Product Description

Star Rating
Indicates if the stock is overvalued, undervalued, or fairly priced

Business Risk
Each stock's risk is rated as below average, average, above average, or speculative

Management
In-depth information about the backgrounds and strategies of top management teams

Morningstar Fair Value
Our analysts' estimate of the stock's fair value price

Moat Size
A measure of the company's competitive advantages

Stewardship Grade
An easy way to tell if management is working for you or itself

Morningstar Grades
A snapshot of the company's growth, profitability, and financial health

Buy/Sell Prices
Incorporating a margin of safety, we give our estimate of when you should buy and sell

Morningstar Style Box
A snapshot of the company's size and value or growth characteristics

Five-Year Financial History
Key measures for the past five years and trailing 12 months

Major Fund Holders
Which funds have big percentages of their assets in this stock

Major Competitors
How the company stacks up against its main rivals

Price History
Five years of price history and the stock's strength relative to the S&P 500

Valuation Ratios
How the stock measures up to its industry and the S&P 500

Thesis
Our independent opinion of the company, including detailed analysis of its strengths and weaknesses

Let our stock research help you find tomorrow's winners today

Morningstar's independent analysis and exclusive tools can help you easily find the best companies at the best prices. The Morningstar Rating for stocks helps you spot companies that are undervalued. Our Consider Buying/Consider Selling prices provide the benchmarks you need in order to make informed buying and selling decisions. And now you'll get this exclusive and valuable guidance updated all year long. Access 50 free stock reports any time in 2007. Choose from 1,800 stocks.

This book can help you:

• Start a new portfolio
• Position your portfolio for a big 2007
• Find this year's best values

You'll also benefit from:

• Tips for picking great companies
• Guidance on the best and worst management
• Trends to watch in 2007

For 20 years, Morningstar has helped individuals and financial planners make better investment decisions. Our trusted data and independent analysis provide a level of insight unavailable from other sources.

For more information about other Morningstar products and services, visit us online at www.morningstar.com.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #985222 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

From the Back Cover
Star Rating
Indicates if the stock is overvalued, undervalued, or fairly priced

Business Risk
Each stock's risk is rated as below average, average, above average, or speculative

Management
In-depth information about the backgrounds and strategies of top management teams

Morningstar Fair Value
Our analysts' estimate of the stock's fair value price

Moat Size
A measure of the company's competitive advantages

Stewardship Grade
An easy way to tell if management is working for you or itself

Morningstar Grades
A snapshot of the company's growth, profitability, and financial health

Buy/Sell Prices
Incorporating a margin of safety, we give our estimate of when you should buy and sell

Morningstar Style Box
A snapshot of the company's size and value or growth characteristics

Five-Year Financial History
Key measures for the past five years and trailing 12 months

Major Fund Holders
Which funds have big percentages of their assets in this stock

Major Competitors
How the company stacks up against its main rivals

Price History
Five years of price history and the stock's strength relative to the S&P 500

Valuation Ratios
How the stock measures up to its industry and the S&P 500

Thesis
Our independent opinion of the company, including detailed analysis of its strengths and weaknesses

Let our stock research help you find tomorrow's winners today

Morningstar's independent analysis and exclusive tools can help you easily find the best companies at the best prices. The Morningstar Rating for stocks helps you spot companies that are undervalued. Our Consider Buying/Consider Selling prices provide the benchmarks you need in order to make informed buying and selling decisions. And now you'll get this exclusive and valuable guidance updated all year long. Access 50 free stock reports any time in 2007. Choose from 1,800 stocks.

This book can help you:

• Start a new portfolio
• Position your portfolio for a big 2007
• Find this year's best values

You'll also benefit from:

• Tips for picking great companies
• Guidance on the best and worst management
• Trends to watch in 2007

For 20 years, Morningstar has helped individuals and financial planners make better investment decisions. Our trusted data and independent analysis provide a level of insight unavailable from other sources.

For more information about other Morningstar products and services, visit us online at www.morningstar.com.

About the Author
Pat Dorsey is director of stock analysis and is responsible for a team of more than 90 equity analysts. Before taking his current position, he was a senior equity analyst at Morningstar covering the telecommunication-equipment and computer-hardware industries. He frequently speaks on investing topics on television and radio, and is a regular contributor to Morningstar.com.

