Investing for Dummies, 4th UK Edition

Chapter 21

Ten Tips for Fact-Finding

In This Chapter

Using your eyes and ears

Searching the Internet

Analysing tipsheets

Examining media coverage

The Rothschilds’ financial fortune and banking empire was founded, so it is said, on the family receiving news before all others of the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington (yes, the British did get some help from the Prussian army). The Rothschilds had organised a series of messengers and carrier pigeons so that they’d know the outcome first.

The stock markets of the time believed the French would win and priced investments accordingly. But because the Rothschilds knew the real result first – that the opposite outcome had occurred – they were able to take big financial bets against the markets and make the early 19th century equivalent of billions.

Now, as then, investment markets revolve around information. If your information is quicker, more accurate and better understood than that of others, you’ll prosper. So this chapter explains how to build your own personal information bank. The Internet, the media and ever-increasing ...