. There are 4 groups for me: . Group 1 are websites like yahoo.finance or Google Finance. There´s more of general information to be found there. Then there´s group 2: these are financial newspapers: like the Wall Street Journal (US) or the Financial Times from the UK. A 3rd group are national newspapers with a dedicated section on finance&investing. Say, the Irish Times in Ireland, or the FAZ in Germany or The Times (UK). The information here may be limited to national listings or also covering international listings. Then there´s group 4: websites exclusively dedicated to financial information. I place the likes of Motley Fool, seeking alpha or Morningstar here. Which group an individual investor goes for depends on what the intention is. When you are very interested and ambitious in investing you go rather for a member of group 4.

Summary

I presented the landscape of financial information available to the individual investor. I showed the difficulty is not gaining access to easier or faster trading but selecting information upon which to invest. I presented four groups of sites dealing offering financial information. The choice depends on your goals. I look in more detail at the websites next.