Newsgroups are discussion forums (or electronic bulletin boards) where individuals post messages for others to read and answer. New newsgroups appear — and old, unused newsgroups disappear — almost daily. The advantage of these groups is that the opinions of authors are disparate and come from around the world. There are between 20,000 and 50,000 publicly accessible newsgroups. Some of these newsgroups are filled with spam (junk mail), and others are inactive shells. Newsgroups range from serious to silly and support almost all religious ideologies, political points of view, and philosophical beliefs. If you want to know what investors think about a particular investment, a newsgroup is a good place to look for the answer. Newsgroup participants aren’t necessarily investment professionals, but many of them are savvy investors.
Knowing how newsgroups are named can help you determine whether a certain newsgroup may interest you. Newsgroup names typically have two or more parts. The first section of a newsgroup’s name is the most general grouping or topic. Here are some examples of different first names that may be of interest to online investors:
Section Description
Alt Alternative subjects, ranging from the serious (investing and finance) to the weird (occult and alternative lifestyles) Biz Business subjects, including commercials Misc Miscellaneous topics, from items for sale to finance Newsgroups can have names with two sections. For example the first section can be alt, and the second section can be invest. The name of the newsgroup then would be alt.invest. Some newsgroups do not have any subgroups, but others have 20 or more subgroups under the major topic. One example of a major topic is alt.invest.real-estate, which branches into other newsgroups, such as alt.invest.real-estate.methods. That is, each component of the name represents a different level in the newsgroup. The last named component is the actual theme of the group. For example, alt.invest.real-estate is about investing in real estate. Subscribing to a newsgroup is easy. With most browsers, you simply click the name of the newsgroup you want to subscribe to. For details, use your Web browser to check out Beginners Central at Northern Webs (www.northernwebs.com/bc/index.html). Discover how to navigate your browser’s newsreader, select a newsgroup, and post to newsgroups.
Finding the perfect newsgroup
The Internet provides various sources for finding Usenet newsgroups. Here are a few examples:
Harley Hahn (www.harley.com/usenet) provides Harley Hahn’s Master List of Usenet Newsgroups. The master list includes a short description of each newsgroup, placed in a category and organized in an easy-to-use search list.
Yahoo! Groups (groups.yahoo.com) offers nearly 3,000 investment groups and more than 600 online investing mailing lists. In this population, 60 subgroups focus on e*Trade. Registration is free. You can even start your own Yahoo! group.
Robot Wisdom Newsgroup Finder (www.robotwisdom.com/finder/index.html) enables you to search by historical period, numbers of articles, and country or state locations. This site uses clickable maps of the United States and the world. Responses include the newsgroup name, address, description, charter, and sometimes Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) if available. Tired of the same old newsgroups? Discover all the Web’s new newgroups by going to Newsville at www.newsville.com/news/newnews.html.
Finally, some investor news reading
One of the easiest ways to find newsgroups is to go to Google (www.google.com). Click Groups, then click Browse all of Usenet. At the next Web page shown in Figure 1-1, to select your topic enter your keyword in the Directory Search or scroll through the Usenet names. Regardless of which approach you select, you’ll discover a listing of newsgroups that may be of interest to you. Each group includes the group’s name, a description of the group, the group’s category, and other characteristics. These characteristics can include information about the number of group members, whether the group is open to the public, restricted, moderated, and so on. The best feature of this site is that you can post your questions directly to the newsgroup without a great deal of fuss. You can also search newsgroup articles for keywords. For example, assume that you’re thinking about investing in Microsoft. As part of your research, you can see what newsgroup members had to say about the company, and when they said it. Another great feature is that you can research the author of the newsgroup article. Google shows how many articles the author has posted and which newsgroup that author is posting to. This data can indicate which newsgroups regularly carry the type of information you’re seeking.
Getting the Message from Investor Message Boards
With investor message boards, you can read what other online investors are saying about an investment that may interest you. Overall, these message boards include many honest, knowledgeable investors, with only a few unscrupulous fraudsters with questionable intentions. Therefore, you must determine what is sound advice and what is trash. Make certain that you complete your own research before acting on any message board information.
The following are a few of the top-rated investor message boards online:
Silicon Investor (www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk) has several levels of membership. Basic membership is free with your registration. The free, limited level allows you to post between one and two messages per day. You can’t turn off ads and can’t make use of advanced features such as Next 10 and Search. Paying subscribers have unlimited posting privileges, the ability to turn off ads, and access to Next 10, Search, and Advanced Search features. Subscriptions are $19.95 per month, $29.95 per $29.95, and $49.95 for six months. Annual subscriptions are $89.95, and a lifetime subscription is $199.95.The Motley Fool (boards.fool.com) is free with your registration. Here you find company discussions sorted by name, industry, and market analysis, as well as an investors’ roundtable for discussing strategies. Before you post, don’t forget to read the “Fool Community Guidelines” at www.fool.com/help/?display=community04.
Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com), now owned by Lycos, has more than 15,000 active message boards. Participants earn a “power rating” that indicates how much credibility a member has earned with the community. Features include lists of the most active message boards and message boards with the greatest number of posts.
Uncovering Investor Information from Mailing Lists
Mailing lists are e-mail groups that are started by organizations or individuals who purchase mailing list programs. Then they advertise to others who may be interested in joining a topic-specific discussion group. The advertisement usually provides precise instructions for subscribing to the mailing list. You subscribe to a particular mailing list by sending an e-mail message to the list’s moderator. In return, you receive an e-mail message confirming your enrollment. This message typically includes the address you use for posting messages to the mailing list, the rules of the discussion group, and instructions for removing your name — that is, unsubscribing — from the mailing list. Mailing list participants exchange e-mail about issues in their subject areas. If someone starts a thread, or topic, that you want to comment on, you post your comments to the list, using the instructions you received when you subscribed.To answer questions or make comments, subscribers send an e-mail message to the mailing list address (which differs from the mailing list program’s address), and everyone gets a copy of the message. Unlike newsgroups, most lists are moderated so that inappropriate messages aren’t sent to the group. Today more than 300,000 mailing lists exist. You may find a mailing list while surfing the Net, but they tend to be private. The best source for finding an investor-related mailing list is Tile.net (www.tile.net). Tile.net has more than 66,000 public mailing lists and is growing. Don’t despair; the site is searchable and provides information that describes each mailing list and how to subscribe (and, more importantly, how to unsubscribe if it doesn’t meet your requirements). Another good mailing list directory is CataList (www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html), which includes more than 66,000 mailing lists. It’s searchable by site, country, and number of list subscribers. (Sometimes knowing how many subscribers will receive your investment question is a good idea.) Don’t lose that information about how to unsubscribe! Mailing list members receive an average of 30 messages per day. If you just signed up for four mailing lists, you may have more than a hundred messages tomorrow.
Using Free and Fee-Based Online Investor Databases
Online investors have their choice of searching free or fee-based online databases. One advantage of both types of databases is that they’re constantly open. That is, you can access them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s a no-brainer that savvy online investors should start with the free databases. If the information you desire isn’t available in the free databases, try fee-based databases. If you carefully select a fee-based database for your well-constructed query, you can often get the information you want without paying big bucks.
Totally free databases
The Internet is a network of networks linking millions of computers worldwide for the purpose of communicating. The Internet was originally developed in 1969 for the U.S. military and gradually grew to include educational and research institutions. These colleges and universities have never charged for the Internet they assisted in creating. Consequently, many free reference sources exist online. Here are a few examples:
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (www.stls.frb.org/research/index.html) provides links to high-quality economic research such as FRED II (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a historical database of economic and financial statistics, and FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research), a new collection of scanned images of historical economic statistical publications, releases, and documents. Sign up for the mailing list and be notified about late-breaking data or new publications.
The Federal Web Locator (www.infoctr.edu/fwl/index.htm#toc) is a service provided by the Center for Information Law and Policy and is intended to be the one-stop shopping point for federal government information on the World Wide Web.Government Information Locator Service (www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/gils), shown in Figure 1-2, contains records of public information throughout the U.S. government. Government Information Locator Service (GILS) records and describes the GILS holdings of a particular agency. However, the GILS database is updated irregularly. Each GILS document is available as a downloadable ASCII text file and as an HTML file.When all else fails — fee-based databases
For specialized investor topics, the only information available may be in an online database that you have to pay for. How each organization charges for database access varies from company to company. Charges can be by query, month, hour, or document. Most firms were designed for large corporate use, and they tend to flounder in their attempts to find equitable ways of charging individuals for private use. Fee-based databases have several limitations. Often, they use their own search methodologies that require some getting used to, and they can be costly. The fee structure may be geared for corporations and too expensive for individual use. Databases tend to be traditional and may not have that bit of unique information you’re seeking. Here are a few examples of fee-based databases (all price quotes are as of this writing and are subject to change, just like everything else on the Internet):
Lexis-Nexis (www.lexis-nexis.com) includes information from major regional and national newspapers, news sources, company information, and financial information, including SEC reports and proxy statements, in addition to other business sources in English and foreign languages. Find the information you need in one of two ways: select the product or service that you want to subscribe to or choose a particular topic. Lexis-Nexis accepts online credit-card payments. You can pay as you go, $3 for news sources, $4 to $12 for company and financial information. Or you can pay by the day or the week. For example, newspaper, business, and financial databases are $250 weekly or $75 daily. The top 34 business sources are $150 per week or $50 per day. Major papers (such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune) are $75 per week or $30 per day.
Highbeam Research (www.highbeam.com/library/index.asp) has, among other things, electronic access to many newspapers, periodicals, and journals that you can search by keyword. Highbeam Research is a good source for background or academic financial research. Basic service is free and limited to previews of articles. Full membership includes unlimited access, lets you archive articles, and provides alerts when new articles about a topic you’re researching are posted. A free sevenday trial is available. Full membership is $19.95 per month or $99.95 for 12 months.
