Top value investing resources for 2014

The backyard economist team is always looking for investing insights and ideas from a wide variety of sources. Below is a list of some of my most used links for investing ideas and news. 

As always, if there are any other online sources, articles, discussion groups or Twitter accounts you find useful then please feel free to drop the details in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Australian business news sources

• The Australian Financial Review (@FinancialReview) – This is daily required reading for any Australian investor. The recent price drop makes it more accessible to retail investors.
• Business Spectator (@BusinessSpec) – has become a valid alternative to The Australian Financial Review, plus it’s free. 
• The Sydney Morning Herald (@SMH) and The Age (@theage) – these broadsheets are becoming less relevant, but we still look at them every day.
• The Australian (@australian) – has become more relevant since its tie up with The Wall Street Journal.
• We also regularly turn to The Courier-Mail (@cmail_qld) and The West Australian (@thewest_com_au) for geographic and journalistic diversity.
• This part of the ASX website (@ASX) is useful for monitoring company announcements.
• Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) Australia is also useful for local news.
• The Business – We love this ABC staple, Ticky gets the big name guests and isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions.
• Inside Business – Close cousin to The Business, on Inside Business join Alan Kohler and panel of ‘experts’ to debate the week that was. (Archive only)
• Global Mail (@TheGlobalMail) – A new news outlet with some excellent long form journalism.
• MacroBusiness (@macro_business) – Excellent coverage of what’s driving the Aussie economy, plus great general coverage of the local business environment.

International news sources

• The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) and Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) are wonderful international newspapers. Much of the good stuff is for subscribers only, but we’re fans of paying up for high quality content.
• Quartz (@qz) is a cracking new online business outlet from the team behind The Atlantic.
• The New York Times (@nytimes) also has impressive business reporting.
• We also read The Economist (@TheEconomist) and Slate (@Slate) for a different point of view.
• For following the ‘news flow’, we use Bloomberg (@BloombergNews), Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Finance UK (@YahooFinanceUK) and Google Finance (@GoogleFinSvcs).
• Traditional finance magazines like Fortune (@FortuneMagazine) and Forbes (@Forbes) are also great.

Prominent value investors

• Guru Focus (@gurufocus) is an aggregator site for information on respected value investors, as is Greenbackd (@Greenbackd).
• Berkshire Hathaway is the source for Warren Buffett’s wonderful annual letter to shareholders. We likewise never miss the annual letter to Leucadia shareholders.
• There are many fund manager websites worth visiting, but we’ve highlighted the following because of the excellent content they make available to all – GMO for the excellent research Jeremy Grantham provides, Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management, Frank Martin’sMartin Capital Management, Cooper Investors, Allan Gray, Bedlam Asset Management, Third Avenue and our own Intelligent Investor Funds Management (@IntInvFunds).
• The Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at the Columbia Business School provides a useful list of value investing resources, plus publishes a free quarterly newsletter.
• The Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing at the IVEY School of Business, provides value investing research, an excellent collection of interviews with prominent investors and an extensive value investing reading list.

Investing newsletters (subscription services)

• Intelligent Investor (@value_investing) – Naturally, we recommend this newsletter for Australian stock research.
• Grant’s Interest Rate Observer (@GrantPub) is focused on interest rates and economic issues with a contrarian bent.
• Michael Lewitt’s The Credit Strategist (@credstrategist) generally looks at issues top-down, but is also contrarian.
• Value Investor Insight (@VILetter) covers similar ground, but is published more regularly.
• The Graham and Doddsville newsletter from Columbia Business School is an excellent quarterly read, and is free.

Investing podcasts/vodcasts

• Of course, none of our analysts ever miss an episode of Intelligent Investor’s Stock Take or Doddsville podcasts (free).
• We like The Big Money, part of the Slate empire.
• Financial Times’ Martin Wolf also produces an interesting podcast. As does FT’s Alphaville.
• The Economist, unsurprisingly, also produces some good podcasts.
• Peter Schiff offers up some interesting reviews in a wide variety of formats, including a weekly podcast.
• Tune in to Boardroom Radio (@boardroomradio) or Open Briefing(@openbriefing) for a range of presentations/briefings from Australian companies.
• The Manual of Ideas is another great source for overseas ideas, often from prominent investors. Check out their youtube channel too.

Favourite Twitter accounts

Wondering who to ‘follow’ on Twitter? Here’s a few of our favourites.

• @WarrenBuffett – Sure he’s only sent out a few tweets, but how can you be a value investor and not follow Mr Buffett?
• @ConversationEDU – Academics often write stuffy, excessively complicated papers that no layman can understand. The Conversation seeks to change that, with shorter more ‘journalistic’ articles from our country’s brightest.   ‏
• @ABSStats – Wondering what’s happening in Australia? The ABS is a wonderful (free) source of stats about our country, plus the guys who run the twitter account are hilarious.
• @ValueIdeasLIVE – Value Conferences runs regular online value investing conferences. Their first few outings have gathered some of the best investors in the game. The online format means tickets are far cheaper than a regular conference.
• @John_Hempton – John runs Bronte Capital, where he specialises in accounting frauds, one of the sharpest minds in the game.
• @jasonzweigwsj – Jason Zweig is a columnist with the WSJ and is best known for his annotated version of value investing bible The Intelligent Investor.
• @TEDchris – Chris Anderson is Curator at TED an organisation that holds annual idea sharing conferences.
• @ValueInvesting_ – Garry Cole is a value investor based in NY, we love his feed for the regular and useful articles he shares.
• @HarvardBiz – Harvard Business Review shares the latest blog posts, management tips and stats.
• @danariely – Dan Ariely is Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University. He also writes an interesting and entertaining blog here.
• @BusinessChannel – Sky Business News’ twitter feed.
• @DanielPink – Dan Pink is a US based author and public speaker. He’s written extensively on behavioural science and how incentives should be applied in the workplace.
• @mungerisms – Excellent quotes, facts and links on value investing.

We hope you find the list useful. Enjoy.

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