The SF Chron has a list of seven good, lesser-known sites for online investing advice and info.

Invest in Value: Benjamin Graham, considered by many to be the architect of fundamental analysis, coined the term “intrinsic value,” which he defined as the present value of a company’s expected future cash flows. He then looked for stocks trading at a discount to their intrinsic value, which he termed the “margin of safety.”

The bigger the margin of safety, the better. Invest in Value ( www.investinvalue.com) calculates the margin of safety for most stocks. You can use it two ways. Either enter a ticker to see the margin of safety for a stock that you pick, or use the screener to see a list of high-margin-of-safety stocks.

TickerSpy: Have you ever puzzled over a stock’s big up or down move that’s seemingly without reason? Usually such a move is triggered by a news report or analyst upgrade or downgrade that you didn’t see. You can usually find the news or analysts rating changes that you missed on TickerSpy ( www.tickerspy.com). The site depends on its users to post links to relevant stories about each stock. Surprisingly, that strategy works. TickerSpy doesn’t replace Yahoo, my favorite source for news headlines about my stocks, but it’s good for filling in the gaps.

321energy: As we’ve seen in recent months, energy prices affect everything. Successful investing requires staying up to date on this critical topic. 321energy ( www.321energy.com) is a great resource for keeping up with news and views about the energy sector. The site displays recent headlines divided into these categories: oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar & wind, and gasoline.

321energy displays the seven most recent headlines for each category on its home page and maintains a news archive for each category going back around three weeks. The site’s daily Energy Report is an interesting read, giving you a bigger perspective on energy issues.

GEO Investing: China, obviously, is a hotbed of economic activity. Unfortunately, by the time we find out about a Chinese stock trading on U.S. exchanges, it’s often too late to join the party. That’s where GEO Investing ( www.geoinvesting.com) can help.

According to GEO, most publicly traded Chinese companies get listed on U.S. exchanges via reverse mergers with existing U.S. listed nonoperating shell companies. In other words, the Chinese firm avoids the lengthy IPO process by taking over a U.S. company that is already listed, but has no real business, and begins trading using the U.S. ticker symbol.

While that sounds gimmicky, several successful U.S. firms such as Acclaim Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting went public via that route. GEO, in its Shell Activity section, lists Chinese stocks with in-process or recently completed reverse mergers. I looked into a few of them, and some sounded interesting. I’m not suggesting that you buy them now. Instead, put them on your watch list and track their progress.

Investor Ideas: Say you want to invest in stocks involved in the wireless industry but you don’t know where to start. Investor Ideas ( www.investorideas.com) maintains amazingly comprehensive lists of stocks in a variety of industries including homeland security, renewable energy, natural gas, coal, gaming, food and beverage, and many more. The site doesn’t just list the stocks; it includes a paragraph describing each firm’s business. Many of the stocks listed are tiny firms that are too risky for most investors. Nevertheless, it’s a good place to start your research.

Big Charts: This isn’t new, but it’s been a long time since I’ve mentioned Big Charts, my favorite site for stock price charts. True, you can see charts on almost any financial site, but Big Charts is the only site I know of where you can add historical price/earnings ratios and dividends to the chart.

From the Big Charts home page ( www.bigcharts.com), enter your stock’s ticker symbol and select Interactive Charts. Then click on Indicators and select P/E Ratio and or Rolling Dividend from the Lower Indicator list. The term “rolling dividend” is confusing. The chart shows the actual quarterly dividends going back to 1970.

Read More