If you talked about ‘financial pages’ when the first edition of this book appeared in 1987, nobody was in much doubt as to what you meant. Slabs of financial text interspersed with the odd picture or table and printed on pink or white paper. Today, all of that has changed. The ‘pages’ referred to are as likely to be electronic pages on the Internet, accessed via computer, modem and telephone line. So this chapter now divides into two separate, though overlapping, parts. First, we will deal with the traditional print media. The second half of the chapter then turns to the newer electronic pages, many of them spin-offs from these established publications.
The British have traditionally had access to a very wide range of financial reading matter. Much of it comes as an adjunct to more general daily reading: the business and City sections of the national daily and Sunday newspapers. At times of boom in the financial markets the national newspapers derive a large portion of their revenue from financial advertising and the editorial pages of the financial sections expand to reflect the heightened interest.
But any review of the financial press has to start with London’s Financial Times: the ‘FT’. It sells around 440,000 copies a day of which some 240,000 is overseas circulation. It prints in two locations in the UK, five in the United States, and in France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Japan and Hong Kong. The overseas editions contain a greater amount of information relevant to the local markets. Back home, it is the City’s bible, and on the rare days in the past when the FT’s pink pages have failed to appear the City has had a rudderless feel. It is international in outlook with a range of overseas correspondents that much of the British press lacks. The UK edition covers as a matter of course all the major financial markets of the UK and the more important ones overseas. It is a journal of record for news of UK companies. Its news reporting covers the major political, economic, business and financial events worldwide, and its interests extend to the arts, sport and leisure activities. News is put into perspective with the help of background analysis and feature articles. And its statistical information and price coverage of all major financial markets is far more comprehensive than can be found elsewhere. On working days it is now divided into two sections, with the more general domestic and international business and political news in the first part and the specific news of companies and financial markets in the second. On Saturday it is divided into three main sections, plus magazines and supplements.
In fact, the FT is easier to define by what it does not cover than by what it does. First, it does not make investment recommendations as such, though you can read between the lines in the Lex investment comment column and some of the company comment. Second, it normally deals in fact rather than speculation. Though its market reporting duly records the rumours that move share prices, it does not always fully mirror the gossipy nature of much City activity. Its nearest American counterpart, the Wall Street Journal, is also read in the City: primarily for its coverage of North American business. It has not seriously challenged the FT on its home beat. The FT has, needless to say, embraced the Internet with a number of websites including www.ft.com/ for mainstream finance and business news and www.ftyourmoney.com/ for personal finance coverage.
Not everybody has the time to read a newspaper of the FT’s scope each day. The financial pages of the quality press – the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph and The Times – offer an alternative, covering the main items of business and financial news and dealing briefly with many of the minor ones. A similar formula – news stories, company results coverage, editorial comment and feature articles – surfaces in different guises. While the Guardian has sometimes had a rather ambivalent attitude to specific share recommendations, the other three carry regular investment comment.
On Saturdays these quality dailies – like the FT – change their spots and devote much of the available space to personal finance coverage: questions of tax, insurance, pooled investments such as unit trusts and family finance-planning in general.
A number of Britain’s major regional papers – the Birmingham Post, the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman – follow a similar pattern to the national dailies, though with a bias towards news of local businesses and events.
Below the level of the ‘heavy’ dailies, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have less space to devote to financial coverage, though the Mail in particular has at times had significant influence on the stockmarket. The result is a greater emphasis on one or two major financial ‘stories’. Both also provide stockmarket reports and both have regular personal finance sections. The attention to financial news in the London’s Evening Standard shows that this is regarded as a significant selling point in the battle for readers in the capital. The Standard’s financial pages are printed on pink paper – a compliment to the Financial Times, though the FT has not always regarded it as such.
