News Driven Research and Due Diligence Software
Maintaining a professional due diligence effort is difficult work. Even dedicated full-time independent investors find it difficult to follow more than a half-dozen companies over a long period of time with a high degree of competence. But what if the most difficult and time-consuming barriers were removed?
New Diligence is a specialized search enginge and due diligence tool for traders and investors. It enables you to follow a larger number of stocks with a greater degree of competence than you could otherwise achieve. The New Diligence software finds news on the companies you follow and allows you to store, edit, and maintain detailed trading and research notes on those companies.
Collective Stock’s New Diligence software:
- Acts as a search engine or News Finder for stocks that you wish to follow – the stocks are managed on a single list or by categories.
- Provides a Quick Check feature that allows you to perform a query on stocks that get your attention – great for stocks that are “in play”
- Provides a Research and due diligence database that allows you to track a companies development, record significant events, provide your own analytical notes and even publish a small but useful research report.
The News Finder
When the program loads for the first time, it will place a small list of symbols (CROX, SBUX, AMZN, SPNG.OB, FUQI, STP) in a memo on the Finder page. Simply replace those loaded symbols with the symbols that you wish to follow instead. When you click the “Check For Stories” button, the program’s search engine retrieves news headlines for review. If your are interested in investigating a story, simply double-click on the headline itself, and the program will retrieve the story into your browser.
The “Just Today’s Stories” option is checked by default, the assumption is that you are using the software to follow the news each day so you do not want to sift through older stories. But if you wish to see stories that might have occurred the prior day, just uncheck the “Just Today’s Stories” option.
Symbol Lists
The Symbol List capability allows you to demarcate and manage different lists. If you would like to follow swine flu stocks, or perhaps coal mining stocks or airlines, you simply create an entry for each category and list the stocks you wish to follow. Use the “Check News” button to retrieve stories.
Quick Check
The Quick Check allows you to quickly type in a symbol and examine some basic information. When I see unusual price movement, or perhaps see an alert in the chat room, I will enter the symbol and hit Enter or hit the Quick Check button. If there is news, I quickly retrieve it. Sometimes I decide that I want to follow that company longer term and I use the “Add to Daily List” button and the program adds it to my daily watch list. This is a good way to grow the list of stocks in your playing universe. If you wish to create some due diligence or research notes for that stock, click the “Add To Tracking” button and some basic information is transferred to the Due Diligence data base that is part of the Tracking feature.
Research
Trading is a very information intensive activity. It was my personal experience that I would make a mental note about a company, “Buy this stock if it gets a credit amendment” or “Buy this stock if it announces customer diversification” only to forget about that company and the event. Weeks or months later, as the note faded from my memory, I would often miss the triggering event and the play. So I wrote the Research or due diligence feature as a way to manage developing trades. By staying current with breaking news stories and recording my own event analysis I am able to follow companies while the trade develops. Trades like CTIC and RTK were managed in a tracking utility. I learned RTK’s “story” and recorded it. When the stock would dip into the .4Xs I would buy a bit, and when the news about commercial airline approval broke, I was able to take quick advantage of it because I knew how that news fit into the trade and what it meant for the company.
Download the software here. Questions, suggestions and support here.
Note well: The 0.9 version of the software that is currently available may be subject to change in the near future. Whenever possible, I will provide a utility to carry your work forward. Please contact me if you would like to publish your Research notes here at Collective Stock.