websites that offer free information about insider trades

mike · Member

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a nice little sidebar about websites that offer free (and pay) information about insider trades. The sites are Thomson Financial http://insider.thomsonfn.com/tfn/insider.asp and Vickers Stock Research http://vickers-stock.com/. Insider buys are often a good indicator that a stock will go up. Insiders sells are less useful, as insiders frequently sell just to diversify their holdings, which is only prudent. Right now, I don't see any stocks with heavy insider buying that I like, but it's worth watching.

MisterL · Member

Thanks for posting this info mike !

Jerry · Member

Hi All,

I'm very interested in learning about the stock market, how to trade, where to trade, etc. I know there are tons and tons places out there with info, but I thought some of you experienced traders could recommend a good starting place or authors who really know their stuff.

I'm not ready to invest yet, I just want to know what I'm doing when I am ready. Any suggested resources would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Chad · Member

Hi Mike,

I'm not an advisor, I just read about the basics on a few sites.

Morningstar has some great resources and tutorials about stocks and funds.

I personally haven't had much luck with stocks, they are too volatile. I recommend mutual funds myself. A friend of mine suggested ETFs, which are like funds, but traded like stocks (I haven't read the tutorial on morningstar yet though).

From my experience, brokers suck, there's no reason to pay for their services when you can do your research yourself. My broker stuck me in some real losers, which I'm confident he spent about 5 minutes researching. I have since moved everything from Merril Lynch to an online trading account.

Morningstar has a great Fund Screener, and you can read about one man's suggested use of it here:
http://www.winninginvesting.com/fund1.htm

I have no idea who the above guy is, but it was the first thing I found after searching Google for using the MS screener.

Another person who I would trust is Suzie Orman, you can find her books on Amazon.

Mike · Member

Thanks for the reply Chad. May I ask which online trading service you use? I've heard about ETFs before too, so that's something I'm definately going to research.

I've read some of Suzie Orman's stuff before, mainly just browsing sample chapters online or skimming through her books at Borders. I'll have to take a more in-depth look at it.

Thanks.

Chad · Member

I use Ameritrade $10.99 stock/ETF trades, and $17.99 mutual fund trades, no accounting fees at all. I think you get 30 free stock trades when you sign up.

Etrade looks like a good place too, they offer just about everything under the sun (I use them for my ESPP offered by my company), I think their site has evolved much more so than Ameritrade's. I used to have a Datek account back in the dotcom boom, which was bought by Ameritrade.

I do my research, alerts, and portfolio tracking on Morningstar's site though (which is free).

The Suzie Orman book I have is "Road to Wealth", which is good for general information, but not specific and detailed enough for investing. It's written in an FAQ style. Good reference when learning about anything related to finances, be it buying a house, investing, saving for college, or buying a car, etc.

boggy2 · Member

Personally, I like TD Waterhouse. Can I reccomend a good company to get into? The analysys I made makes great sense, hell the whole idea makes sense.

poly · Member

I have a friend who works for Goldman Sachs. I've been meaning to set something up with him, but haven't. I'm so lazy. I've been looking at investing some money for awhile now, but haven't.

Chad · Member

ameritrade has super fast execution if you're into day trading. I don't really care that much about it, but they have no maintenance fees, and I'm doing better myself than with what Merril Lynch was recommending me.

Go ahead and list your stock picks here...

Some I've invested in recently:

netflix (NFLX)
applied digital systems (ADSX)
cognizant technologies (CTSH)

Ameritrade's research isn't very good. I typically do it all on morningstar's site for free.

boggy2 · Member

Try EMC Systems. Its a small hardware company focused on supplying small companies with computer networks.

SYMBOL: EMC
Stock is going for about $14.00, but has increases from about $10.00 in the last 3 months.
I hope this works out ok for you guys.

Stockpedia · Member

www.thestreet.com is a pretty good resource that offers a lot of different analyzation information.

James H. · Member

To be honest, learning about the stock market doesn't help much if you cannot read the financials. You will always be in need of someone elses advice. Your decision will be based on someone elses judtgement.

I would suggest learning financial ratios and how to extract them from financial statements. The SEC requires all companies to make their audited financial statements available to the public, this includes the salaries and bonuses of all corporate officers. You can use the information to see trends in the individual companies and whether they are a good investment or not.

By the way, that does mean to dismiss good advice. It only means that you will be able to confirm good advice when it is given to you.

Chad · Member

my experience with my advisor at Merrill Lynch was that he didn't give two shits about my portfolio, and consistently recommended lousy stocks in the blink of an eye. For the average joe investor, ML has been known to recommend crap, while telling their big fish to sell and "get out while you can". This happened to me with Enron, and then a month later with Elan. I lost 66% of my portfolio, and after doing a little bit of research on the mutual funds he recommended to me for my IRA, decided "hell, I can do better on my own than this monkey", and moved everything to AmeriTrade, where I handle it myself.

Just because you pay ML $45/quarter and commission on trades, doesn't mean they have your interests at heart. Best thing is to learn about the market, read some books, and do it yourself.

Over 4 years, not once did he ever call me to say "YOu should sell or buy". And when I did call him, it was more of the same, "yeah, it's going down, but you shouldn't sell, it's going to go back up."

Also, I don't recommend investing anything into stocks unless you're willing to loose 100% of it. For long term growth, you're much safe with mutual funds, as they are a composite of several stocks, and have a dedicated manager or two, who does have your interests at heart.

The other thing I keep hearing about is ETFs.

What have others out there experienced with stock brokers?