13-07-2011, 01:43 AM
(13-07-2011, 12:51 AM)d.o.g. Wrote: [ -> ]The most effective way that I know of is to start with "A". There are only 700-odd companies on the SGX so it won't take that long, a couple of months if you are devoting 1-2 hours a day. You will get faster as you get more practice.
Learn to analyse by elimination: first remove companies that are losing money, heavily indebted, very small etc. This will only take 1-2 minutes per company and should cut the list down by at least 50%.
There is a "Shares Investment" book that costs $6 and supposedly lists the SGX companies by PE, ROE, P/B, dividend yield etc. I flipped through a few editions and never found it useful because invariably the companies that came up on the list were distortions e.g. property companies on the low PE list, companies booking extraordinary gains on the ROE list etc.
I use Shares Investment but instead of the book version, I would recommend the online digital version. Similarly to the book version, you get to quick glimpse of the past 2-3 years of financial performance of the companies which is particularly useful if you are skimming through 700+ companies continously. The online version has the advantage of all 700+ stocks where the book will only showcase the popular 300+ stocks and at a small fee of $6 for a month (abt the price of the book). This will save some time wasted from googling the company or downloading the AR pdf and searching the financial data.
The disadvantage is that you can have the book forever but limited period for Shares Investment digital.
Another free alternative I know is to use Clarity of DBS Vickers if you subscribe an account. However, it is not as user friendly in my opinion and does not show ROE trend.
Please share if you have other more effective methods. Thanks!