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I love the Internet as much as anyone. The thing is, though, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Sites I'm curious to see multiply all the time, and I'm just talking about those aimed at investors.
That's why, in a vain attempt to stay on top of it all, I began keeping a list of places I'd like to visit but didn't have the time to check out right away. This week, I set out to check up on what I've been missing. If you're game to come along, keep reading and I'll brief you on what I saw at 10 intriguing spots. If you don't have five minutes to join me right now, click here and save or print the next page that comes up. It's an itinerary that you can follow whenever you have the time. With that, let's first head to...
FalconEye. Since I don't trade stocks by the minute -- and don't think that's a good strategy for very many people -- I can't recommend this site generally. But if I were a day trader, I'd be curious about FalconEye's promise. For $19.95 a month, this site offers -- among other analytics -- to cover 6,500 Nasdaq stocks with its "Order Optimizer" tool. It's designed to tell you how good your chances are of seeing your limit order -- that's a request that your broker buy or sell shares at a specific price -- actually gets filled.
If the market in Oracle (ORCL), for example, were 75 1/2 bid, 75 9/16 ask, what would your chances be of having your limit order filled if you placed it in between the spread, at 75 17/32? FalconEye says it will examine the recent volatility in the stock along with current supply and demand to give you a percentage estimate -- say, 87% -- of your chances of being able to get a better-than-market trade. Does this work? I can't say, but if I were a day trader, I'd be tempted to sign up for the free 10-day trial.
FinPortfolio.com is designed for an entirely different type of investor. Buy-and-holders know that how they divvy their portfolios among different classes of assets -- stocks, bonds, money-market funds, for instance -- has a lot to do with their eventual investment success or failure. This site is free until September, so I fooled around with it a bit. I found that by one measure my taxable portfolio is poorly allocated, with too little overseas and too much in muni bonds. I'm not sure I buy that, but this site's toolbox has enough toys to keep asset-allocation nerds busy for many long evenings.
iAnalyst.com's motto is "Market Experts You Can Talk To." Through the end of August, this site is offering users a free crack at chatting online with its team of analysts who focus principally on technology stocks. If these people really have some good stuff to say, it's hard for me to imagine how this will pan out to the benefit of many investors: Will users Nos. 5, 6, and 7 have as good an opportunity to exploit the site's analytical genius as Nos. 1, 2, and 3? Probably not. And think about it: If you were a terrific analyst, would you want to chat with a bunch of schleppers?
Market Radar. If you know what a scatterplot graph is and the sight of one doesn't make you want to run from your computer to, oh, clean your refrigerator's vegetable bin, then head for Morningstar.com's new tool. Just to look at it, it's kind of cool. It will plot each stock or fund in your portfolio, or those in such other universes of stocks (the Standard & Poor's 500) and funds (all domestic stock funds), according to all sorts of criteria, such as year-to-date returns, Morningstar rating, or standard deviation. The resulting colorful graph might help you spot potential opportunities or dangers. Or you might just go cross-eyed. Trying to figure out how to use it threatened to take me to the land of migraine. I think Market Radar still has some explaining to do.
MutualMinds.com. One notion I'm betting Morningstar will be happy not to have dreamed up is coming to life at MutualMinds.com. Here's the idea: Anyone and his brother comes up with stock picks. MutualMinds scores how well each of these stock-pickers does. Then, if the Securities & Exchange Commission approves its application to register mutual-fund shares, it will sponsor a fund whose investments are chosen by the community's highest-scoring stock pickers. Would you put 10 cents in such a fund? I'd sooner toss it in a fountain with a wish for world peace.
A new site put up by Saul Nirenberg should be visited by anybody tempted to do otherwise. Nirenberg, a former broker and sales manager on Wall Street, has since 1990 been an expert witness and arbitrater for the New York Stock Exchange and mediator for the National Association of Securities Dealers. He knows what can go wrong with an investor's money on the Street. This free educational site raises lots of worthwhile questions any investor ought to ask repeatedly, such as: "Are You Trading Too Much?" And it will show you how to come up with an answer to that question.
SmartLeaf, set to debut in August, is another place to get a handle on your portfolio. Right now you can get a free preview of some tools it's offering. One of them promises to help investors in taxable accounts figure out when it's worth your while to sell a stock or fund that's under water so you can cut your tax bill.
The Social Security Administration's Retirement Planner site is far more basic, and probably more meaningful to most people. It has three calculators, including one you can download, to help you figure out how much you can expect to get each month in retirement. Take whatever answer you get with a grain of salt (but you already knew that).
TickerTrend. Many investors also know that the Sage of Omaha (a.k.a. Warren Buffett) can't abide investing in tech because he doesn't understand it. Hoping to fill that void is TickerTrend, which offers fundamental, Buffett-esque research on stocks at $5 a pop. "Not only does TickerTrend embrace the technology firms," the site proclaims, "we strongly believe their duration in the market has transformed some of them into the B2B equivalents of the "consumer monopolies" Mr. Buffett prefers in his portfolio." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but you can visit this page on TickerTrend to see a free demo report on Microsoft (MSFT). My verdict: If I were about to put $10,000 in a stock, I might be willing to pop $5 for an e-mailed report from TickerTrend.
Validea. A site called Validea brought my tour to an end. No, you're not going blind -- I had to keep looking at that word too before I realized that it wasn't some antipsychotic medication but a schmooshed-in version of the phrase "valid idea." This site's totally righteous idea is to track all manner of stock market experts -- Wall Street analysts, Internet commentators, TV talking heads, even magazine writers -- and see how well they fare as prognosticators.
Are the site's rankings fair? I'm not sure, but if you ask Mona Eraiba, Gruntal's semiconductor analyst, I bet she'll nod her head yes. She's currently ranked No. 1 by Validea.com with a three-month average return of 64.45% on her 13 picks. I'm also betting bottom-ranked Merrill Lynch airlines analyst Candace Browning, whose average loss of 31.49% on her 10 picks, some spotlighted on Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser, would disagree. Either way, the rankings are fun to read and potentially illuminating.
Robert Barker covers personal finance for Business Week
Questions? Comments? Take the tour yourself and let us know what you thing about the sites at BW Online's barker.online Forum EDITED BY THANE PETERSON
Copyright 2000 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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