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!

Wanting an investment overview of Bangladesh?  Try the TCU database, CountryWatch.  Click on the “Country Reviews” tab at the top.  It also has lots of good stuff: Political overviews, Economic Overviews, Envrionmental Overviews, etc.

There is some overlap between the two databases, but there are also many unique features.

Wanting more?  Try Country Commercial Guides located in our database, StatUSA.  After entering the database, click on StatUSA again, and then Globus & NTDB, then scroll down to the link into Country Commercial Guides. 

Country Commerical Guides contain info such as, market conditions, best export sectors, trade regulations, marketing strategies, services for exporters, etc.  It’s our government’s attempt to help business exports/imports.

Useful (and reliable) websites include:  www.buyusa.gov

www.cia.gov - click on the World Factbook link on the right side of the page

http://www.site-by-site.com/  An international investment portal

http://globaledge.msu.edu/  a portal to learning resources on global business activities

http://www.doingbusiness.org/downloads/  business regulations and enforcement information

Check out the country tag and the international tag in my delicious account for more!

http://www.iii.org/financial2/

It is the Financial Services Fact Book, and the website provides information on the financial services industry including insurance, banking, mortgage, securities, and finance.  I’ll provide a smattering of some of the data they provide:  Mergers, Leading Companies, Educational Plans and Loans, National Savings, IT spendings, World Rankings, and Demographics. 

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Report Sections:

• Setting a Budget (and Sticking to It!)
• How to Set Up an Emergency Fund
• A New Financial You in 30 Days
• Closing the Gap on the Wage Divide
• Advice for the Soon-to-Be-Divorced
• What to Do When You’re Widowed
• Taking Care of Your Parents
• Six Money Tips for Part-Time Workers
• Where to Turn for Emergency Cash

Here is the report: The Woman’s Guide to Money Matters

I would look in the following TCU databases (keep in mind that some of these databases have limits on the # of simultaneous users, so if a non-TCU password screen pops up, just wait and try again later):

Business Source Complete, EconLit, General Business File ASAP, Promt, Business Reference Suite (2 users), and Factiva (5 users). 

Here is how I would structure my basic search if you have multiple boxes on the page:

Box 1: iasb OR “international accounting standards board”

Box 2: fasb OR “financial accounting standards board”

Box 3: differences

In box 3, you may need to replace the word ‘differences’ with a keyword from some of the other criteria for your assignment (someone needs to post the questions being asked for me to give better suggestions here- my feeble mind cannot recall the entire assignment from my one glance at it).  In some databases, you need to NOT use the word differences in order to get results.  Try some variations and don’t give up on the first attempt.

If the database has a single search box, construct your search like this:

(iasb OR “international accounting standards board”) AND (fasb OR “financial accounting standards board”) AND differences

Good luck!

Someone sent me the assignment- yeah!  Here are some more suggestions for searches. 

• I am numbering my searches to match your assignment 
• I will put the search in black and any personal commentary/explanations in blue
• I will structure the searches as if I had one search box on the database page (if you have multiple boxes, put the items in parenthesis in a single box, together) 
• Feel free to post your own suggestions for classmates in the comments
• Same databases mentioned above.

1. (ifrs OR “international financial reporting standards”) AND (advent OR history OR emergence OR development)  You may want to delete the word, development, from your search since it will pull up lots of articles talking about the effects of IFRS on business development.  Play around with it.

2. (ifrs OR “international financial reporting standards”) AND politic*  The * symbol tells the search engine to look for all the variations that could be added to the end of the word (ex. politics, political, etc.)

3.  I think my original suggestions pertain to this (see above this added section)

4. (ifrs OR “international financial reporting standards”) AND (benefit* OR cost* OR pro)  Pro, because some databases will have articles that talk about the pros & cons of IFRS  (try truncating it also (i.e., adding the * symbolel- pro*)

5. (ifrs OR “international financial reporting standards”) AND “early adopt*”  If you don’t get anything back putting “early adopt*” in quotations, take out the quotation marks and try just the word, adopt*.  Or, you can try early AND adopt*

“If you go to the Help and Education page of Morningstar Investment Research Center, you will find our Investing Classroom. There are courses on stocks, mutual funds, and portfolio analysis. The nice thing about Investing Classroom is that it can help anyone–from the novice to the expert. You will find course levels ranging from basic terms at the 100 level to derivatives and contemporary theories at the 500 level.”

Just click on the Help and Education tab.  Remember, our database only allows 2 simultaneous users, so if you get a strange (i.e., non-TCU) password screen, wait a few minutes and try again.

Double click the screen shot below for an indication of what you will find:

• Go to the TCU database, Factiva   (note: this database only allows 5 users at a time, so if a nonTCU password screen pops up, that means that 5 people are currently using the database, and you’ll have to try later- wait 10-15 minutes) (I’m taking a breath now!)
• Note: You may just want to double click the image below vs. reading all this verbage!
• Type your search in the search box
• Make sure the date range works for your needs
• Click the “Source” plus sign
• Click on the “Group: WSJ Publications” link (this should make it show up in pink above the Source search box)
• Click “Run Search”
• DONE!

The pdf is lengthy, but it contains several reports (I am paraphrasing BLS’ descriptions of each report below):

• The births and deaths of business establishments in the United States- Basically a report that discusses the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) attempt to better measure business start-ups and failures (as an indication of entrepreneurship).  The bonus is that they provide lots of statistics on this topic.
• Expenditure patterns of young single adults: two recent generations compared- A report comparing the spending habits of “young, never-married adults in 2004-05 and their counterparts in 1984-85.”
• Business Processes and Business Functions: a new way of looking at employment- BLS created a new classification system and combined it with their Mass Layoff Statistics to gain a new perspective on employment.
• Service-providing occupations, offshoring, and the labor market- An analysis of service-providing occupations’ susceptbility to offshoring.

The Monthy Labor Report is produced by the U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics.  I am linking you to the December 2008 report.

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

Enjoy!

Morningstar Report:  wheretoinvest09