Customer Reviews

If you are interested in buying individual stocks, this is a good place to spend some of your research time and money
There is an old saying that people spend more time studying which refrigerator to buy than how they invest for their retirement. It is a sad saying because it is probably true in more cases than we would like to admit. There is also an awful lot of evidence that people are more often better off with a very low cost index fund than in picking stocks or even investing in mutual funds. Why? Because over the long haul, there aren't many who can consistently provide higher than market returns. And it is even more difficult to identify who those folks will be in advance.

Still, it is nice to look for the next Microsoft, or to figure out when it would be a good time to get into a good company. What too many people do is buy after the run has started and they end up providing capital gains possibilities for others. You may have heard of the greater fool theory. If not, feel free to email me and I can explain it to you.

While the web is full of information about companies, one has to do an awful lot of analysis and develop one's own perspectives about when to buy, when to hold, and when to sell. Again, during the learning curve one makes it possible for others to make money by taking your hard earned money away from you in transaction costs and in helping you buy high and sell low.

This terrific book has several virtues for the person wanting to buy some stock in companies that are likely to be good. However, the authors don't simply list 500 stocks and say, "Have at it." Far from it. They provide a very interesting page on each one of the companies and that page is crammed full of valuable information.

The obvious eye catcher are the star ratings. However, they do not say whether or not this is a sound company. Morningstar uses its star ratings to communicate the relative attractiveness of the company as an investment at its (then) current price given all the other aspects of its condition and position. I also appreciate the fair value price (the discounted cash flow value divided by the number of outstanding shares as Morningstar has evaluated their likely future cash flows). The last close, consider buy, consider sell, and yield are also interesting indicators for a person trying to understand that company.

Morningstar also provides a brief summary of the business, a rating of the stewardship of present management and why they gave that rating. There is also a good amount of historical financial information, ratios, competitors, comparisons of financial performance to those competitors, and about a third of a page "thesis" on the condition and prospects of that company as the named Morningstar analyst sees it on the date given for that article.

There are also about fifty pages of interesting short articles at the front of the book that explain these reports to the reader, the thinking behind some of their concepts like the competitive moat size. These pages also provide all the companies simply by name. Some are also singled out for being attractive and other for not being least attractive. The companies are also presented by sector and also the performance of various market sectors are also given. The back of the book has a helpful glossary.
Now, we all know that financial information becomes dated very quickly. So, Morningstar provides access to their online services that have more up to date information. When you buy this book you get access to fifty reports you can download at no additional cost before the end of December 2007. This is a very nice way to overcome the aging factor of the information in a book.

Still, this book is a wonderful study for anyone wanting to learn more about any of these 500 companies, business students, and prep work for folks getting ready to invest. It is quite interesting to compare what Morningstar thought months ago and what current markets have shown about those judgments.

A very useful and helpful book. Morningstar also offers other books in this series for bonds and mutual funds.

A great resource to supplement your research
It's best to do your own research first, but of course a second opinion can never hurt. That's how I used this book for most part, but also got some ideas. I used this book for an experiment; I made up a mock porfolio of stocks I had done research on, and then took 16 totally random companies that this pick had rated with 5 stars, which is the highest rating. 12 of the 16 companies made money, while 4 didn't. Over 9 months, I gained about 10.5%, which doesn't factor in dividends, or fees for that matter. On the other hand, the stocks that I had actually researched, did about the same, 10%.

Overall, the book gets a 4.5. They strike a good balance between information, and quantity of top stocks. A beginner may not enjoy this book off the bat, because there are no explanations of the numbers, but after you learn a few things, the rest falls into place. They have the basic numbers for all the companies listed, but certainly, by the time the book comes out, those numbers will have changed, and at years' end, they will most likely be quite different. The vital info is across the top, and makes for quick reference.

Do your own research, use this book for a second opinion. Morningstar is without a doubt one of the most trusted names in the business.

Let Experts pick the winners for you !
Morningstar grades the stocks in its universe with one to five stars. This book has one page overviews of the best 500 stocks in that universe, rated and discussed in some detail.

Morningstar uses a "value investor" approach to stock evaluation.

I use this book in conjunction with Morningstar's StockInvestor newsletter, and I am pleased with the results.