On the Internet: News
by CI Staff
News is available on the Internet in many different formats, from tickers and headlines to in-depth news reports. Here we focus your attention on some of the top financial news Web sites available today.
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Bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com
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The Bloomberg Web site includes news coverage of U.S. and international companies, top news stories on the economy, market updates, and financial tools. Also available at no charge are current statistics on world market indexes, U.S. Treasury and international yield curves, currency exchange rates, and municipal bond yields. The sites home page shows breaking news as well as snapshots of the main equity indexes, leading and lagging movers, commodities, and currenciesupdated every 30 seconds.
Headline news stories from Bloomberg News are available with a one-sentence summary. You can access the full story by simply clicking on the link to the news item. Links can also include audio coverage of the news story.
The site is divided into four main sections: Markets, Money, Magazines and Books, and Life. These sections provide extensive information and analysis for individual investors.
The Markets section has links to a full page of current news items summarized into one paragraph with full story links available. The current news section includes top financial news, top world news, stock market updates, earnings news, and analyst ratings. Other sections are dedicated to stocks, rates and bonds, currencies, and commodities. In the stock area, for example, you can access earnings announcements, sector news, a chart builder, and an IPO center.
The Money section provides commentary related to investing and personal finance. This area includes sections on mutual funds, portfolio building and management, retirement, and banking and loans. It also offers tools such as a mortgage calculator, a total return calculator, and a buy/lease calculator. The mutual fund section displays fund-related news items as well as a searchable database of funds. The portfolio section allows you to build three portfolios of up to 50 stocks each.
The retirement section provides strategies to consider and a retirement fund calculator. Bloomberg.com asks for current age, desired retirement age, desired fund value at retirement, expected return on investment, and amount of current retirement funds. The resulting table shows the amount you need to save each year to reach your goal.
The Magazines and Books area provides links to some of Bloombergs publications. The Life section offers information on golf, sports news, careers, and travel.
CNN/Money
www.money.cnn.com
The CNN/Money Web site offers a diverse collection for the individual investor ranging from news and data on stocks, markets, bonds, interest rates, and commodities, to initial public offerings (IPOs), and ADRs. This free site also covers personal finance, retirement, and mutual funds, and offers portfolio tracking and personal finance tools and calculators.
The news section of the Web site contains news items on individual companies and industries, company research, financial news, and international news. Visitors can also access snapshot company reports provided by Market Guide/Multex, a mergers and acquisitions databank that lists the most recent corporate acquisitions, economic news and data, and news items broken down by industry.
In the Markets & Stocks area, users will find morning and afternoon market summaries in addition to sections covering ADRs, bonds and interest rates, commodities, currencies, the Dow 30, IPOs, and world markets. The CNN/Money Earnings area contains data from Thomson Investors Network reporting the latest earnings information for more than 11,000 North American companies. Listings are provided for the last five trading days; you can also choose to see the most recent upward or downward earnings revisions. A list of companies issuing earnings warnings is provided by Briefing.com.
The site offers commentary from Lou Dobbs and other columnists and an entire section devoted to technology stocks. The Personal Finance section covers autos, banking, college, insurance, and taxes. In the Mutual Funds area youll find the Money 100 mutual fund listing, the top 100 mutual funds as chosen by Money magazine. The list is sortable by various data elements such as one-year return, expense ratio, and minimum investment. A fund screener allows you to find funds with specific criteria as to fund type, returns, and expenses.
The Money 101 area consists of on-line lessons to help visitors learn to invest, save, borrow, and spend more wisely. The lessons contain calculators, quizzes, and a library of supplemental materials. Topics covered include the basics of investing, handling employee stock options, planning for retirement, and asset allocation.
Lastly, the CNN/Money site contains tools for tracking your portfolio and calculators to help you reduce debt, refinance your mortgage, estimate your insurance needs and more.
PR Newswire
www.prnewswire.com
PR Newswires Web site provides news stories from PR Newswire at no charge. News is divided into sections by regions of the world.
PR Newswire displays the days top stories summarized in one paragraph but with a link to the full story. News can also be searched by company name or located in sections devoted to different industries.
You can also search current news by subject, state, company, ticker symbol, keyword, concept, or industry. This allows you to search for specific topics such as mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies, bond/stock ratings, sales reports, restructuring, earnings, and forecasts. PR Newswire also includes searchable market commentary provided by Thomson.
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Wall Street Journal Online
www.wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition covers top news stories, economic news reports, and market updates on U.S. and international companies. For an annual fee of $79 per year ($39 for print subscribers to the Wall Street Journal or Barrons), subscribers gain access to full content from the Wall Street Journal and Barrons, as well as a search function that allows users to find back articles up to 14 days old. Searches can be done on company name, topic, or keyword. A custom news retrieval feature provides news based on your predefined preferences; you can also have news alerts E-mailed to you.
Other features include portfolios, detailed company data, news alerts, stock quotes, and company and fund searches. Access to the European and Asian editions of the Wall Street Journal are also available on-line.
Reuters
www.reuters.com
Reuters.com offers many products and services for investors in addition to offering their news items for free.
The Markets area in the Finance section gives the top stories of the day and reports a market summary. In the Market Snapshot area, you can find statistics on the major indexes; the Financial News area reports on company results, hot stocks, mergers & acquisitions, and economic news among other topics. Canadian and international index quotes are also offered along with a links to news on Canadian and other international companies.
A watchlist on the home page can be customized with a free registration. Other research and tools available include company research, a comparison chart function, Lippers fund screener, and links to SEC filings.
