US company web sites are by far the most useful source of information on American companies, although clearly investors should view any PR material on these sites with the appropriate amount of scepticism.
Finding corporate web site addresses is generally fairly easy. Either input the company name into a search engine such as Google (www.google.com) - this will usually throw up the correct web address to visit - or go to a site that has an indexed set of links to a large number of corporate sites.
Examples of sites like this are those of the main stock exchanges (www.nyse.com and www.nasdaq.com ), those of index providers such as FTSE International (www.ftse.com) and Dow Jones (www.djindexes.com) . Linksitecorporate (www.linksitecorporate.com ) has a list of direct links to the corporate web sites of Dow Jones 30 share index and the top 100 NASDAQ listed companies.
Company websites in the US generally have a wealth of information on the company concerned. Information available online typically includes:
Some sites provide more information. Some, for example, contain details of analyst coverage of the company in question and links to the individual analysts themselves.
As noted above, though print documents are mostly available, some companies only provide access to their annual reports in cyberspace, especially if you are not already a shareholder and you reside outside the US.
Nonetheless, the range of information that is available makes a visit to a company sites a pre-requisite to making an investment in the stock of the company in question.
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