Tools of the on-line trade
Using these Web sites, you can find as much information about the stock market as most pros, ROB CARRICK writes

You and those investing professionals who play the stock market for a living have something in common.

When pro traders sit down at their computer terminals, they have instant access to an incredible range of information about the markets. Same goes for you, if you know where to look on the Internet.

With the right Web sites, you can find news, quotes, charts, analyst earnings estimates and recommendations, financial ratios, regulatory filings and a lot more.

You won't find the same breadth of information that the pros get through their Bloomberg or Reuters terminals. Still, the price is right. While people on Bay and Wall streets pay heavy subscription fees for their services, you can find plenty of useful information that costs nothing.

You have to know where to look, though. There are hundreds of investing Web sites out there, but only a select few deliver serious information. Unfortunately, a dwindling number of Canadian investing Web sites means that most of the resources mentioned here focus on U.S. markets.
Here's a selection of some of the most useful sites.

For market news: Globeinvestor.com (http://www.globeinvestor.com)

The Globeinvestor home page offers breaking news from the Globeandmail.com Web site, as well as Reuters. The focus is on Canadian markets and stocks, but there's U.S. news as well.

A unique Globeinvestor feature is the archive of news stories on both Canadian and U.S. companies. Just click where it says "news" at the top of the home page and specify the stock symbol, company name or sector you want to search. You can look at items from pages of The Globe and Mail, as well as from Reuters and Canadian and U.S. news wires. (These news wires issue corporate news releases, not news stories).

For quotes: Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)

Yahoo's stock quotes stand out for the detail they offer -- 17 different pieces of information, including bid, ask, last trade, day's range, 52-week range, earnings per share, price/earnings ratio, dividend per share, dividend yield, dividend date and ex-dividend date (the day on which buyers of a stock cease to be eligible to receive an imminent dividend payout).

If you're looking up Canadian stocks on Yahoo Finance, type .TO after the symbol, as in BCE.TO. For shares with a class structure, say Bombardier's B-class shares, type BBDB.TO.

Yahoo's stock quotes are delayed by 15 minutes for the Nasdaq Stock Market and 20 minutes for other markets, as are the quotes on most financial Web sites. For free real-time U.S. quotes try Freerealtime.com (http://www.freerealtime.com) , ThomsonFN (http://www.thomsonfn.com) or CNET (investor.cnet.com) . Free real-time Canadian quotes seem to be unavailable.

Another site worth noting for quote-seekers is stox.com (http://www.stox.com) , which will show you the day's trade history for Canadian and, to a lesser extent, U.S. stocks. Included here are the price, volume and time of trades, as well as the buying and selling dealers.

For stock charts: BigCharts (http://www.bigcharts.com)

Nothing puts a stock's long- or short-term performance into focus like a chart, and no Web site does charts for Canadian and U.S. stocks like BigCharts.

Start by typing a ticker symbol into the box at the top of the home page (type CA: in front of Canadian stocks, as in CA:NT) and then choose the "Java chart" button. What you'll get is a one-year price graph showing dividends, splits and earnings announcements. Move your cursor horizontally across the graph and stock price information for each trading day of the year will pop up sequentially.

Next, you can adjust the time frame on the chart, and add a stock index or other stocks. If you're into technical analysis, you can bring such indicators as moving averages, stochastics and MACD, which stands for moving average convergence divergence, into your chart.

Investors in a hurry might want to try the Quick Chart option, which produces a simple one-year chart. Another option is an interactive chart, which is a simpler version of the Java chart.

For analyst consensus recommendations and earnings estimates: Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)

See the little ticker box in the middle of the rather disheveled Yahoo Finance home page? Type in the symbol of stock you're tracking (for Canadian stocks type .TO after the symbol, as in CP.TO) and then use the pulldown menu to select "research." Yahoo will then produce reams of numbers showing how analysts view your stock.

To start, you'll find a breakdown of the number of analysts rating the stock as a "buy," "buy/hold," "hold," "hold/sell" or "sell." An average rating is also provided, along with comparable ratings from last week and previous months.

Want to know where analysts see a stock a year into the future? Yahoo shows you the high, low and median 12-month target prices set by some analysts. There's also copious amounts of information on where analysts see the company's earnings per share over the current and next quarter and fiscal year.

Hot stocks: Briefing.com (http://www.briefing.com)

This Web site spits out running analysis on the day's noteworthy stocks. The focus is on U.S. markets, not Canada, although some U.S.-listed Canadian stocks do crop up now and then.

To look at Briefing.com's coverage, use the Web address above and click where it says "free services." This site offers premium subscription packages (a free trial is available), but it also provides a good basic service at no cost.

If you want just a summary of the stocks making news, click on "short stories." If you want analysis focused on the question of whether a stock's a good buy or not, click on "story stocks." The "in play" feature tracks stocks presenting possible trading opportunities.

Briefing.com will also show you which stocks have been upgraded or downgraded by analysts on a given day.

Regulatory filings: Sedar (http://www.sedar.com) /FreeEDGAR(http://www.freeedgar.com)

Every piece of information that publicly traded Canadian companies issue to regulators and shareholders can be downloaded from Sedar, which stands for system for electronic document analysis and retrieval. Included are annual reports, prospectuses, early warning reports and proxy circulars.

You can zero in on a particular company, sector, document type or date with Sedar's search engine. The database is current to the previous business day.

FreeEDGAR is a site that contains filings by U.S.-listed companies to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Click on "today's filings" for the latest documents, or run a search by company name or stock symbol.

FreeEDGAR will show you documents, but you can't download a printable format unless you subscribe to a premium service on a site called EDGAR Online at http://www.edgar-online.com . EDGAR, by the way, stands for electronic data gathering and retrieval.

Financials: Globeinvestor/Morningstar (http://www.morningstar.com)

For Canadian companies, go to Globeinvestor and type a stock symbol into the ticker box at the top of the homepage. Then, click on "company snapshot" for a look at a company's revenue, earnings before interest and tax, profit or loss, earnings per share, assets, dividends per share, return on common equity and number of employees for the past three years.

A good place to check the financials on U.S. stocks is Morningstar, an independent U.S. mutual fund analysis firm that also covers stocks, and covers them well. To access Morningstar's financial data, type a stock symbol into the ticker box on the home page. You'll then jump to a Morningstar Quicktake report that includes a link to a "financials" page.

Ratios: Globeinvestor/MSN Money Central Investor (moneycentral.msn.com/investor)

Globeinvestor will show you a company's price-to-book, debt-to-equity, interest coverage and dividend payout ratios, as well as return on common equity and assets. To find this information, click on "reports" on the home page, then type in your stock symbol and choose "company report - ratios" from the pulldown menu.

The excellent MSN Money Central Investor site gives you a much broader range of ratio numbers for U.S.-listed companies. To find it, click on "stocks" at the top of the home page, then on "financial results" on the left side of the page. Next, click where it says "key ratios."

Global markets: site-by-site (http://www.site-by-site.com)

Want a quick look at what's shaking on the National Stock Market of India, or the Bucharest Stock Exchange? This Web site provides links to these markets, as well as dozens of others around the world.