Business Research Sources -ch 6: Barron´s

6. The Wall Street Journal

Recommended Supplement: Barron´s

Barron´s ([800] 628-9320), a sister publication to The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company in 1921. Written exclusively for investors, it is one of the best-known business periodicals in the United States. It is known for its detailed financial tables. For example, the "Market Week" Section contains 55 pages of securities quotations. It is also known for investment articles that often take a contrarian stand.

The tables in Barron´s also list prices for every security, whether traded the previous week or not. At first glance one can see that the tables are easier to read than those in the WSJ; larger print and more spacing create listings that are much less cramped. Also, the stock tables give slightly more data than standard listings, showing more complete information on dividends and corporate earnings.

The "Market Laboratory" section provides summary measures of security performance similar to the WSJ's "Data Bank," but in more complete fashion. It is considered, according to Michael Lavin, to be the most convenient form of comprehensive market information available on a weekly basis and offers the most diverse compilation of market indicators of any investment publication.

No other information company in the world can match Dow Jones at business news and coverage of financial markets-whether by newspaper or news wire, in magazines or on television, on the Internet or real-time networks. Just as innovation is crucial to the business community, it's also central to Dow Jones. Dow Jones keeps coming up with new ways to deliver its product; it has more than 1,000 reporters and editors around the globe focusing on the most authoritative business news and information, in new forms, times, and places. Every business day, for example, the global Wall Street Journal reaches over 7 million executives in more than 125 countries. For more information on what Dow Jones is up to, visit the Dow Jones home page at http://www.dowjones.com or e-mail to jan.abernathy@cor.dowjones.com.

Having said all that, one should also be aware of another useful source called Investor's Business Daily (ISSN 1061-2890) published by Investor's Business Daily, Inc. ([800] 831-2525). It was created "For People Who Choose To Succeed," just in case you were ambivalent about whether to purchase the newspaper. The daily newspaper (except Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays) was launched as an alternative to the WSJ. According to Lavin, Investor's Business Daily eschews the lengthy, wide-ranging articles that are the hallmark of the WSJ and concentrates on investment information. The articles are brief, emphasizing news of public companies, economic conditions, and market behavior. The great strength of Investor's Business Daily is the quality of its financial tables; its strength, however, may also be its weakness since most of the pages are devoted to financial tables and should not be considered as a replacement to the WSJ as the primary source of business news. Investor's Business Daily is an excellent source of additional information, and presents numerous articles analyzing companies, industries, and political issues. For example, "Is the U.S. Importing Poverty?" by Anna J. Bray is replete with useful statistical information about the economic impact of this issue and does not get involved in debating the human interest and political dilemmas.

To assist readers in locating articles of interest, a weekly "Index of Investor's Business Daily Features" appears on Fridays. This column provides an alphabetical index to the companies and industries covered in special articles during the prior three months. The complete text of Investor's Business Daily is also available electronically through LEXIS-NEXIS. The table of contents includes:

Amex Tables	Classifieds	Companies/News
Computers & Tech.	Credit Markets	Dividends
Earnings	Futures	Industry Groups
Market Charts	Mutual Funds	Nasdaq Short Interest
Nasdaq Small Caps	Nasdaq Tables	New America
New Highs & Lows	New Issues	NYSE Tables
Options	World Markets

Something to Do

According to Michael Lehmann (Real World Economic Applications: The Wall Street Journal Workbook), economists have never agreed on a single economic indicator to predict the future. Some indicators are better than others, he says, but none is consistently accurate. To deal with this, economists have devised a composite of statistical series drawn from a broad spectrum of economic activity, each of which tends to move up or down ahead of the general trend of the business cycle. These series are referred to as leading indicators because of their predictive quality. Eleven have been combined into the composite index of leading economic indicators. The series usually appears around the first of the month. Try locating it and reviewing it.