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Dateline: 8/31/98
The amount of reading material on investment on the Internet is truly astounding. In fact, there is so much of it, few people can really afford the time to read it all. So any reading we do must be selective. To help you make your selections, we offer this quick overview. We won't mention the obvious sources - The Financial Post, the Globe's Report on Business, the big U.S. publications - Forbes, Barron's, the Wall Street Journal. What we're trying to cover here are the specialty magazines and newsletters. We'll restrict ourselves largely to Canadian publications, but will mention the occasional foreign one as well.
There are some excellent Canadian investment magazines both in print and on the Internet. The online versions usually contain excerpts and often complete articles from the magazines. Here are some of general interest.
Canadian Business: This glossy mag covers a wide range of topics of interest to investors, entrepreneurs and business people. Published 21 times a year, it can be had by subscription for $29.95. The website features several complete articles from the current issue plus a database of the top Canadian companies by revenue called Performance 2000. You can search for information on companies by name or get a list of the tops in various categories.
IE: Money: This is an excellent general interest magazine for Canadians covering investment, mutual funds, financial planning and more. The glossy print version goes for $3.95 a copy or $14.95 for a one year subscription. It comes out 6 times a year. The online version includes indexes to all the back issues and three to five complete articles from each issue. Only the index of the current issue is listed.
Individual Investor: This is an American magazine that Canadians may find useful as well. Available on the news stands for $3.50 Canadian, the magazine features market commentary, several articles each issue on specific stocks or sectors, and a section on mutual funds. The website is comprehensive and includes daily news releases, weekly updates on sectors and mutual funds, a portfolio tracker and more. You can register for free and get access to a members only area which features more in depth analyses and reports. They will also send you a regular e-mail (every two or three days) telling of new material on the site.
Planning for Profits: This relatively new publication is published three times a year at $4.95 an issue on the news stand. You can subscribe for only $9.95 a year. While the magazine itself is excellent, featuring such well known writers as Garth Turner, Duff Young, David Cork, Michael Kane and Mike Grenby, the website itself only has excerpts of a few paragraphs from selected articles. It does include complete excerpts from their Profiles and Portfolio sections, but these look more like ads for particular companies than articles.
All-Canadian Mutual Fund Guide:This is a glossy mag covering Canadian mutual funds. Available on the news stands for $4.50, you can get a one year subscription (four issues) for $15.41. The magazine features quarterly reports on the top performing funds, articles on fund managers, a trends column and several feature articles. Author Steven Kelman (Understanding Mutual Funds) is a regular contributor. Unfortunately, the website doesn't have more than an index of articles in past issues. The most recent Summer 1998 wasn't even listed yet. Buy the mag - forget the website!
The Fund Counsel: Economists Levi Folk and Richard Webb publish this monthly newsletter filled with analysis. This is a premium newsletter at a premium price - $140 a year. The website features a complete sample back issue, and because of the current market chaos, the author's have generously made their current issue (September 1998) available free on line. Two extremely useful tools online are their reports on Value Investing which lists mutual funds with the lowest aggregate P/E ratios and their Fund Counsel Quotient, a unique method of risk assessment. The website also includes breaking news along with their current buy recommendation. You can ask questions or discuss issues at their online forum.
Webb and Folk also launched a glossy magazine, the Mutual Fund Review, in January. This quarterly costs $3.95 on the news stand or $14 a year. There's nothing about the mag on the website so I don't even know if it's still publishing.
Fund Watch: This exclusively online publication is the most widely read mutual fund newsletter in Canada. It's free. Editor Rudy Luukko is ably assisted by a staff of researchers and writers and keeps you up to date monthly on the latest news about Canadian mutual funds. You can download an abbreviated version in Adobe format if you like.
This week we just covered some general investment magazines and some specializing in mutual funds. In future columns we'll cover other areas - gold, precious metals, stocks. In the meanwhile, you'll find many of these already listed in my Newsletters links. Two sites that offer many newsletters for subscription are Select Information Exchange which lists over 170 different newsletters and Newsletter Access which lists over 2000! Wow!
Disclaimer: As with all my columns here, I should re-iterate a precaution. I am not a professional financial advisor. I am a financial journalist and editorialist. The views in these columns are my personal opinions. The author holds interests in a number of the funds mentioned in this article.
Investing (Canada) Notes:
Have you checked out The Daily? Links to daily Canadian busines and investment news and commentary.
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