Analyst Brokerage Research on the Web: Multex vs. Investext

[Infoadvis2 at aol.com]

(cross-posted: apologies for any duplication)

Greetings--Below is a summary and excerpt from an article from the April, 
2001 issue of The Information Advisor, which describes and compares Investext 
and Multex as sources for locating analyst brokerage reports on the Web. If 
there are questions or comments feel free to call or email me directly at 
rberkman at aol.com. The full article provides a detailed comparison table of 
features of the two products and a sidebar on searching Investext in PDF on 
Dialog.

(Other articles in the April 2001 issue include:  whether and how to use 
public relations personnel as trusted sources of expertise; a new "Best of 
the Business Web" alert service [which is free--see sign up information at 
the end of this message] and searching discussion group archives via Google).

Robert Berkman
Editor
The Information Advisor
www.informationadvisor.com
Falmouth MA
508-540-5990
rberkman at aol.com

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(Excerpt from April, 2001 Information Advisor)

INVESTMENT RESEARCH ON THE WEB

 The Web has had a huge impact in the availability and delivery of investment 
research reports. But, while there are many aggregators, discount brokerage 
sites, investment advice portals and the like, there are only two providers 
that offer top-notch and powerful databases of investment reports: Multex and 
Investext. Both firms offer various front-ends for accessing their investment 
reports, and this article identifies and compares the two firms'offerings.

Multex

Multex offers investment reports and information services to the financial 
community via three major services: MultexNET product for financial 
professionals; MultexInvestor.com for individual investors, and,  MultexNET 
On-Demand for the information professional and business end user.

When you log onto MultexNET On-Demand (www.multex.com), you begin by choosing 
either a "simple" or "advanced" search. To run a simple search, you enter a 
ticker or company name. At this point, you can also limit the search by 
"symbol origin" (you select a country), date, keyword (in full text or in 
headline), industry, region and/or country.

If, on the other hand, you select the advanced search option, you have many 
more choices for narrowing and focusing your search. These are:

*By Category
Here you can limit your search to a certain type of research, e.g., commodity 
research, company (equity) reports, credit research, derivative research, 
economic reports, foreign exchange, industry focus, internal reports, 
market/country research, and so on.

*By Keyword
You can choose to search the full text of the reports or restrict the search 
to headlines.

*By Document Language

*By Specific Contributor

*By Specific Analyst Name

*By Currency

*Sort By
You may choose to sort your results by date, relevance, or length of report.

Overall, we were quite pleased with MultexNET On-Demand. The system was 
simple, powerful, and had many helpful features.

We have a few small complaints. We found that some publishers categorized as 
"market/country research" were a bit iffy, such as Hoovers and CNBC. While 
these firms provide useful company and industry information, we don't think 
they should be grouped together with the heavy-duty Wall Street research 
firms like Salomon Smith Barney or Morgan Stanley. Also, on the matter of 
report categorization, we'd like to see definitions of these categories and a 
list that identifies which publishers' reports are slotted into which 
categories.

Thomson's Investext

Thomson has created several sites where you can search and download Investext 
reports. These include:

Research Bank Web (www.investext.com)
Intelliscope (www.intelliscope.com)
Thomson Investors Network (www.thomsoninvest.net)
Global Access (www.primark.com/ga) [coming soon, to be moved from 
ThomsonDirect.com]

Information professionals looking for a Thomson Web product to search 
Investext may want to choose Research Bank Web, with its archive dating back 
to 1982. In early March, Thomson introduced its latest edition of Research 
Bank Web called Version 1.5. We had a chance to try out this new version.

Searching Research Bank Web
When you log onto Research Bank Web, you have a few initial choices to make. 
First, you need to decide which of the Thomson databases you want to search. 
You can check or uncheck boxes to search Investext, Morning Notes (very brief 
investment reports), MarkIntel (market research reports), and/or Industry 
Insider (trade association research and reports).

You also have a choice of two different search interfaces-"Full" search and 
"Expert Search."

With Full Search, you can limit your search by clicking on any of the 
following:
Company 
Free Text/Title (1999 and forward only)
Ticker Symbol 
Author 
Industry 
Contributor 
Geography 
Report Type 
Report Date 
Report Number 

You create your search criteria, one at a a time, on the left-hand side of 
the screen, and you view how your search is being built, step by step on the 
right. When you have entered all your criteria, you can click on "list 
reports" on the right side to run your search.

Comments
Research Bank Web is a simple but powerful service. On the positive side, you 
can create precision searches to retrieve individual pages. It is also quite 
nice to be able to combine a search with the MarkIntel and Industry Insider 
databases. We also appreciate the free keyword-in-context display and the 
very long archive, back to 1982. Our gripes include the fact that free-text 
searching is only available for reports since 1999, the lack of Investext's 
precision subject index codes--which have been available on the traditional 
online services and the premium price for purchasing individual pages.

Research Bank Web vs. MultexNET On-Demand
The bottom line is that both MultexNET On-Demand and Research Bank Web are 
very good products. We found Multex's product to be better designed and more 
intuitive to use. We particularly liked its financial screening function. But 
the trade-off is that you must purchase the entire report on Multex and, for 
most information professionals searching for a table, statistic or focused 
information, a full report is going to be more than is required.


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The Information Advisor, an international monthly journal founded in 1987, is 
a guide for information professionals, who rely on its articles to help them 
identify, compare and select the best business sources from the myriad of 
information products and services available, whether in print, on a 
professional database or on the Web.  Readers include business librarians, 
information brokers, market researchers, knowledge managers, competitive 
intelligence professionals and other hands-on researchers and information 
specialists. The April issue is available to non-subscribers for $20.  
Contact Ms. Sonia Bedikian at (212) 633-4539 or sbedikian at findsvp.com for 
further details.

Also published by The Information Advisor is the "Best of the Business Web" 
E-letter, a free monthly e-mail alert identifying the five best business 
research sites found by the editor every month. To sign up, visit: 
www.bestbizweb.com

The Information Advisor is published by FIND/SVP, Inc. (FSVP-NASDAQ), the 
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