Are You Getting What You Need From Your Financial Research?

Have you ever read financial research that always seems to say the same things? How about research that tends to be on the same side of an issue? As an example, how many buy ratings do you see on a company versus the number of sell ratings? How many research reports tell there will be negative growth next year versus positive growth? The biases for research reports are:

1) to buy something as opposed to selling, or going long instead of short;

2) economic growth rather than contraction;

3) consume rather than save;

4) follow the conventions rather than question them.

Is it true that these 4 themes should always be followed? Not necessarily. In fact there is a whole method of investing called “contrarian investing” that goes against these popular themes to capitalize on the asymmetries in the market place.

So, what exactly are you getting? Are you looking for something truly independent, something which reflects the opinions of the researcher and the merits of the research, rather than some bias for some outcome or another?  If you want to research for yourself, where can you go? Do you want to pay a price determined by the market of users rather than a few large players or institutions with biased outcomes? I have used many types of newsletters and reports in the past to obtain cutting edge research. But where do you find them? You can try to find them by searching the internet but this will take some time and patience.

There is another way that I have recently discovered.  It is a web site called the Financial Research Exchange: www.FRXmarket.com, the P2P online market for finding, buying and selling independent financial research.

www.joetheinvestorgroup.com