Last week I traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, to
take in the Resource Investment Conference and Trade Show
of 2008. This is one of the biggest trade shows in Canada
centered on mining, oil and gas, new energy, commodities
and fuel sources. It's the kind of show where you, as an
investor, walk around and meet and talk to up to 400
different companies, most of them with one aim in mind:
they want you to buy their stocks.
As a dyed-in-the-wool marketing guy, I found this most
interesting. There were many companies there who obviously
knew what they were doing. These firms knew how to capture
the attention and hopefully the acceptance of the
individual investor, as s/he walked in a sea of competing
entities and offers.
One such firm that really captured my attention was Stock
Research DD Inc. Khaled Sultan, President of this recently
launched membership website, introduced me to his two
associates, Sara and Jaymie, as well as the founder of the
site, Ian Campbell, one of Canada's leading business
valuation consultants.
This special site focuses on the Canadian small-cap mining
and oil & gas sectors. "We're excited to have launched a
web site that gives users the ability to apply due
diligence to two important sectors in the context of
today's globalization and macro-economic conditions," said
Campbell, who took more than 18 months to develop the site.
The web site's purpose is to enable subscribers to prospect
for financially strong companies in high-growth sectors,
while reducing the associated investment risks by allowing
them to do efficient research & due diligence and putting
strong research to work for them.
Campbell explained that "this site offers one-stop access
to unique data and analysis. It provides consistently
formatted research on more than 250 companies that trade on
the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange.
Each of the companies embedded within the site meet
capitalization and balance sheet requirements set by Stock
Research DD Inc."
When I asked him for whom this site was designed, he said
"the web site will be useful for individual retail and
institutional investors who research investment ideas on
the Internet, as well as investment advisors and securities
analysts."
I asked Sultan, why any independent investor should trust
using such a site as this. His direct response, looking me
right in the eye, was " This site is transparent and
fiercely independent. It is subscriber-driven and receives
no income from either the investable companies listed on
the site...or any advertisers. It is a 'pure' source for
research and due diligence data, and does not make stock
recommendations."
I really liked the part about it being transparent,
objective and not making any buy or sell-side
recommendations. It's obviously a very efficient tool that
I can use to do my own research and due diligence and then
make my own personal decisions.
Walking up and down the aisles of the show I was taken by
the number of people I heard talking about this new site.
Several asked me just why any investor should pay any
attention to this new service. I mentioned the
open-transparency of it; I added the complete objectivity
and being non-beholden to anyone, coupled with the fact
that they don't take any money from others except the
members (membership is less than twenty bucks a month, or
$199 for a year).
I finished with my favorite point: they don't push any
stocks on anyone: you make your own decisions. When I said
that's what I had seen and been told, their faces usually
lit up in a smile; they immediately planned to visit that
booth.
While talking with others at the show, one of the most
frequent questions I heard was: "where do these people get
their data and information feeds?" Not knowing for sure,
and now wondering this myself, I re-visited Sultan at his
booth and asked him.
"Subscribers gain access to information that is often
buried or cast afar," he said. "We aggregate licensed,
third-party data and wire feeds that are not offered
together anywhere else: Capital IQ, the institutional data
feed that's part of Standard & Poor's; System for
Electronic Disclosure by Insiders (SEDI); Canada NewsWire
from CNW Group Ltd., and Marketwire Inc.," he added.
That was enough for me. I'm now a member of this most
useful site. I can save untold hours each month; and I
don't have to worry about the data, its objectivity,
accuracy...or where it's coming from.
© Roy MacNaughton, 2008
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Learn more about this special site at:
http://www.stockresearchdd.com
Roy MacNaughton is a niche hospitality-marketing coach and
business writer. He's a seasoned marketer, with more than
30 years of international marketing and franchising
experience, including 10 years online. Learn more at his
blog: http://www.UmarketingU.com
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