Investment Analysts

Your Life as an Investment Analyst

A survey to understand the research and analysis process used by investment analysts. I'm interested to know what tools you use and what tools would be helpful. I'm also interested to know where you hang out online.

For the purposes of this survey RESEARCH refers to background reading or interviewing. ANALYSIS refers to quantitative "number crunching" as well as qualitative analysis.

Question Title

* 1. How do you decide to what to write about? Please check all that apply.

I write about companies I already have a position in AND I want to see how it's doing.

I write about companies I already have a position in AND I want to convince others of its merits.

I read or heard about the company and thought it sounded interesting.

I write about hot topics, like crypto-currencies in early 2018 or cannabis stocks in late 2018

I like to cover subjects and companies that are out of fashion or not getting a lot of coverage.

I write about debt

I write about the economy

Other, please explain.

Other (please specify)

Question Title

* 2. Where do you go for background research? Please rank your preferred sources from highest to lowest.

Seeking Alpha - articles, news or conference call transcripts

Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Financial Post or other business publication

New York Times, Washington Post, CBC or other general news publication

Company website

EDGAR/SEDAR filings

Social media - Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Stocktwits etc.

Motley Fool or other websites that have investment articles in them.

Question Title

* 3. Where else do you go for research?

Question Title

* 4. Do you rely on calculations made by someone else? For example a forward PE ratio from Seeking Alpha or the dividend yield from Google Finance?

Question Title

* 5. Do you calculate your own investment ratios or metrics?

Question Title

* 6. If you do your own calculations, what tools do you use? Please describe your process.

Question Title

* 7. What tools would be helpful to you that you don't currently use? Please rank in order of importance.

Technical analysis tools, i.e. charting tools

A place to do research and to keep research organized

A tool that captures all of the data I need e.g. price, financial statement, economic information

A tool that lets me create my own investment models that I would normally have to create in excel

A tool that let's me create charts and graphs with my data

A stock screener

A tool that tells me about the characteristics of a stock with the push of a button

A tool that would help you write your articles (e.g. by pre-populating parts of it).

Question Title

* 8. Are there any other tools that you'd like not mentioned above? Please describe.

Question Title

* 9. What investment or financial websites do regularly spend time on?

Question Title

* 10. What investment or financial podcasts do you listen to?

Question Title

* 11. We'd like to provide you with more information if we see a match between your needs and our offer. If you're interested, please provide us with your email address and we'll give you a coupon to try out our solution for free for two months.

Email Address