How to Research Like a Boss

Finding a new investment for your portfolio is like making any big purchase — it's important to research your options. Learning the basics about a company shouldn't have to mean poring over decades of financial statements. With the right resources, you can do your own research and move forward feeling confident with your investment choices. Here are some easy places to start.

Go Straight to the Source

As with any shopping experience, a company website can be a great source of information when researching your investments. Most publicly traded companies devote a section of their site to investors. That's where you'll find financial filings, corporate governance documents, management bios, information about the board of directors and more. If you want to confirm a company announcement you read about somewhere else, you can often find the original news release on the company's website.

Find Secondary Sources You Trust

If, like many, you need a little help translating corporate-speak into useful information, there are plenty of experts to turn to, starting with equity analysts. Analysts study publicly traded companies and write detailed reports about financial information and projections, stock-price fluctuations, management decisions, capital allocation and industry developments. Analysts also publish research notes, which can range from detailed overviews of specific companies and industries to their takes on recent company events, such as takeovers, management shakeups and more.

Companies often list the names of analysts who cover them in the investor sections of their websites. Independent research firms offer equity research on their respective sites, and many online trading platforms provide analyst reports to clients as a value-added service. Most sites that provide stock quotes also compile analysts' earnings forecasts and recommendations such as buy, sell or hold.

Analysts' reports can get very detailed, so if you're looking for more bite-sized information, seek out relevant articles. Business journalists, columnists and bloggers can offer insights to investors. A trusted market-watcher can be a valuable resource, and that second opinion can get you thinking, but take some time to understand an expert's point of view. The “elbow grease" approach (reading, questioning and fact-checking) is a great way to build confidence in your sources. It's also good to have a roster of voices you turn to; sometimes the stories being told can take different angles depending on who is doing the telling.

Study Stock Quotes

Of course, much of the information that will help you make informed decisions resides in real-time stock quotes. It can be an overwhelming amount of information to take in if you don't speak the lingo. Get yourself up to speed with our detailed-quote checklist below.

The types of information you can find from a company itself, an expert or a stock quote can be valuable at any stage, but particularly as you're getting to know a company. There's no magic method, but it's worth putting in the time to get informed.

How do you tackle research? Leave a comment* to share your thoughts.

This article was featured in our special issue, as seen in the Globe and Mail. Find all the magazine articles HERE.

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