Investment Research On the Internet, CNNfn

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNNfn ANCHOR, YOUR MONEY: If you`ve got the $5,000 we talked about to begin investing, it`s a good idea to do a little research. One easy place to get information for free, of course, is the Internet.

Scott Hanson (ph) joins us now from Sacramento. He is a certified financial

Scott, how are you doing?

SCOTT HANSON, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER, HANSON MCCLAIN: I`m doing great. Good to be here, Allan.

CHERNOFF: Excellent. Well, Scott, let`s go surfing. How about that? Even though you`re a little landlocked over there in Sacramento.

HANSON: Yes, you`re right.

CHERNOFF: Where would you suggest we begin our surf?

HANSON: I tell you, Allan, there are so many good Web sites. I used to pay thousands of dollars a month for some satellite feeds, and then years ago I had a satellite go down for a couple days and had to search the Web. I found such good Web sites, I quit my service.

Most of the information I get is right on the Web. It`s available to the public just for the looking.

And I think one of the best places for an individual investor, and particularly someone starting out, is at Morningstar.com. Now, Morningstar is a company that started years ago to do information about mutual funds and give us research about mutual funds, and they`ve expanded it in a broader array of stuff. But they`ve got a great education center, and a Morningstar`s education center, you can get all kinds of things.

They`ve got virtual classrooms, they`ve got seminars, they`ve got workshops, they`ve got information about 401(K)s, about mortgages. They`ve calculators. I mean, you name it, they`ve got it at Morningstar.com.

CHERNOFF: And this is all for free.

HANSON: It`s all for free. They ask you (UNINTELLIGIBLE), go a little deep, and they want you to register, but they`re not going to charge you anything. Now, some of the services that they provide, you`ll have to start paying for real in-depth analysis. But for the typical investor, the free stuff`s going to get you. I`m pretty cheap. Most of the stuff I get on the Web is for free.

CHERNOFF: Very well, OK. And Morningstar, I mean, as you`ve mentioned, they`re really known for mutual funds. But you`re saying it`s not just funds.

HANSON: No, Morningstar is actually changing quite a bit. They not -- they do research now for stocks, they provide a great deal of information. They`re starting to get into the area where they`re going to help people manage their 401(K)s, charge them some sort of fee. So they`re really branching out in a lot of areas.

And the thing I like about Morningstar, as opposed to maybe some fund companies, is that they really don`t have a vested interest in trying to sell you something. So sometimes if you`re on a particular mutual funds Web site or a brokerage firm`s well, Web site, there might be a bit of a bias there. And Morningstar tends not to have that bias.

CHERNOFF: OK. Although we should point out they did have a little bit of hot water recently. Morningstar was cited for not updating the performance of a certain mutual fund rapidly enough?

HANSON: You know, I kind of thought they got the bum rap. I mean, the regulators are after everybody right now, so if someone hasn`t gotten bit, they have, they`re not going enough business, probably.

CHERNOFF: OK. Well...

HANSON: A second good Web site is Yahoo`s got their personal finance, the Finance.yahoo.com. And this is where I get my stock quotes throughout the day. If I need a little more information, I might go elsewhere. But Yahoo`s fantastic with that. And Yahoo`s got some -- a personal finance section that`s got everything there.

And if you want to learn about how bonds and how bonds work or about how stocks work, I found that the typical investor, even if they might have several hundred thousands of dollars, they -- a lot of people don`t really understand the difference between a stock and a bond. On a Web site like that, you can get that kind of information and really understand what`s going on.

CHERNOFF: It`s also a pretty good place for news about individual stocks.

HANSON: It`s out there all the time. Matter of fact, if you have that and then refresh it throughout the day, you`re going to have any big news will be out there. And if you want to dig deeper on a particular company, I mean, it`s amazing how much information you can get on a particular company for free at Yahoo`s finance Web site.

CHERNOFF: Yes, looked from our video too like it`s a good place to learn about pumpkins as well.

HANSON: Well, there`s all kinds of stuff on there. But I don`t know how good of an investment pumpkins will be unless you can get the really big suckers, but...

CHERNOFF: Yes, oversupply, I would imagine. All right. You`ve got one more to tell us about, Sharebuilder?

HANSON: Yes, this -- Sharebuilder.com. And a lot of individual investors, you know, it`s tough for an individual investor who`s starting out with a small amount to get any professional advice, because a lot of advisers will have $100,000 account minimums, or a broker`s, and usually the people that are going to be taking the time to meet with someone over $5,000 or $10,000, they don`t have a lot of other business going on, quite frankly.

So it`s very challenging for the individual investor to get start. And for someone who wants to buy individual stocks of companies and diversify their portfolio, Sharebuilder.com is probably one of the best places to do it. On there, you can pick out which companies you want to buy, and you could have a monthly allotment. Maybe you want to invest $50 a month or whatever. You can do it right at Sharebuilder.com.

They`ll reinvest all the dividends for you, and the nice thing is, they help keep track of the cost basis. So at the end of the year, you get one nice statement, and it`s probably the lowest-cost place I have seen for people to own individual stocks.

CHERNOFF: So is this a discount brokerage operation? What is it, exactly?

HANSON: Well, I suppose it is. You know, I`ve never recommended anyone use it for anything other than really buying individual stocks, but they do sell a variety of things, and they are a discount broker. But I think their -- the real niche is individual stocks, and buying, being able to diversify and having the dividend reinvestment plan.

The beauty is, you get one statement as opposed to, you set these up with several different companies, you`re going to get several different statements. This gives you one statement. Very similar to the way you would at a discount brokerage firm, but their costs are even less expensive than a lot of ones out there.

CHERNOFF: Excellent. Scott Hanson, thank you much for joining us. Appreciate it.

HANSON: My pleasure, Allan.

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