The heavyweight Sunday papers – the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph and the Independent on Sunday –start with the assumption that their readers will have picked up the main items of the week’s financial news elsewhere. Thus the emphasis is on background analysis of current stories and attempts to get in first with the stories that will hit the financial headlines in the coming week. In this some of them are often helped by financiers (or their public relations advisers) who find it convenient to float a story before the new week’s dealings begin in the markets. Not every ‘story’ necessarily results from journalistic legwork, nor is a partisan approach always entirely absent. All provide personal finance coverage and all at one time or another are active with share tips, often of the ‘close to the market gossip’ variety. In addition to the ‘general’ Sunday papers, Sunday Business aims fair and square at finance and business stories.
Because of the extensive financial coverage in the national press, Britain supports relatively few stockmarket magazines. The largest and by far the longest established is the Investors Chronicle, now under the same ownership as the Financial Times. Its strength has traditionally been its very detailed analysis of company profits and company prospects, useful for those who want to monitor their existing investments as well as pick up ideas for new ones. It does make specific share recommendations, but the bulk of its coverage also contains an element of evaluation or advice. Its feature material contains much that is aimed at helping the newcomer to the stockmarkets. It also carries a regular personal finance coverage. Considerably larger in terms of circulation is The Economist, but domestic financial markets now occupy a relatively small amount of space in its pages, though its selective coverage of international business issues is strong.
Mirroring the decline in direct stockmarket investment by the individual and the growth of pooled investment schemes, publications on personal financial planning for the individual have blossomed. New magazines spring up and older ones change their names or their owners. A glance at any major newsagent’s magazine rack reveals a fair selection, probably including Money Observer (an off-shoot of the newspaper). For subscribers, Money Which provides advice on financial services and products. There are also specialist magazines advising on what mortgage to go for and the like.
These personal finance magazines for the individual should not be confused with the publications aimed primarily at financial intermediaries – insurance brokers and so-called financial advisers – who market investment products to the public. The leaders here include the monthly Money Management and Planned Savings, both of which provide detailed coverage of the performance of unit trusts, insurance funds and other investment products. Money Marketing is a news-oriented weekly paper that aims for something of the same market and has attracted several competitors. These papers for the personal finance business overlap with trade magazines for the insurance and pensions industries (insurance magazines are legion).
Banking is served by the Banker, a monthly magazine under the same ownership as the Financial Times, and the eurocurrency market by the monthly Euromoney and allied publications from the same stable. The weekly International Financing Review is aimed primarily at the banks and bankers that put together the big financing packages in the international market, which it records.
Britain has a highly developed trade press. The property world is served mainly by the long-established weekly Estates Gazette and by Property Week (formerly Chartered Surveyor Weekly). Accountancy spawns numerous publications, of which the monthly magazine Accountancy and the weekly free newspaper Accountancy Age are prominent.
Newsletters are a publishing market in themselves. Many sectors of the financial community are served by a range of specialist newsletters: taxation, accountancy and eurobond newsletters in particular. But in addition there is a range of stockmarket newsletters –tip sheets – promoting themselves directly to the general public.
Some stockmarket newsletters are established, well researched and reputable. But some are distinctly dubious, backed by claims of successful recommendations in the past which may fall down on detailed scrutiny. Promotional costs aside, the newsletter publishing business is cheap to get into – little more than a wordprocessor and a telephone is required – and it attracts its fair share of get-rich-quick merchants. You have been warned!
The warning we sounded on hard-copy newsletters applies with double force when we turn to the electronic pages. Nobody enforces editorial standards of truth or accuracy on the Internet as a whole, and there is a great deal of dangerous rubbish out there, particularly in the share-tipping department and among newsgroups and discussion groups. There are, however, some wonderful information resources as well. The Internet is, inevitably, heavily biased towards United States sources, but we are focusing here on sites with a particular UK relevance and generally concentrating on those that provide information free.
First, however, we should underline the warnings we sounded in the introduction to this book. Be a little cautious of sites that do not give the name and physical address of the organization that provides them. You may need this to assess the likely quality and reliability of the information on the site. Be doubly cautious, of course, in the case of a site offering a service such as broking or banking.
Always check the date on a document that you access and be careful when a date is not provided. Many organizations that have been keen to establish an Internet presence are a lot less punctilious about maintaining the site and updating or removing old material or publications. You may come across tax guides that refer to long-outdated tax rates and the like (even government departments do not always get this right!).
