This was published in Business in Calgary magazine, May, 1995.
[copyright John Mueller]

The Internet and Investing

John Mueller

Although its history is considerably longer, the development of the global
computer network commonly called the "Internet" is a remarkable phenomenon of
the 1990s. In many respects, this development is most notable for the wide-
spread positive regard attached to it, and with good reason: the more people
who are involved the more reasons to become involved, many of the information
resources are either free or inexpensive, and access is generally inexpensive
as well.  Thus it is not surprising that by many measures network activity has
grown by 10% a month for the past few years, in other words roughly doubling
in less than a year.

Commercial activity on the Internet has also grown greatly in the last two
years.  Some of this activity has resulted in controversy, but some has
occurred more discreetly, two solitudes so to speak.  For the sake of
discussion here, I will distinguish between "marketing" and "investing"
activities to make the point.  Marketing activities are generally one-way
communications, from seller to prospective buyer, and the only reverse
communication of interest would be the provision of a credit card number! 
Internet activity, in contrast, has been heavily bidirectional, and in fact
the user going after or even providing information is much more the model than
the user receiving unsolicited information.  Small wonder that this culture
clash has sometimes generated heated exchanges, such as when some immigration
lawyers recently saw no harm in broadcasting their services to people who had
innocently been discussing gardening, UFOs, and other non-commercial matters.

In contrast to marketing, investing activities involve a pattern of behavior
more compatible with the Internet sub-culture, which values providing and
accessing information, especially actively seeking information.  Thus recent
developments in this domain have occurred without much publicity.  In fact,
one can even see two aspects to investing activity here, one the direct
benefits of investment-related activities and the other more indirect.  The
latter develops when individuals who are active users of the Internet become
aware of companies that are successfully using the Internet. To the extent
that one believes that technological innovators represent good investments,
then one learns about these investment opportunities first-hand as a result of
pursuing other goals.  However real as an indirect benefit, this type of
insider information or participatory spinoff is a more nebulous by-product, so
I will discuss primarily the more direct benefits, and simply note in passing
that there are positive by-products of mere participation.

One might say that there are three ways that investors can benefit from the
Internet: "information, information, and information."   In other words,
investors have the usual benefits of Internet participation: timely access to
information near and far. Often these information archives will be general
sources, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, magazines such as TIME and
MONEY, or other magazines at the Electronic Newsstand, whereas others will be
government agencies, such as Statistics Canada, Industry Canada, and Finance
Canada, or other technical databases, such as patent or trademark files or the
NAFTA document.  Sometimes this information is available off-line but not
always handy nor current, and in addition when it's on-line there is the
opportunity to do electronic searches, which are less tedious and less error
prone than manual searches.

Some archives are specifically related to economics and business.  For
example, there are a number of individuals who collect pointers to on-line
resources.  These people are often located in libraries or business programs
in universities, who put these collections on-line for local instructional use
by their students perhaps, but given the nature of the global network the
archive then can be accessed by anyone.  Sometimes these even have a specific
focus, such as "Canadian Economic Indicators" or "Marketing Information."  

In addition to individuals, new enterprises have developed to provide
business-oriented magazines on-line, such as Michael Strangelove's "Internet
Business Journal," Meckler's popular "Internet World" magazine, and
Wentworth's newsletter "Internet Business Advantage."  In addition to a hard-
copy edition and an on-line edition, these operations generally host a World
Wide Web site with a collection of pointers to other business archives on the
Internet.  

If we look more directly to the companies who are previously established in
investment circles, we find many of the established financial enterprises
moving on-line in one form or another.  For example, Dun and Bradstreet, J. P.
Morgan, VISA, Ernst and Young, and many others have recently established an
on-line presence.   When new databases emerge, they are quickly brought on-
line, such as the Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) service for
mutual funds.  And classic investing indices, such as stock quotes, are
increasingly being made available via Internet services.

Not only are the old-line financial companies appearing in cyberspace, but
entirely new businesses and services are emerging.   For example, O'Reilly
Publishing has established the Personal Finance Center on-line.  Others take
on a new face when they appear on-line, such as Security APL's Portfolio
Accounting World Wide System.   

It is also possible to access remote expertise in the form of consultants who
specialize in business activities on the Internet.  For example, Jim Carroll
("Canadian Internet Handbook") and Michael Strangelove ("How to Advertise on
the Internet") are two Canadian authors who also function as consultants.  Or
perhaps one just wants access to kindred souls world-wide who want to discuss
offshore investing, real estate, mining, stocks, bonds, whatever, it's all
made possible via essential free electronic mail.  

Compared to the spotlight that has focused on the marketing use of the
Internet, using the global network for investing has created hardly a stir. 
One good reason for this is that investing and information go hand in hand. 
One still needs a good investment counselor to assist in the interpretation of
the information, but at least free and rapid access to the information
resources available on the Internet removes many other barriers to investing.   

********
For readers with access to Internet via Netscape, Mosaic, or Lynx browsers,
the World Wide Web addresses for many of the sites referred to here are listed
below.

Business/Economics Collections
http://galaxy.einet.net/galaxy/Business-and-Commerce/
http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo/Business/
http://steven.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/EconUrls.html

Internet Business Center
http://tig.com/IBC/

Personal Finance Center
http://nearnet.gnn.com/gnn/meta/finance/index.html

Stock Quotes
http://www.secapl.com/cgi-bin/qs
http://www.quote.com/
http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks/graphs.html

Mutual Funds
http://edgar.stern.nyu.edu/mutual.html
http://nestegg.iddis.com/nestegg/nestegg/mutfund.html

Network
http://networth.galt.com/

Dun and Bradstreet
http://www.dbisna.com/

The Investor Channel
http://www.wimsey.com/xr-cgi-bin/select?/2@/Magnet/mc/cover.html

Financial Economics Network
http://april.ibpm.serpukhov.su/friends/economics/economics.network.html

Financial Web
http://finweb.bus.utexas.edu/articles/post.html

NAFTA
http://the-tech.mit.edu:80/Bulletins/nafta.html

Strangelove Internet Enterprises
http://www.phoenix.ca/sie/

Canadian Internet Handbook
http://www.e-commerce.com/jacc.html

Magazines
gopher://gopher.enews.com:2100/11/business
http://www.timeinc.com/time/daily/money/1995/latest.html
http://www.mecklerweb.com/
http://www.wentworth.com/webworld/IBA.htm

Canada Net
http://www.visions.com/netpages/

Government
http://www.fin.gc.ca/
gopher://gopher.revcan.ca/
gopher://talon.statcan.ca:70/1
http://www.nstn.ca/government.html
http://www.clark.net/pub/lschank/web/gov.html