The Financial Press
Newspapers and Magazines

I refer to the business section of the financial press (e.g., the Financial Review in Australia), and the business section of major daily newspapers for company information.

Articles and recommendations in these publications provide useful background, or possible candidates for your consideration.

These publications contain daily share prices, together with the high and low share prices for the company in the last year, the current dividend yield, the current earnings per share and the price/earnings ratio.

Depending on the day of the week, other information may be available.

You need to be aware that the current earnings per share refers to the figure quoted in the last annual report. This means that it could be up to a year old.

As the price/earnings ratio also uses the earnings per share figure, it could also be seriously out of date.

As a result, some commentators use the prospective or forecast earnings per share and P/E ratio. These are considered to be more up to date - but are dependent on the accuracy of the forecast!

The cost of newspapers and magazines needs to be taken into account as part of your investment expenses as it can mount up over a year if you are buying a paper every day and a magazine every few weeks.

Depending on your circumstances, the cost may be tax deductible.

Share and investment magazines (e.g., the Smart Investor in Australia) contain a range of articles and recommendations mostly relating to shares, including stock market statistics.

Their greatest use to me is to provide a source of recommendations to which I can apply my own analysis using the template which will be found in my e-book (not yet available).

Given that these magazines have to come up with upbeat stock market top picks every month, their recommendations often fail my criteria when value/price analyses are undertaken.

However, they are a good source of commentary on the state of the share market and like other parts of the financial press, essential reading.

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