Finally, avoid being seduced by the speed and power of the Internet. Yes, it allows you to trade shares, commodities and the like with great ease. But the danger is that the whole thing comes to be regarded as some sort of computer game – it is all to easy to forget that you can lose real money, and very rapidly. This applies with particular force to practices such as ‘day trading’ – buying and selling stocks within a short space of time to take advantage of short-term price movements. If you are tempted, have a look at the warning from the Financial Services Authority first.
There are any number of headings under which you may classify the financial information available on the Internet. In addition, you may look at it from the point of view of the type of material or the type of provider. We have approached it initially from the point of view of the material itself. But before getting into the detail, there is a general point to be made. Chasing links round the World Wide Web for the information you want can be enormously time-consuming and frustrating. So there is a high premium on sites that, rather than providing a great deal of information themselves, offer links to the most useful sources.
There are a great number of these in the financial area. For a start, the main ‘portals’ such as Yahoo have financial and business sections that offer such links. But two sites that we have found particularly useful as jumping-off points in the context of UK finance and business are the site maintained by Sheila Webber at the University of Strathclyde and the site maintained by Peter Temple. The first may be found at www.dis.strath.ac.uk/business/ and the second at www.cix.co.uk/~ptemple/. The Strathclyde site has its own search facilities to find the kind of links you want, plus a certain amount of basic information on each of the sites to which it provides a link. However, it is concerned with business information, not with details of on-line banks or brokers, though it might point you to other sites that would have this information.
The Peter Temple site consists of a series of listings of websites under different categories, such as listed UK companies, major European companies, stockmarket price providers, markets themselves, brokers, personal finance sites and the like. It provides the link, but generally without further information. If you are not exactly sure what you are looking for, the Strathclyde site might be the best. If you know what you want, like the web address of a company or a broker, the Peter Temple site is probably the quickest way in. Both sites also have the virtue (at least at the time of writing) of freedom from the superfluous graphics, flashing advertisements and general clutter that make accessing many websites such a painful experience. Incidentally, if you want to get deeper into the question of investing or seeking business information via the web, Peter Temple is also the author of a comprehensive guide: The new online investor. Details of this book can be found on his website.
This comes in a number of forms. Most of the larger companies have their own websites (you can access them easily via the Peter Temple linksite). The quality varies quite a lot, but the better ones will provide you with a fair volume of background information and allow you to view or download recent profit or other announcements and press releases. You may also be able to download a full version of the latest report and accounts in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format, though this takes a fair time and can be heavy on telephone bills. If you are not in a rush, there is probably a cheaper way of getting hold of it. The CAROL site at www.carol.co.uk/ allows viewing of many company reports on-line while there is a Financial Times-linked service, accessible at www.annualreports.ft.com, where you may order a wide range of company reports for delivery free by post within a few days. Most individual company sites also provide an e-mail address which you could use to request a report by post. On the better company sites you will also find the latest share price and a recent share price history and the company may provide reports of functions such as recent briefings for stockbrokers’ analysts. These may come in a specific ‘investors’ section of the site which may also give a financial calendar – likely dates of the main profit announcements, dividend payment dates, date of the AGM, etc. – and details of the company’s main professional advisers. There may also be links to the websites of individual group businesses.
As well as information from the companies themselves there is the information about listed companies from other investment sites. Much of this is merely share price-related, but for people wanting to do more fundamental analysis, the Hemmington Scott site at www.hemscott.net/ is the essential starting point. It does, incidentally, have share prices as well. A great deal of free and reliable information on listed and AIM companies is available here, including key statistics, share price histories (you can get a share price chart going back as much as ten years), brokers’ forecasts of earnings and the like. Hemmington Scott now operates as a free Internet service provider (ISP) as well, and those who use it as their Internet access point are entitled to a range of additional information without payment. Others can access this additional information in return for a fee.
There is a whole range of sites providing information on latest share prices, and movements in stockmarket indices, currencies, etc. At the time of writing the usual pattern is that share prices that you may access free are delayed by a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes and you need to pay a subscription to access real-time prices. The delayed prices are usually adequate for most sensible private-investor needs – they are certainly a big advance on the previous day’s closing prices available in the morning newspaper. The Market-Eye Internet site at www.market-eye.co.uk/ is particularly worth a visit because you have the option of downloading a five-year run of company share prices or of a particular market index. You can then feed this information into a spreadsheet and manipulate it at will. Some sites, including personal finance sites, allow you to store details of your own portfolio and revalue it automatically when you want to.
Prices for personal savings products such as unit trusts or insurance bonds are available from a number of personal finance sites and in some cases comparative performance tables are also provided. Two ‘comprehensive’ sites which cover the stockmarket as well as personal finance are Interactive Investor International at www.iii.co.uk/ and Moneyextra (now incorporating Moneyworld) at www.moneyextra.com/. They offer a useful starting point for newcomers to the net as well as services for more seasoned users.
Stock exchanges and other types of financial market, at home and overseas, usually have their own websites. Some of these provide prices (the London Stock Exchange does not). They are usually designed more to provide information on the functioning of the market, its dealing methods, the types of company listed, how to contact a broker, and so on. The London Stock Exchange site is at www.londonstockexchange.com/, and other major exchanges are listed at the end of this chapter.
The main newspapers have websites with electronic versions of the news, including financial news sections. The Financial Times website at www.ft.com/ is, of course, almost exclusively devoted to financial and business news; most of the current and recent information is free, though at the time of writing you have to pay to view past articles more than a few months old. The FT’s separate personal finance website is at www.ftyourmoney.com/. The Daily Mail/Evening Standard newspaper group has a specific financial site at www.thisismoney.com/, which is devoted mainly to personal finance information, and the Guardian/Observer/Money Observer grouping also has a personal finance site at www.moneyunlimited.co.uk/. The main financial magazines also have a web presence. The Investors Chronicle’s site at www.investorschronicle.co.uk/ is useful primarily for a very detailed listing of stockbrokers and their charges and services, though at the time of writing the site is being extended. The major news agencies also provide financial news on-line as it breaks. Reuters is at www.reuters.com/news/ (select the ‘business’ option for international financial news). For coverage geared to the UK, Reuters stories can be found at uk.finance.yahoo.com/, along with a lot of other finance and business information. An alternative source of UK financial news is Bloomberg at www.bloomberg.com/uk/. Many other finance and investment sites, plus the ‘portal’ sites, have regular feeds of business news from one source or another.
There are two main types of information source on personal savings and loan products (in which we would include unit trusts, insurance bonds, ISAs, mortgages, pensions and the like, down to deposit rates available). There are the general personal-finance websites and there are the sites of individual vendors of savings products, such a insurance companies, fund managers and banks. If you go to the site of an individual vendor, remember that the vendor is pushing the merits of his own product. Check as well with one of the general personal finance sites that provides comparative information. The Association of Investment Trust Companies has its own site at www.aitc.co.uk/ where there is useful background material on investment trusts as a whole. Unit trusts are likewise catered for at the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds’ site at www.investmentfunds.org.uk/ and there is useful and user-friendly performance information on unit trusts and investment trusts at www.trustnet.co.uk/.
We have deliberately not included the web addresses of individual on-line stockbrokers or banks. Newcomers are joining their ranks so rapidly that it would quickly become out of date, and we would also be reluctant to seem to recommend particular firms or services. You may find lists and links on the Peter Temple website, as well as on personal finance and other sites such as those of Moneyextra or Interactive Investor International. And, as noted, the Investors Chronicle website provides details of brokers with information on the commission that they charge. Note that ‘on-line’ broking can mean different things to different firms – sending buy or sell orders by e-mail is not the same thing as being able to enter buy or sell orders direct over the Internet, for immediate execution.
