Listen Money Matters - Free Your Inner Financial Badass. All The Stuff You Should Know About Personal Finance.

Interested in purchasing individual stocks? Listener Patrick Kenneally teaches us how to research stocks. Patrick had his first taste of investing while in college where he was part of Huntington 360, the student-run group that invested a portion of the school’s endowment in mutual funds. There are some tools that Patrick recommends, the first is an SEC site that will give you any publicly traded company’s quarterly filings.  The next is from Business Week which provides financial statements as well as ratio calculations. Aside from hard numbers, it’s also important to consider emotions that could be inflating or deflating a stock price.  Several months ago a Tesla car caught fire and affected the stock price.  Conventional cars catch fire too but as Teslas are new, this was suddenly considered a safety issue specific to them. Another important consideration when buying single stocks is your familiarity with the company’s products.  If you are researching something you have no knowledge of, you won’t unde