HOW TO GET INVESTMENT INFORMATION
(Over 20 years investing experience in Nigeria’s financial markets)
To be a successful investor, one needs to gather information that will aid our investment decisions. Investment in real estate, stocks and businesses require knowledge and information. Lack of adequate information can make an investor lose money. Listed below are some of the sources whereby an investor can get investment information.
1. Newspaper: Most newspapers have sections that are devoted for business and financial news, good investment decisions can be from the news derived from this section. News about plans to construct roads and other infrastructure in an area is good news to real estate investor; news about the ban of certain products is also good information for investors who are willing to produce the banned goods. Almost all the newspapers have columns where they give daily summary of transactions on the stock exchange. Beside quarterly financial reports of quoted companies are regularly published by newspapers.
2. Investment advisers: These include your stockbroker, lawyer, banker etc. The stockbrokers are the people that buy and sell shares of companies on behalf of their clients. Useful information can be obtained from an informed stockbroker. An experience lawyer can detect encumbrance in a business deal, this will save an investor both money and time. All businesses and investments are regulated by the laws of the land; this makes a lawyer with experience in business transactions a good source of investment information.
Your bank is not just there for one to deposit and with money. A banker should be a good source of information for financing options for investment and business deals.
3. Insider information: Useful information can be obtained from people working in the companies you intend to buy their shares, government officials in certain parastatals and ministries can also be a source of inside information.
A retired lawyer with about forty houses in choice areas of Lagos made good use the inside information he got during his working days from the officials of the Ministries of Land and Urban Planning. With this information, he was able to buy cheap plots of land which have turned to goldmine within thirty years.
4. Personal research: Apart from relying on the information from the newspaper, investment advisers and insiders, an investor also needs to do thorough personal research on the assets, companies and ventures they want to invest in.
The investor also needs to have an investor eye and the ability to make good use of the information at his disposal.
5. Internet: The resources that the big boys and Institutional investors were using to gather investment information and make investment decisions are now available for everyone via the internet. It is now very easy for every investor to get investment information, but it appears that the more information at the disposal of investors the more confused and helpless they become. Investors should equip themselves with the knowledge of how to make good use of the barrage of information at their disposal.
Information is key in making good investment decisions. It equips one with the necessary knowledge to maximize returns and minimize risk.
Mr Ewumi has done a good and selfless job with this article.
More wind to your sail.