Site of the month

Each month Site of the Month examines a different investment Web site to reveal facilities that you may not know about and that will help you with your investing.

Note: This examination of the Site of the Month is an independent opinion about the site published by Investors Internet Inc. No payment of any kind has been accepted for the review of the site.

The homepage of www.nasdaq.com has a summary of the performance of major indices with a chart of the Nasdaq index.  Also available in the homepage are news headlines, latest announcements, new offerings, and quotes look-up.  For the quotes look-up, you are allowed to enter 10 symbols and have the choice to choose from Flash Quotes, Info Quotes and Summary Quotes.  Moreover, you can access to the Portfolio Tracker by clicking the link on the top of the homepage.  You need to have a Microsoft Passport (an hotmail address/msn address) in order to use the tracker.

The Quotes + section provides more in depth details about particular companies that you are interested in besides the different quotes mentioned above.  These details include: Company News, Charts, Company Financials, EPS Summary, Pre-Market and After Hours Quotes, Analyst Info, Holdings Summary, and Guru Analysis.  Perhaps the most interesting utility mentioned above is the Guru Analysis; it provides stock evaluation based on well-known evaluation methodologies of nine famous investors, such as, Benjamin Graham, Kenneth Fisher, Martin Zweig, and Peter Lynch.

The Market Activity section shows the daily performances of major and sector indices.  The site updates itself automatically after some time interval.  You may also find out about daily most active stocks and stocks with unusual volume.

The Extended Trading section provides information on pre-market and after hours activities.  The Pre-Market Indicator can be used to predict opening prices of the markets.  Also available are Pre-Market Most Active, Pre-Market 5 Day Volume and Pre-Market Quotes.  On the other hand, the After Hours Indicator shows trading activities during 4 to 6 pm. E.T.  Similarly, After Hours Most Active, After Hours 5 Day Volume and Quotes are provided.

From the News section, you can find out about the latest news regarding the market in general or regarding any particular companies.  It also provides news headlines from Forbes.com.

The ETFs/QQQ section gathers information about ETFs.  It shows the ETFs under two categories: Broad Based and Sector.  In addition, it has a ETFs Compare/Screener that allows you to screen out ETFs according to five different criteria.   If you are interested in international based ETFs, you may want to check out the International page, which provides daily changes in various international based ETFs.  Prospectuses regarding Major ETFs are available for download in PDF form.  Quotes of close end funds, equity and index options can be obtained from the Closed End Funds and Options And Indices pages.

Many useful utilities are provided in the Investor Tools section.  The Guru Screener filters out stocks that receive high scores based on various investing gurus as mentioned before.  The Stock Screener, powered by Sharp Screen, is a Java applet that allows you to screen out stocks based on parameters you define.  Holdings/Insiders page lets you to search for filings of institutional and insider activity by typing related keywords.  The Personal Finance is a place where you can find a lot of useful educational materials regarding management of your personal finance.  Annual Reports page allows you to retrieve annual reports of companies by name or sector.  Sectoring by Industry is provided by Barchart.com. It divides companies into industry groups.  RiskGrades is a utility that allows you to find out how risky a stock is when comparing to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.  The Nasdaq LiveQuotes is a fee required real-time streamer.  A free one-month trial is available for new customer.

The charts section allows you to draw charts for up to 10 stocks at once.  Many chart display choices are available.  You can also compare charts to major indices and other stocks that you select.

The IPO section provides latest updates about current offerings as well as the coming offerings. Secondary public offerings information is available too.  Summary, financials and filing information are provided for these offering companies.

In conclusion, if you are interested in investing in stocks and funds or gaining some education regarding personal finance, www.nasdaq.com is definitely a web site you don’t want to miss.