Morningstar stock reports are free today and tomorrow

Posted at 13:46 on Tuesday October 31, 2006 | Filed Under Investing

From another blog I read, Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:

The purpose of this email is to let you know that we are making our 1,800 stock research reports available for free to all users visiting our investment web site, Morningstar.com, for the next two days: Tuesday 10/31 & Wednesday 11/1.
I thought your readers might be interested in our stock research open house. It is a great opportunity for them to get our buy/sell opinions on 1,800 companies for free. Please note that users will need to register with our site before they can access our stock research.

I read these investing reports on the toilet--as entertainment. Now you can go behind the curtain and see that there aren't any secrets to investing, and that high-priced research doesn't mean higher ROI.

As Warren Bufett noted,

"Almost everything we learn is from public documents.... We do not find it particularly helpful to talk to managements.... The numbers tell us a lot more than the managements. We don't give a hoot about anyone's projections. We don't want even want to hear about it."
He had even greater scorn for analysts: "I don't read any analyst reports. If I read one, it's because the funny pages weren't available. I don't know why anyone does it."

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Comments (4)

1.: In contrast to your post, I find Morningstar to be incredibly helpful. I am not a financial analyst. Their 5 star rating for stocks (way different for funds) has worked out pretty well for me. My portfolio of 21 individual stocks and 1 mutual fund is up 5.59% since mid-February. This is primarily due to 5 stocks that are way down, but on the flip side I have 12 that are above 10% gains (5 above 20% and 1 at 42%). I picked all of my stocks based off of M*'s research. I don't rely solely on it, but it does help identify some values and gives an estimate of fair value that has seemed pretty accurate to me so far.

I don't want to risk calling it a 'hobby', but I am interested in investing in general, so the $135/year membership fee works out to $11.25/month.

Granted, you can get a lot of the information out on the internet, but having one consolidated place that offers a pretty good analysis of the stock has been awesome for me. They are also more oriented on the value side versus the growth side, which is in line with my investment strategy as well.

Just my 2 cents.

Posted by KMulligan at October 31, 2006 07:24 PM

2.: The analyst reports also burden you with an information overload. And it pressurizes your thinking, taking you away from enjoying the process of investing.

I wd think that one should start with looking for the right questions first and then look for answers. Instead of a template based analyst report.

Posted by Ranjan at October 31, 2006 11:49 PM

3.: I've been wondering about your bathroom reading habits. Thanks for sharing. :)

Posted by reid at November 1, 2006 04:58 AM

4.: I haven't looked at a Morningstar report since they dissuaded me from buying CRXL at 6 a share a few years ago.
Its gone up to like $24 since then.

Posted by alfredo gomez at November 1, 2006 04:23 PM

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