STAT-USA (www.stat-usa.gov) is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This site includes economic indicators, statistics, and news. It also offers data about state and local bond rates, foreign exchange rates, and daily economic news. Statistics include interest rates, employment, income, prices, productivity, new construction, and home sales. Subscriptions for individuals are $75 per quarter or $175 per year.
Getting Online Investor Information Geared to Your Needs
Today, online investors come from the entire spectrum of society. Online investors range from young to old, beginners to professionals, and so on. Each of these groups has specific needs and interests. Many of the individuals in these special-interest groups are looking to online communities for answers and information about their special investment needs. Others see communities as a way to make online investing simpler because information is geared to their way of thinking. The Internet provides special Web sites targeted to online investors with specific interests. The following is a sample of what you’ll find on the Internet.
Investor Web sites for children
Every day you’re bombarded with information about the stock market. Turn on the car radio, walk through a hotel lobby, or watch the news on television, and you get updates about the stock market whether you want to or not. In a recent Merrill Lynch survey of 512 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17, about 9 percent who save their money invest in mutual funds or stocks. How can young people invest? A parent must open a custodial account because a minor can’t make securities transactions without the approval of an account trustee. The Merrill Lynch statistic indicates an interest in investing that’s supported by a number of online Web sites aimed at children. Here are a few examples of the wide range of online resources that can meet the needs of even the youngest investor:
Big Money Adventure (www.agedwards.com/public/content/fcgi/bma/frontpage.fcgi) is a site in which you select your guides and adventure based on your age: 2 to 6, 6 to 10, and 10 to adult. Visit the Rainbow Castle, jump into a storybook adventure, and learn about investing, or you can play a stock-picking game and win prizes.
The Young Investor Web site (www.younginvestor.com) is an interactive community designed for children and parents. Find out the fundamentals of managing money and investing. Don’t forget to visit the game room and play a few investing games.
Web sites for young investors
A recent NASDQ (National Association of Securities Dealers) survey showed that college-aged individuals (18 to 34 years old) account for about 20 percent of all U.S. investors. Online brokerages target these investors as their next revenue source. Many online brokerages understand that college-aged investors don’t have a lot to invest now but will likely become substantial investors over time.
Here are a few examples of sites that target this group:
Edustock (http://library.thinkquest.org/3088) is an educational Web site designed by high school students for investors young and old. The Web site includes beginning investor tutorials about how to select stocks, company profiles, and a free 20-minute delayed online stock market simulation.
Independent Means (www.anincomeofherown.com) is a Web site designed for women under 20 (and their over-20 mentors) to find an income of their own. The motto of the Web site is “girls, money, and power.” Discover articles about money and investing, teen business pages, and more.
TeenAnalyst (www.teenanalyst.com) is staffed by a group of young investors aged 15 to 16 years old. Using their experience and knowledge of investing, they bring young investors information in a fun and informative manner.
Other investor special-interest sites
Many financial institutions sponsor special-interest Web sites that provide selected groups with the information they need to be educated investors. These and other specialty Web sites (which are often nonprofit) understand that many investor sites attempt to educate online investors but fail to do so correctly because they don’t understand the unique needs, top issues, and interests of the Internet users they serve. The following sections present a sampling of the various special-interest investor Web sites available:
Senior investors Older investors can turn to the following sites for investment information:
Money & Investing (www.eldernet.com/money.htm) is geared to senior citizens. You access this site from the ElderNet home page. ElderNet’s Money & Investing site provides tutorials on the basics of investing, mutual funds, stocks, and bonds. Also, it includes sound advice on how to select a financial advisor.
ThirdAge (www.thirdage.com/money) provides information about investing, money management, and retiring well for adults in their mid-40s through 50s. If you’re investing for an early retirement, this Web site can help you.
Socially responsible investors If you have an active social conscience, consider these sites as starting points for your investment research:
SocialFunds.com (www.socialfunds.com) has more than 1,000 pages of strategic content to help investors make informed decisions regarding socially responsible investing. The Web site provides news, information, research, investment analysis, and financial services.
The Investor Responsibility Research Center (www.irrc.org) provides research related to corporate governance, social issues, and environmental practices. Get information about corporate benchmarking and environmental indexes.
The Social Investment Forum (www.socialinvest.org) offers comprehensive information, contacts, and resources on socially responsible investing. The Web site includes an online guide, financial services, news, and research. Minority and women investors The following sites are representative of Internet investment resources targeted specifically at minority and women investors:
The Gay Financial Network (www.gfn.com) provides free financial news, information, and services. The site also includes articles by featured columnists and a weekly poll.WIFE.org (www.wife.org) is the Web site of the Women’s Institute for Financial Education (WIFE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to financial independence for women.
iVillage MoneyLife Personal Finance for Women (www.ivillage.com/money) targets women who want to take control of their finances and start investing. Other topics include handling credit and debt, life and money, and money talk.
