Surfing the financial web - Personal Finance

Healthcare Financial Management, March, 2003 by Ronald J. Paprocki, Joel M. Blau

Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks for investors is keeping abreast of specific financial information and economic trends in a time-efficient manner. Web sites offer a tremendous amount of information that today's busy healthcare executives can access at their own pace.

While it's obviously important to know what you own, it is equally important to know how well, or poorly, the overall portfolio and specific investments are doing on both a dollar and a percentage basis over various periods.

SmartMoney's portfolio tracker (www.smartmoney.com) can help you keep a close eye on your investments. You can enter your holdings on a screen or import the data from Quicken, Yahoo, and even many online brokerage statements. Heavy on analytics, the portfolio tracker tool provides an overview and performance charts and allows you to view a visual map and analysis using several factors, including a breakout of holdings by asset allocation percentages.

Similar tracking can be accomplished through the CNBC on MSN Money web site (www.moneycentral.com).

General Financial Information

One of the best overall financial sites is Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com). Yahoo's text-based interface makes navigating through the site simple and fast. The opening page provides up-to-the-minute market data, prices on individual stocks, and bond-market commentary. From this site, you also can access respected outlets such as Briefing.com, Financial Times, and Business Week as well as international news and financial-based chat rooms. Of particular interest is the stock research link, which takes you on a journey of exceptional research tools covering stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and options. If your interest lies in corporate, municipal, or government bonds, spend some time at the Yahoo Bond Center. You will find educational information, professional commentary, current rates on bond offerings, and a helpful glossary of terms and financial calculators.

Economic data, and the expectation of new data being released, certainly are major factors affecting the stock market. Economy.com (www.economy.com) provides access to raw data, general domestic and international economic news, and a helpful commentary to interpret it all. Navigate this site with caution, as its on-line subsidiaries often charge subscription rates to access economic reports. One of the subsidiaries, however, is Free Lunch, which lets you search for more than 900,000 items of economic and financial data without a charge.

For a general financial education, spend some time with the solid tutorials on market basics with The Motley Fool (www.fool.com). Ease is the key here, as all of the educational information and tools are easily accessible from the web site's "Fool's School."

Another option for general-market and retirement-planning education is the SIA Investor (www.siainvestor.com). This site, which is actually a service of the Securities Industry Association, takes advantage of the long-time involvement of many experts with varied interests and specialties. Of particular interest is the section on managing the retirement nest egg. The site also has a concise dictionary of financial terms and tools and other interactive features, making it a valuable site for both investment novices as well as more seasoned investors.

Given that there are more mutual funds than common stocks, many sites are dedicated to evaluating both load and no-load mutual funds. The leader in the field of mutual fund research is Morningstar (www.morningstar.com). You can obtain a one-page summary on almost any mutual fund, including analyst reports and the Morningstar ratings. For more in-depth research, such as fund alerts (e.g., changes in fund management) and portfolio optimization tools, you will need to purchase a subscription.

Global Information

Although most sites provide a variety of financial news, one of the best sites dedicated to U.S. and global events is that of the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com). Links on the home page will take you to news by region and topic.

For those who are interested in delving into the intricate finances of America's publicly traded corporations, a couple of web sites warrant attention. Both Multex Investor (www.multexinvestor.com) and Hoover's (www.hoovers.com) have enough reports and company fundamentals to keep sophisticated investors well educated. Simply enter a company's trading symbol or name and the site will take you to abundant company information, including charts, earnings estimates, income statements, balance sheets, and cash-flow reports. Of particular interest may be the reports detailing insider trading and the level of institutional ownership. Both sites also make additional in-depth reports available on a subscription basis.

Resources abound for investors who would like to become more involved in developing and tracking their true financial independence.

RELATED ARTICLE: Personal Finance Web Sites at a Glance

Personal finance web sites offer an abundance of information for both novices and advanced investors. The following list of. web sites is a good place to start: