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YAHOO FOR STOCKS!

The vast majority of financial topics are smartly subdivided into managable subheadings such as: U.S. Markets, World Markets, Research, Financial News and Reference.

Research allows individuals to screen stocks that have certain characteristics such as by Industry, Price to Earnings Ratio and 1-Year Estimated Earnings Growth. This feature is a particular weak point since the screening variables are extremely limited and generally meaningless for those with long-term horizons. Hoovers' StockScreener is still superior in this writers' opinion.

The Financial News section is extremely impressive. It provides a minute-to-minute update on global financial events as reported by Reuters Securities. In terms of sheer information volume, QuoteYahoo! has no peer. If you are more interested in looking up information on a particular company, you can enter that business' ticker symbol and get the information there. In terms of providing up-to-date financial news reporting, QuoteYahoo! is the place to go.

The 'Profile' section of a stock has been improved. It now includes a listing of insider trades by company directors or major shareholders. Also, the 'Profile' section is now linked with Market Guide to provide users with Highlights, Performance and Ratio Comparisons of virtually all publically traded businesses. This is a fundamental analysts' delight! The Highlights section provides earning and revenue history on a quarter-by-quarter basis for up to 5 years. The Performance link displays less important price-action information. The Ratio Comparison is a great tool for finding out a company's Price to Book, Quick Ratio, Current Ratio, LT Debt to Equity and Margin ratios over the last year. The Ratio Comparison is one of my favorite new features of the 'new' QuoteYahoo!.

Now, without further adieu, is the initial article covering some of the oustanding features of QuoteYahoo!

Of all the online resources on the web today, Yahoo provides one of the best sources of financial information around. Whether you're an amateur investor or veteran trader, Yahoo's Quote Yahoo service can be an invaluable tool for finding great leads.

This is not to say that Quote Yahoo is the solution to all your research needs, it is far from it. However, I believe it is a powerful compliment to Value Line, Hoovers and the annual report.

The Symbol Lookup

First off, Yahoo provides a useful feature called 'Symbol Lookup' that allows you to find the ticker symbol of your favorite stock. In addition to the ticker symbol, a successful search will reveal more research functionality.

As you can see from the above image, a successful search on 'T Rowe Price' gives the ticker symbol 'TROW' and some other options as well.

These options include a variety of display settings such as Basic, DayWatch, Performance, Fundamentals and Detailed. The only view that is of any interest is the Basic (default) view.

Below the Views setting there is a table with cells that contain TROW's time of last trade, last known price per share, change and 'More Info'. Again, only the 'More Info' cell is of any real use.

This cell contains the following options:

1. Chart - useful for seeing how long your company has been publically traded.
2. News - an excellent source for recent news concerning your company.
3. SEC Filings - a good brief summary of the business. You can find more comprehensive filings at Hoovers/Edgar web sites.
4. Profile - a superior tool for screening out high calibre companies. Profile allows users to view a company's contact information, web site (if available) return on equity, equity/debt ratio, return on assets, earnings and cash per share and dividend yield. This is the primary reason I use Quote Yahoo.
5. Research - opinions of the professionals. Generally useless.
6. Messages - a sounding board for those who own or are looking to own this company. Generally useless.

Below this table is a section of Recent News that highlights any events that have affected the company over the last few days. This feature is extremely useful due to it's unique benefit of giving the investor up-to-date information about a specific company. This kind of information would be virtually impossible to find in newspapers, on television or the radio.

Profile of the Company

In the 'Profile' section, TROW's contact information is given on the left-most column atop the page (as shown below). Other miscellaneous information about T ROWE PRICE can be found on the right-most column including the company's home page, SEC filings, annual report and press releases.

There is also a Business Summary that outlines what the company produces and how their revenue and earning numbers have done over the last 9 months.

On the bottom of the Profile page there are some interesting numbers. From the image below we can see that T ROWE PRICE, as of March 20 1998, had a return on equity of 37%, return on assets of 29%, debt/equity of 0, profit margin of 21%, earnings of $2.25 per share and a dividend yield of 0.94%. Needless to say these are excellent numbers. Oftentimes I go through an entire Sector or Industry and write down the ticker symbols of the strongest companies I find. This is extremely helpful to me in screening out poor performers.

Another useful feature of Quote Yahoo that I won't get much into right now is it's Portfolio feature. This feature allows you to select a bunch of stocks by their ticker symbols and track their progress. It is a good way to remind yourself of the good stocks you've found so that you can go back to them later and look up their annual reports or 10-K SEC filings. Below is a sample screen shot my portfolio 'clipboard' and the information it contains. For the curious, the blurry section contains the ticker symbols and names of the companies that I either want to buy or currently hold.

Summary

In conclusion, Quote Yahoo is an excellent resource for beginners and veteran stock pickers alike. It provides current information about U.S. stocks and can be used as a screen for finding excellent businesses.

Cheers,
Jim Chuong