MorningStar (only allows 2 users at a time):  Click on the Industries link under the Industries category (see screen shot).  This takes you into an alphabetical listing of industries.  Scroll down until you find the REITS link.   Voila!

Value Line Research Center (only allows 6 users at a time): Left-hand navigation bar- click “Standard Edition”.  Go down to the “Look Up Industry” box and hover your mouse until the entire box turns dark grey and click (see screen shot).  Scroll down the alphabetical industry list until you find the R.E.I.T. link.  

Note: The PDF next to the REIT link provides ValueLine’s overall assessment of that industry.  Once you click the REIT link, you are taken into a listing of companies… Another NOTE- the pdf and html pages next to the each company’s name contain some overlapping but some different info.  It pays to look at both.

Mergent Online (only allows 15 users at a time):  Click the “Enter Mergent Online” tab on the left side.

In the Classification box in the center of the page, select “Prim. NAICS” and enter 531 into the search box.  This basically takes you into a listing of companies in the Real Estate industry.

Let me know if you find any other resources or if I need to add anything else to this entry!

Here’s the report: Guide to Green and Socially Responsible Investing

Enjoy!

SWAT- killing flies.

Totally not related.  Once again, I’m just trying to get your attention.  If you need to find a SWOT analysis on a company, use the TCU database, Business Source Complete. 

Here’s the quickest way to find a SWOT analysis in that database:  Type the ticker symbol of your company in the first search box and select “TK Ticker Symbol” from the drop down box.  In the next box, type: swot  (double click on image to see an example)

SWOT search example

Morningstar Report:  wheretoinvest09

Here’s a link into the database CQ Researcher with a synopsis of what has occurred- very brief, easy to read.

Here’s a link to the bill that is currently in legislation.

Here are some quick, initial things to think about as you begin your research:

• Is the company public or private?  (hint: it is more difficult to find information on a private company)
• Is the company a subsidiary? (if so, financial information is typically reported under the parent company)
• What is the “official” name of the company? ex. Target Corporation, Ford Motor Company, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., etc.  (some databases won’t pull up information on the company unless you have typed in the “official name”)
• What is the address of the company’s headquarters?  (some databases list financial information on local units or franchisees OR 2 companies have similar names: either way, an address helps to verify that you are looking at the correct company)
• If it is a public company, what is the ticker symbol?  (some databases allow you to search by ticker symbol, and honestly, this is the fastest, easiest way to search)

I like to start my company research in Hoover’s Online because 1) the database is forgiving when it comes to the “spelling” of the companies name (i.e., I don’t have to type in the “official name” to get results) 2) the database easily answers all the questions posed above, and 3) I can get quite a bit of information from Hoovers including financial data, competitive landscape, biographies on key personnel, news, products, etc.

Next research post: I’ll talk about some useful TCU databases for researching public companies.

1.  If you go to the website, www.hoovers.com you will be able to get some information from the site; however, at some point, it will ask you for your credit card # in order to obtain the information you want. 

2. If you go into Hoover’s Online through the library’s databases, the TCU library has already paid for a deeper level of information than what you can get through the Hoovers.com website. 

Who wins the smackdown?  TCU library, of course.  Same Hoovers site, but MORE information!

If you want to read some of the articles about the survey, go to the TCU database, Factiva and complete the following steps (or take a look at the screen shot below):

1. Expand the ‘Source’ box by clicking on the + sign.  Click on ‘Group: WSJ Publications’ so that it appears as a pink link at the top of the source box.

2. In the drop down box next to ‘Date’, choose ‘enter date range’ and then enter 04/14/2008 in both boxes.

3.  In the free text box type “ceo compensation survey” (hint: be sure to use the quotation marks)

This should pull up approximately 8 articles to read. (double click on the image to enlarge it.)