Back in the 80’s and 90’s when I was an economic development
consultant in Japan, the Shikiho listing of company data was the go to
source for information about companies in general. We used it to identify
companies likely to perform strongly in the near future, and therefore likely
to invest overseas, too. Obviously though, it also proved useful for
identifying companies that might be good prospects in which to invest in
general.
The Standard and Poor’s 500 Guide provides a lot of
information that is very reminiscent of the Shikiho. I felt vaguely
nostalgic flipping through the company explanations and financial summaries,
reviewing the year to year performance of the stock price, P&L summary
statements, earnings, dividend statements, and all the rest . The information
contained in this book is very thorough and useful to a point. In this day and
age, however, the Internet provides a number of resources to get more reliable
and up to date information that would probably be of more value to most
investors. Although it does provide buy, sell and hold recommendations, because
this is Standard and Poor’s book of all 500 companies contained in their
exchange, it does not offer much in the way of in depth analysis, but as a source
of raw data for performing your own analysis, it is invaluable. You’ll just
need to be prepared to provide your own investment strategy.
I’m very glad the publisher provided me a copy of this book
gratis for this review, but I would say, the information contained is well
worth the retail price. I rate this book as a “buy”.
