For this week's value investing insight, I would like to share with you what are the sources we need to analyse stocks, where to find them and how to prioritize them.

It is very important that we look at the right and the reliable sources. Because stock analysis is very dependent upon information.

By getting the wrong information via looking at the wrong sources, we would have the wrong conclusion about that particular stock.

The principle is that we should always prioritize looking at source documents/primary sources from the company itself instead of looking at third party sources first, such as via Seeking Alpha or other news outlets.

Source #1: Stock Exchange Filings of the target company in that particular country - read their annual, quarterly reports and any other filings starting from the latest one

• for the United States, it's the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• for Singapore, it's the Singapore Exchange (SGX)
• for Hong Kong, it's the Hong Kong Exchanges (HKEX)
• for London, it's the London Stock Exchange.
• Why is it reliable? The source comes straight from the official filings by the company itself as opposed to an opinion or selective reporting by other third party sources.

Source #2: Earnings call transcripts

• We can learn a lot once every three months by listening to or reading the quarterly earnings call transcripts.
• Again, this is a source direct from the company - so it is reliable.
• You can google them (e.g. "XX company quarter 1/2/3/4 earnings call transcripts") or find them inside the company's website under investor relations.

Source #3: Highly reliable primary sources

• Industry specific publications
• Court documents
• Scientist research articles
• Agency records
• Historical documents
• Autobiographies
• Survey data
• You can google them or go straight to the specific agency/publications' website.

Source #4: Secondary sources

• News articles
• Television show
• Reviews
• Analyst reports
• Blog articles
• Websites
• You can google them.
• For secondary sources, we should always re-think whether they are reliable or not as a source and one quick indication are by looking at who is the author and whether he or she has any hidden intention behind the article.

>> We should always prioritize deriving conclusions from sources #1 and last, #4.

Further reading:

http://open.lib.umn.edu/writingforsuccess/chapter/11-4-strategies-for-gathering-reliable-information/

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/docs/learningguide-sourcecredibility.pdf