Except for in-and-out market dealers, this is arguably the most valuable resource on the Internet. First, the general public can now access a whole range of information – press releases, background briefings, etc. – that was formerly available only to journalists and the like. Most organizations that run a press or information service now make their news items and press releases available to all at their website. These organizations include individual companies, markets and exchanges, professional firms such as accountants and surveyors (as well as their professional associations), regulatory bodies and government departments. In addition to news releases, many organizations offer a range of weightier publications that may be downloaded on the spot or ordered via e-mail. The range is much too vast to cover in detail here, but it falls into a number of categories.
First, there is educational material. Very basic guides to investment and to individual investment products are available from a range of sources: the personal finance websites, the unit trust and investment trust associations, the ProShare organization, the ‘Share-Aware’ section of the London Stock Exchange’s site, the Financial Services Authority and many others. The quality of the material varies and it is not always easy to find, but a little digging usually pays off. For example, there is a useful introduction to the gilt-edged market published as Gilts: An Investors Guide on the website of the UK Debt Management Office at www.dmo.gov.uk/. But you have to select ‘publications’ and then ‘other publications’ and trawl through a fairly long list to find it. And for an impartial description of ISAs you would not necessarily think of going to the website of the Treasury at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/ or that of the Financial Services Authority at www.fsa.gov.uk/. But both provide factual information on the structure of ISAs which may be a useful antidote to the more hyped-up approach of the ISA vendors. The Inland Revenue site at www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/ includes many brochures and other publications giving information or guidance on different aspects of the tax system, though be sure that anything you download reflects any recent changes.
Second, a great deal of statistical information is available, though again the range is too great to cover in detail here. You can download from the London Stock Exchange, for example, the monthly fact sheets on market activity, new issues, etc. And a range of financial and economic statistics is available from various government sites, though not quite as much as one might sometimes like (since long-run statistical information is sold commercially in a variety of publications, what you can get free may be limited to the data for recent months). There are, incidentally, two main routes into UK government sites. The CCTA Government Information Service at www.open.gov.uk/ provides an entry point into all other sites such as the Inland Revenue, the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry. Or each department has its individual address, which you can access direct.
Third, a great deal of technical information is available. This is more likely to be of interest to the professional or the serious student, though some has a wider application to business in general. The information on preparations for the euro on the Bank of England website at www.bankofengland.co.uk/ is a case in point. The precise details of the stock exchange’s regulatory arrangements, on the other hand, are clearly of importance to stock exchange firms but may be of limited interest to a wider public. However, they are on the website if you want them. Likewise, if you want precise details of the construction of the FTSE stockmarket indices, you can find them at the FTSE International site at www.ftse.com/. But they are not exactly bed-time reading.
Below is a listing of websites under different headings. Where a single site provides a range of different services, it may appear more than once. The list is in no way intended to be comprehensive, nor does inclusion imply a recommendation of the particular site. But by and large the sites listed are among those which have been accessed in the course of preparing this book for the fifth edition and which have appeared to offer something of interest or use.
Pointers to information sources
There are any number of these, but for links to useful websites you should try one of the two linksites that we have already mentioned.
Peter Temple Linksite |
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University of Strathclyde |
There are any number of sites offering delayed share prices (or real-time prices for a fee), including stockbroker sites and some portal sites. See the Peter Temple website for a more comprehensive list.
Freequotes |
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Hemmington Scott |
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Interactive Investor |
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Market-Eye |
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Moneyextra |
It is not difficult to find links to brokers and banks – the brokers’ ‘Trade now!’ advertisements are flashing up on many of the financial websites that you visit. You can get a list of Internet brokers from the Peter Temple website or the personal finance sites, and the Investors Chronicle site has comprehensive information on brokers.
This includes the main UK financial markets with websites and a selection of principal overseas sites. The main UK and US regulators are also included.
