Chapter 6: Where Warren goes to find financial information

In the modern age of the Internet there are dozens of places where one can easily find a company’s financial statements. The easiest access is through either MSN. com (http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp) or Yahoo’s Finance web page (www.finance.yahoo.com).

We use both, but Microsoft Network’s MSN.com has more detailed financial statements. To begin, find where you type in the symbol for the stock quotes on both sites, then type in the name of the company. Click it when it pops up, and both MSN and Yahoo! Will take you to that company’s stock quote page. On the left you’ll find a heading called “Finance,” under which are three hyperlinks that take you to the company’s balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow. Above that, under the heading “SEC,” is a hyperlink to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). All publicly traded companies must file quarterly financial statements with the SEC; these are known as 8Qs. Also filed with the SEC is a document called the 10K, which is the company’s annual report. It contains the financial statements for the company’s accounting or fiscal year. Warren has read thousands of 10Ks over the years, as they do the best job of reporting the numbers without all the fluff that can get stuffed into a shareholders’ annual report.

For the hard-core investor Bloomberg.com offers the same services and a lot more, for a fee. But honestly, unless we are buying and selling bonds or currencies, we can get all the financial information we need to build a stock portfolio for free from MSN and Yahoo! And “free” financial information always makes us smile!