The Regulatory News Service (RNS) provided by the London Stock Exchange is an excellent and reliable source of news information for traders, furthermore, it is free. For the last three hundred years the London Stock Exchange has produced detailed information for companies and investors alike. Moreover, the advent of technological innovation over the past decade has transformed this service from a twice-weekly paper publication for the London business community to a real time news flow of continuous electronic information to the world’s financial markets. In 2008 RNS redeveloped its technology platform which improved data submission and display of announcements to the market in XHTML formatted data output. Today, RNS is the leading specialist provider of regulatory disclosure distribution services to UK listed and Aim companies. For companies, RNS is a one shop stop for them to fulfill their regulatory obligations and communicate with global investors and for the investor RNS is the authority for reliable and accurate corporate news. Approximately, 250,000 announcements are published by RNS per year, according to their website. Additionally, over 70% of all regulatory and potentially price-sensitive UK Company announcements, emanating from leading FTSE companies, originate from RNS. RNS is used by many financial journalists for reliable news providers such as the FT and Reuters. RNS website can be found at; http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-home.html .
Having rapid access to information relating to directors’ dealings in their company shares is also useful; this is known as “insider trades,” or “insider dealings.” Don’t confuse this with the other illegal activity of insider dealing, which is when the trades are made on information gained prior it being released to the market. The rules on insider trading are complex and do vary from country to country and enforcement varies greatly, depending on the jurisdiction where the white collar crime was committed. Nevertheless, we will concern ourselves with the legal insider dealing. What distinguishes this from the other illegal market activity, in a word, is when the trade was made. If you trade on publicly available information then that is perfectly legitimate trading. There are literally thousands of insiders trades, directors buy or selling their company’s shares on a daily basis. As the saying goes, “the view at the top is always better.” So when a director increases their shareholdings in their own company this is often perceived by the market as a bullish signal and visa versa. However, it is not always a master plan when deciding whether to go long or short on a stock because it may be the director’s strategy to buy stocks with the aim of propping up the company’s share value. So the increase in share price may be tied to no real fundamental reasons, such as the improved competitiveness and profitability of the company. Or a Director may be selling his own shareholdings to buy a holiday home, a luxury yacht etc. Nevertheless, insider dealings could be a useful gauge, particularly when it’s combined with technical analysis. Additionally, this information is publically available for free. The website; http://tiptrades.com/ provides daily updates of insider dealings. “We keep you connected with insider buying and selling alerts directly to your mobile, device,” claims the founder of the website and it prides itself of giving you the data without having to spend hours trying to find it.
Mergers and acquisitions activity moves the market. The idea is to try and identify target companies, those likely to be taken over, and buy stock in them before they have been acquired, often by a rival company. It’s not uncommon for the share price of target companies to rise by double digits during the course of just one week. So by keeping abreast with mergers and acquisition activity, then acting appropriately on the information might turn out to be a lucrative trading strategy. For mergers and acquisition news relating to US stocks checkout the website http://www.streetinsider.com/Mergers+and+Acquisitions. It has been recommended as the best source for mega merger and acquisitions on Wall Street. The founders claim to have been tracking Mergers and acquisitions of companies on Wall Street since 1999. The premium service provides email alerts with the aim of giving you a trading edge.
Then there is macroeconomic data that can also be useful. It’s always best to drink at the source, so check out the government websites. For the UK; The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is a reliable source and it can be found at the following address; http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html. For US; Marco economic data the most reliable source is the Federal Reserve Bank website; http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/calendars/nationalecon_cal.html. This will provide you with the date and time of the key economic events and the available links will direct you directly to the data source.
It might also be prudent to reconcile your trading decisions with some technical analysis. For example, take a hypothetical case where you receive a news alert about insider dealing, a company director buying shares in his company, but the charts are indicating a clear sell signal. The share then falls due to a negative trading statement, later released by the company. Had you not decided to buy you would have avoided a loss. This simple example underscores the importance of combining your trading decisions with analytical software. Typically the best analytical software available is designed by traders http://winwaycharts.com/Tradingexpertpro.html is gaining rapid popularity.
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