Internet A Cheap, Quick Source Of Financial Advice Services Offer Everything From Stock Quotes To 10ks

The Internet can be a priceless resource for seasoned money managers and greenhorn investors alike. It’s one of the cheapest and quickest ways to sniff out hot investments, track those you’ve already made and study the financial world.

Where else can you find quick, free price quotes and historical charts of your favorite stocks and mutual funds? M.I.T.’s Experimental Stock Market Data Server provides 24-month charts of closing prices and daily trading volumes for hundreds of stocks and funds. M.I.T.’s service also offers daily prices and basic background information for each stock and fund it covers - free for Internet users.

NETworth by GALT Technologies isn’t free, but for two weeks you can try it free - and it’s one of the most impressive online investor services around. It offers prices, ratings and extensive information about more than 5,000 mutual funds.

Once connected to NETworth’s site on the net, users can chose the company’s mutual fund quote service by clicking on a small picture representing mutual funds. Type a mutual fund name’s abbreviation in the white blank that appeared on the screen and in less than a minute users will be looking at a historical graph of the fund’s net asset value.

The Internet also offers reams of investment information for those without access to the World Wide Web. InterQuote, a service that provides up-to-the-minute stock quotes, operates outside the Web. So does QuoteCom, which offers five free stock quotes daily, financial news, indexes, and other information through e-mail.

Users can get free corporate records of thousands of companies including 10Ks, 10Qs and quarterly reports through the Security and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR (electronic data gathering and retrieval) service.

There’s no shortage of online investment advice either. Free investment newsletters are sent regularly to readers’ electronic mailboxes. For example, Steve Win Wang in his free Recommendations Update compiles periodic lists of the stocks that receive the highest recommendations from various brokerage firms.

Net users also can trade ideas with other armchair investors via USENET discussion groups. Three of the most popular financial USENET groups are misc.invest, misc.invest.stocks and misc.invest.funds.

Once you dive into these resources and get your bearings, you’ll find the net a gold mine of financial information.