Free Value Line Reports

If you have been investing on your own for any length of time, then more than likely you have heard about The Value Line Investment Survey. In a nutshell, it is a kind-of catch all system for a tonne of fundamental data about a particular stock. On each page, there is 10 years worth of revenue, earnings, cash flow, net income, and DIVIDENDS. You could spend days running numbers and comparing companies to invest in.

Each page also has a couple of metrics that Value Line uses to rate a stock. I don’t pay too much attention to these ranks, but it is nice to have it as a validation for any of the analysis you are doing on your own. The metrics are as follows:

Timeliness: Measures relative probable price performance of the stocks in the guide. Essentially it is value lines estimate of how well the stock will perform compared to the other 1,700 stocks in their database. Rank 1 = top of the pile, Rank 5 = not so good.

Safety: Measures the total risk of a stock relative to the approximately 1,700 other stocks. Rank 1 are the safest stocks and Rank 5 are not as safe as the others.

Technical: Uses a formula to predict short-term price returns of the stock compared to the other stocks. Value Line does not recommend you use this metrics as a basis to purchase a stock.

Value Line costs money, but the downtown Calgary library subscribes so I often go there and copy the pages for the companies I am look at. In addition, they do provide free copies for all the Dow 30 companies on the web here. I find in my analysis that the toughest part is gathering the years of data I need to make decisions with – using Value Line cuts that time down drastically.

P.S. This post has nothing to do with my banner at the top of this page – I am not getting paid to write this at all. I simply love the data the Value Line Investment survey provides.