LibGuides: Finance 602: Gathering Information

Researching Companies

Mergent Market Atlas
Comprehensive suite of authoritative financial information with the accuracy, timeliness, and transparency required for business research.
Value Line
Provides information about investments for individual investors, portfolio managers, corporate finance professionals, and academic institutions. Access includes the Investment Survey and Small and Midcap Survey.

EDGAR | Search Tools (Company filings)
This sources from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission maintains all the government filings for publicly traded companies
Yahoo Finance!
Easy online free source; lacks complete financials and ratios, lacks historic data, lacks SWOT. But is an excellent source of most important current ratios/financials, especially at the industry level, and basic company profiles/news.

Researching Industries

IBISWorld

Provides economic, demographic and government data on 700+ industries.
Business Source Complete

The world's definitive scholarly business database, including articles from peer-reviewed journals, magazines, trade publications, and news sources. Company and industry profiles are also available. Citations available from 1880-present.
Market Share Reporter

Presents comparative business statistics in a clear, straightforward manner. It affords an immediate overview of companies, products and services and cites original sources for more than 2,000 entries.
Mergent Archives

A vast indexed collection of corporate and industry related documents. Contains hundreds of thousands of reports covering more than 100 countries and industries

Finding articles and news

These library databases and open websites will have articles, profiles and analysis of your companies.

Newspaper Source

Provides selected full text coverage for more than 240 newspapers and other sources. This collection includes cover-to-cover full text for USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor and The Times (London) as well as selected full text from more than regional newspapers, international papers, news wire services and TV/Radio transcripts. Generally one year's coverage only.
New York Times

As of June 2025, Murray State students, faculty and staff can use their network credentials to access their free New York Times subscription, instead of registering for an account as in the past. Instructions follow for new and existing users.
New users: From a web browser, go to nytimes.com, click Login, scroll down and click Continue with work or school single sign-on at the bottom of the login page. Note: Activation via mobile apps is not yet supported.
Existing users: Login to your nytimes.com account via your current login method (eg. email/password or social login method). Then go to Account > Account settings > click "Manage" next to Connected Accounts / Work or School.
OR
Existing NYT program subscribers can continue to visit nytimes.com until their academic passes expire after 4 years, after which they must visit nytimes.com, click Login, and immediately scroll down and click “Continue with work or school single sign-on” at the bottom of the login page (as shown above in the New User section).
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(Old instructions for reference) The New York Times Archive searches the contents of the New York Times from 1851 to present. Full text is provided to Murray State users. Murray State users must create an account to authenticate access, AND MUST BE ON CAMPUS FOR REGISTRATION. Following registration, access is available off-campus. Visit https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/ippass to create a free account. If you are unable able to come to campus to create your account, please contact Cris Ferguson .

NAICS Code Tutorial

Identifying NAICS (Industry) Codes. From the University of North Carolina Greensboro business librarian. Run time: 5:18.