Many investors want to research where to put their money. Learning about a company or industry can help someone decide whether or not to invest in a public company’s stock or an investment fund. Stock performance is one factor that can be used to evaluate a public company or compare it against competitors.
For a basic overview of how the stock market works, check out this site from How Stuff Works:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/stock.htm
All publicly traded companies have what are known as Ticker symbols (from the ticker tape that used to be generated in print back in the early days of stock exchanges). These are one, two, three, and sometimes four or five-letter codes that are a company's unique identifier on a particular exchange. Most stock price resources have a ticker symbol search field and it's often best to have the ticker at hand to quickly pinpoint the company you're looking for.
Many free online sites give basic data, e.g. Yahoo Finance and MSNMoney. Many fee-based online services also have some free content, e.g. Value Line, Morningstar. In general, you'll find a source that you like to use best for quick searches and perhaps others for more in-depth questions. We'll take a look at some of these on the Investment Sources page.
Most analyst and other packaged data comes at a cost, though many investors will be looking for input on a stock's past performance and predictions on how it will fare in the future. Being aware of which fee-based databases your library might subscribe to that provide this kind of analysis will allow you to assist your patrons who are interested in investing. Keep in mind that we are not investment advisors, ourselves, but rather referers to sources of investment information.
Other investment options:
Bonds
Bonds are similar to stock, only they generally involve less risk. And rather than purchasing shares in a company, a bond serves more as a loan that you are providing at a certain interest rate. Companies can have bond ratings (from S&P or Moody's or Fitch) and these are indications of how well the banks think they can pay back their loans--Bonds are part of the Fixed Income market and are a little bit beyond the scope of this course, but here's an overview from How Stuff Works for a little more info:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/question723.htm
Mutual Funds
Mutual funds are large pools of money managed by an investment company. For a basic overview of Mutual Funds, check out this site from How Stuff Works:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/question727.htm
Money Market
Investing in a money market as an individual investor generally means that you are placing your money in an account for a set period of time during which will it will be used by either banks or governments or other large institutions to lend and borrow things like bonds, treasury bills or something known as “commercial paper” [company debt]. You wont' have access to this money, but it will accrue interest at a higher rate. For a basic overview of the Money Market, check out this site from Investopedia.com:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/071304.asp
Commodities & Futures
Commodities markets set prices now to sell an item, i.e. commodities such as wheat, metals, etc., at a later time. For a quick overview of how futures contracts work, check out this link from Investopedia
http://www.investopedia.com/university/futures/futures2.asp
Often a patron will ask for stock price information on a company that has either gone bankrupt or merged with another company. This can pose a problem because many sources of company information, especially many of the free online ones, will often pull a defunct company's information from their system since they will no longer have an active ticker symbol.
For example, AOL merged with Time/Warner (and Time and Warner Bros. before this) back in early 2001 and if you try to find a stock price for AOL after that date there won't be one since AOL as such doesn't exist anymore. In many systems that collect stock price info (both free and fee-based), trying to look up an earlier stock price from when AOL *did* exist won't work, either, because defunct tickers are dropped. That means the data on AOL is gone completely from that resource now.
In another example, Kmart merged in March 2005 with Sears to form a new company called Sears Holding Corp. Now Kmart's old ticker, KM, has been dropped from many systems and Sears' old ticker, S, has already been taken by Sprint Nextel Corp (and, yes, Sprint Nextel is the result of a merger between Sprint and Nextel that took place about 5 months after Sears became Sears Holding).
So, if a company's stock price or other information seems to be especially difficult to track down:
--From the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, MD
--From Bankrate.com