Online Investment tools?

B

brian276

Guest
I have never invested in shares before and I am considering the Irish stock exchange. During the course of my research I have encountered free online tools for the American Markets, these allow you to list the traded shares by various criteria, Market Capitalisation for example.

Are there any such tools for the Irish Market?
 
I have a follow-up query on this. I am a value investor and am currently finishing Ben Graham's excellent book 'The Intelligent Investor'. In this he outlines several criteria for a value investor to consider before investing in a share such as:

-valuation based on 7 year trailing p/e
-current dividend rate
-historical dividend rate
-price verus NAV
etc

I was wondering is there a good software or on-line research tool out there that would sift market data according to above criteria and others to throw up good candidate shares and etfs to invest in for a value investor?

What tools do regular equity investors and analysts use here for instance??

Thanks for all replies,
Daithi
 
Daithi7 said:
I have a follow-up query on this. I am a value investor and am currently finishing Ben Graham's excellent book 'The Intelligent Investor'. In this he outlines several criteria for a value investor to consider before investing in a share such as:

-valuation based on 7 year trailing p/e
-current dividend rate
-historical dividend rate
-price verus NAV
etc

I was wondering is there a good software or on-line research tool out there that would sift market data according to above criteria and others to throw up good candidate shares and etfs to invest in for a value investor?

What tools do regular equity investors and analysts use here for instance??

Thanks for all replies,
Daithi
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Bloomberg machines
 
www.digitallook.com ( has investor tools to sift through stocks)
www.hemscott.net (has tools to sift through stocks - find momentum plays or growth or income plays)
( see what hedge funds are holding in their portfolios..they cover filings for Buffett etc...pretty good stuff for the value investor...
Also check out seeeking alpha's hedge fund section ..they pull together alot of great stuff from other sites ..

For etfs..check out ... ETF trends here and ETF Dashboard
 
I suppose I should have spelt out in my previous post for anuj21k.

1. I am not recommending blindly following anyone elses investment style (hedge funds etc). The sites I proposed are for information purposes only. Always do your own research.
2. I didn't recommend Irish shares and I would recommend the op redefines his/her scope and look outside the Irish Stock market too for any potential investments. Maybe take a look at different ETFs that encompass a good degree of diversification.

Certainly I would be against sticking money in the Irish Market when so much of it is tied to bricks and mortar.





anuj21k said:
I dont think so, www.Goodbody.ie/ www.ise.ie , can be a starting point.

Beware before investing in Irish shares even Buffet has lost money investing in them :)
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This one have better options
sec.gov/investor/tools.shtml
 
Following my search for good stock screening tools according to set criteria:

I came across some tools on the Nasdaq website to screen stocks according to various 'guru's' valuation systems e.g. Graham, O'Shaughnessy, Etc. This is a link to the page, its quite cool and they explain the underlying methodology behind each approach:

http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/guru.stm

Let me know if anyone has sourced something better or similar that analyses more or all markets. Enjoy!!
 
Hi Peter,

Thanks for that. Why is it nonsense in your opinion?

If these stock screenings are being done according to, say, Graham's Value Investing Criteria( as this is the only set I've actually read up on properly), then surely this presents a baseline list that you can go away and do further analysis on to pick stocks that are likely to be good value with good margins for safety and hence perform well over the medium to long term??

I'm fully aware that these lists could produce 'value traps', that is stocks that look like good value but are priced at those levels for very good reasons. But as a tool to produce good candidate shares for further research I would have thought these tools are very useful- Yes /No /Maybe???
 
The way the market works is it rewards the 'smart money' and punishes the 'dumb money'. Do you believe the market is going to reward somebody who gets stock picks from a website? Does that sound like 'smart money' to you.

Have a read of some of the stuff on my website Daithi plus I will be at the Wealthbuilding talk tomorrow if you want to hear it first hand.
 
PeterBrennan said:
The way the market works is it rewards the 'smart money' and punishes the 'dumb money'. Do you believe the market is going to reward somebody who gets stock picks from a website? Does that sound like 'smart money' to you.
Peter,

Thanks for your post, and for your views on how you feel the market works.

I am not a trader, I am an investor, a long term value investor.

I am not looking to make a quick buck on today's trend, or the latest fad, or a market frenzy. Day traders are chasing fool's gold IMHO, mantras such as '2percentaday' are as laughable to me as salesmen selling eternal youth tonics in the wild west. I view the market a means to buy a stake in good businesses for the medium to long term i.e. ones that will make a positive return on capital over a very long time.

No one can know the future, but we can at least inform ourselves of the present and past performance of various companies, sectors & markets, and this helps to show what companies may be able to best cope with what the future throws at them.

Since there are so many companies out there pumping out results all the time, I am interested in sourcing software or an on-line tool to sift through this data to select companies that match certain performance criteria. For me these are Benjamin Graham's Value Investing criteria, which haven't changed for about 40-50 years now.

Do I think this will help me pick better companies to invest in - Yes, the same way as investigating the spec on a car will help select a better car.

Do I think this gives me an advantage over the market? Well I don't know and to be honest I don't give a cobblers.

All I want are good companies, with good management, of sufficiently large size, with very sound fundamentals and a great record of giving a good return on capital- if I get to invest in those at a good price the rest will take care of itself.
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Daithi,

I am afraid you misunderstand some basics.

Markets are more predictable over the short term (because of overbought/oversold conditions) than the long term.

If you had bought the S&P index 10 yrs ago, how much would you have made. Answer: negative even without discounting for costs.

The rest of your post regarding good companies is just a primitive inductive fallacy.
 
Peter,

This is Ben Graham's take on the manic character he terms Mr Market.

“Common stocks have one important investment characteristic and one important speculative characteristic. Their investment value and average market price tend to increase irregularly but persistently over the decades, as their net worth builds up through the reinvestment of undistributed earnings. However, most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions, as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble”.

- Benjamin Graham

That 'primitive inductive fallacy' as you term it, is good enough for Warren Buffet so its good enough for me too :)
 
Well good luck with trying to make money in the market armed with a bit of waffle like that.

Its a bit like a local football manager armed with a quote from George Best thinking he is going to take on Man utd.
 
Thanks Peter,

With all due respect both your analogy (and investment philosophy) is fundamentally flawed. I'm not trying to take on Man Utd, I just want to buy a stake in it at a good price with a high margin of safety and sit back and watch george best & his descendents do the business.

As an alternative I could adopt your investment philosophy which is buy in and out of Man Utd every other week or day according to how many went through the turnstiles that day.... mmm I wonder which approach is likely to be more successful??

Let me see Graham, Buffet and Co recommend the first approach and who exactly recommends the second??? oh you is it!?
 
In Daithi7's defence, he is articulating his investment style well and I see little point in deriding that. If Mr. Brennan is more comfortable trading markets which he feels are more predictable over the short term then fine. But Mr. Brennan must also acknowledge that his route is fraught with much greater risk for the majority - that trading short term is a zero sum game. Perhaps he is on the winning side more times than not, and good luck to him if he is. But it is not correct to argue that that approach can be followed by all.

Trading assets is a different practise to owning assets and owning assets is the essence of investing. Mr. Brennan is correct to say that holders of equities have simply lost money in the past ten years. They have because equities were grossly overvalued in 1999. It will be more helpful on this site if one does not make things personal !
To Daithi7 I would say that it is possible the site I run might be of inyterest to you, you can sign up for a free weekly email to get a flavour of what the site offers. Currently, for memebers, I am running a series on the US Global consumer franchises as they look as cheap as they have been in many years www.investRcentre.com
 
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