American Stock Exchange |
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Chicago Board of Trade |
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Chicago Board Options Exchange |
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CREST settlement system |
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EASDAQ |
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EUREX |
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Financial Services Authority |
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FTSE International (indices) |
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German Stock Exchanges (Frankfurt) |
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International Petroleum Exchange |
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LIFFE |
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Lloyd’s of London |
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London Metal Exchange |
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London Stock Exchange |
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NASDAQ |
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New York Mercantile Exchange |
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New York Stock Exchange |
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OFEX |
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Paris Stock Exchange |
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Securities and Exchange Commission |
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SETS (London trading system) |
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Tokyo Stock Exchange |
Fundamental information on companies is not as easy to find as share-price information. Aside from companies’ own websites, the Hemmington Scott site is the essential starting point. Some company research is available on other sites, though not always free, and stockbroker sites may provide research for their clients. Commercial property performance information is available on the Investment Property Databank site.
Carol (company reports on-line) |
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Companies House |
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Extel Survey of Brokers’ Analysts |
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Financial Times |
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FT reports service |
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Hemmington Scott |
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IPD (commercial property performance) |
There are many sites in this area, ranging from sites that cover all aspects of savings and personal finance (probably including shares) to those specializing in fund performance like Trustnet, Lipper and Micropal. The addresses below are just a selection.
AAA Investment Guide |
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Association of Investment Trust Companies |
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Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds |
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FT Your Money |
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Guardian/Observer/Money Observer |
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Interactive Investor |
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Lipper (Reuters) |
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Micropal (Standard & Poor’s) |
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Moneynet |
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Moneyweb |
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Moneyextra |
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This is Money |
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TrustNet |
Basic news supplied by the electronic versions of the main newspaper sites is usually free, though you may need to register to gain access
BBC |
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Bloomberg |
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Daily Express |
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Economist |
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Euromoney |
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Financial Times |
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FT personal finance |
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Guardian and Observer |
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Guardian/Observer personal finance |
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Independent |
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Investors Chronicle |
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Mail/Standard personal finance site |
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Reuters |
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Sunday Times |
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Telegraph |
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Times |
For the absolute basics of investment, start with the ProShare site and for a few timely cautions, plus other educational material, look at the Financial Services Authority’s offering. There’s information on personal-finance products from a variety of sites including the unit trust and investment trust association sites and the general personal finance sites. For booklets on different aspects of taxation, go to the Inland Revenue site.
AAA Investment Guide |
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Association of Investment Trust Companies |
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Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds |
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Bank of England |
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Debt Management Office (on gilts) |
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Department of Trade and Industry |
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Financial Services Authority |
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FT annual reports service |
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FT Your Money |
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Inland Revenue |
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Interactive Investor |
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Kauders Portfolio Management (on gilts) |
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London Stock Exchange |
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London Stock Exchange (investors) |
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Moneyweb |
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MoneyWorld |
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ProShare |
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Securities and Exchange Commission (USA) |
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Treasury |
UK government departments may be accessed via the CCTA Government Information Service site or you may use the web address of the individual department. Also included here are addresses of a few major European and international bodies.
Accounting Standards Board |
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Bank of England |
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British Invisibles |
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Business Link |
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Central Office of Information |
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City of London |
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Companies House |
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Competition Commission |
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Data Protection Registry |
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Debt Management Office |
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Department of Trade and Industry |
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Enterprise Zone |
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Euro (get ready for) |
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European Bank for Reconstruction and Development |
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European Business Register |
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European Central Bank |
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European Commission |
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European Commission euro information |
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Eurostat |
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Financial Reporting Council |
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Financial Reporting Review Panel |
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Financial Services Authority |
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Inland Revenue |
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International Monetary Fund |
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Office of Fair Trading |
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Organisation for Economic Co-operation |
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Serious Fraud Office |
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Treasury |
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UK official statistics |
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World Bank |
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World Trade Organization |
Some of the professional association sites are geared more to members than to the public, but may still provide useful information
Association of British Insurers |
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Association of Consulting Actuaries |
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Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds |
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British Bankers Association |
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British Venture Capital Association |
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Building Societies Association |
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Chartered Institute of Bankers |
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Chartered Insurance Institute |
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Confederation of British Industry |
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Corporate governance (institutions’ site) |
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Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW) |
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Institute of Directors |
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International Securities Market Association |
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National Association of Pension Funds |
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RICS Investment Property Forum |
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Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors |
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Trades Union Congress |