How to get the best from the IC website

We hope you find our website easy to use, intuitive to navigate, and most importantly, valuable as an investment resource. But with so much content and data available, you're bound to have questions about where things are and how to access them. This guide attempts to answer them.

ACCESS RIGHTS

Access to editorial content on our website (with the exception of the Chronic Investor blog, which is free at all times) is on a 'metered' basis. If you register, which is quick, secure and free, you can view up to 15 articles each month. However, that 'allowance' does not include share tips, fund tips, Simon Thompson's and some other columns, stock screens and features. These items are reserved for online subscribers. Access to share, fund and market data does not require registration.

IF YOU ARE A MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBER

Most of the content on the IC website is the same as in the magazine. The main extras are the Chronic Investor blog, the daily technical analysis content and the summaries of company news and press comment.

However, articles are published continuously rather than once a week, meaning you get most things more quickly. Share tips and features are published on Fridays, the same day the magazine appears. And the website juxtaposes content and data in a way that many users find useful.

Access rights for magazine readers are the same as for other users. However, combined print-online subscriptions are available at big savings. More details here..

FINDING INVESTMENT INSPIRATION

Share and fund tips

Every week, we put forward investment ideas for shares and funds, and sometimes bonds. Bear in mind that although we spend a lot of time researching them, they are just ideas. Only you can decide whether an investment is appropriate for your individual circumstances. To help you decide whether it is, we categorise share tips into growth, value or speculative, and provide risk ratings. There is a guide to what these ratings mean on the share tips page. Fund tips are classed as either income or growth. All tips are only available to online subscribers.

The share tips page features this week's tips in a 'carousel' at the top of the page. Click on the forward and backward arrows to see all the tips, or click on the image to read the full story. Note that you will not see the tips unless you are an online subscriber and logged in.

Beneath that, we show tip updates classified according to style, and the five best-performing tips in each category. Please note that the performance calculations are not in real time - they are updated weekly.

Tip updates

We provide updates on share tips if there is a significant news event or a significant price movement from the original tip price. There are several different ways to browse to these.

The share tips filter

This page allows you to see what we've tipped (and updated) recently, and to filter by style. If you want to exclude Aim shares (which are generally ineligible for Isas) you can filter them out by clicking the Main market radial button.

If a share tip has been updated, this is shown beneath the original tip. Fund tips are updated much less frequently as funds are a longer-term investment.

Writers' portfolios

Several of our columnists and regular contributors maintain portfolios of shares and other investments. You can view the latest holdings in these using the links at the foot of the share tips page. Note that any valuation calculations are not real-time. The date at which they were last updated is usually shown. You will need to be a subscriber to view these.

Stock screens

Screening for shares is a great way to generate ideas. Because we have access to resources like Bloomberg, Datastream and CapitalIQ, we can run sophisticated screens and we use these as the basis for articles. You can access these either from the Shares page, or from the Tips & Ideas page. You will need to be a subscriber to read the articles, but you can use our stock screening tool for free - see Researching your investment ideas for more on how to use it.

Trading ideas and technical analysis

We provide frequent commentaries on stock, commodity, bond and forex markets most days. They're written by our resident chartist, who is a chartered market technician and also writes the weekly Trader column. You can access the technical analysis commentary by clicking on Trading Ideas in the Tips & Ideas sub-navigation. This page also shows the IC's unique interpretation of the Coppock indicator, plus trading ideas from selected external contributors.

RESEARCHING INVESTMENT IDEAS

Share data and analysis

The Shares page is your gateway to a world of data and analysis on UK and international quoted companies. Every company on the Official List of the London Stock Exchange, plus those on the Alternative Investment Market, has its own set of pages showing share prices, charts, full financial data, dividend information, plus the latest IC view and articles about that company from both Investors Chronicle and the Financial Times. Many companies also provide annual reports and other investor relations information on the company page.

To find a company, simply start typing its name or stock-exchange symbol (eg Vodafone, or VOD) into the search box at the top of the page. The search tool will immediately start showing potential matches.

Company data pages.

The share price and financial data on our website is supplied by Thomson Reuters, a global information provider whose data is used in many of the City's dealing rooms. It is updated every 15 minutes.

Once you've arrived on your company data page, you can see the basic share data plus the latest IC view at the top. Use the tabs below to navigate to news, background information, directors dealings, company accounts and brokers' forecasts. If you want a bigger chart with the ability to add overlays and compare to other shares or indices, click on the Interactive Chart link at the top of the page. In many cases, you can also download company annual reports and other investor relations content from the company page on our site.

* There is currently a bug with some IC views showing older articles, articles with incorrect dates, and links to older articles (from the previous website) not working. We are aware of these issues and they should be resolved shortly.

Using the stock screening tool

You can use the stock screening tool to find shares that match your particular criteria - such as P/E ratios below a certain level, or a minimum dividend yield. You can access the tool from the Shares page, or from the home page. You can save the results of your screen for future reference.

Fund, ETF and investment trust data

We are in the process of consolidating fund data on a single platform, but currently investment trust data is handled differently to data on managed and exchanged-traded funds. Use the search box on the Funds & ETFs to find the fund you're looking for; investment trusts will be shown as equities, since they are effectively quoted investment companies. Data pages on funds and ETFs show you basic information about performance and charges, and in some cases, you can download a more comprehensive fact sheet. Investment trust data is focused on NAV and share price performance.

Searching our archive

You can use the search field in the main site header to look either for articles, or for fund or share prices. Use the two radial buttons to flip between prices and articles. For article searches, results will be shown in order of relevance. You can also use so-called Boolean logic - inserting terms like AND, OR and NOT. For instance, "Enterprise NOT Inns" would look for articles about outsourcing group Enterprise, but exclude those about pubs group Enterprise Inns.

MONITORING YOUR INVESTMENTS

Daily news and results

Each day, we produce a handy summary of the key corporate announcements and business press headlines. It appears on the home page and the shares page.

Portfolio tool

You can keep track of your investments using our portfolio tool. You need to be a registered user to do so. Access is via the link on the home page, or in the header/footer of every page. The portfolio can handle long or short transactions, and you can opt to simulate the effect of dividend reinvestment, or receiving dividends as cash.

Watchlists

A watchlist is like a portfolio, but without any transactions. To use one, just set up a portfolio and when it comes to adding individual stocks, select 'Watch' instead of buy or sell.

Dividend and company calendars

The dividend calendar is accessed from the shares page. It shows the ex- and payment dates for dividends declared but not yet paid, arranged in order of ex date. It also gives the amount of the dividend and the likely full-year yield on the shares.

The company calendar is a week-ahead view of company reporting. Because companies are no longer required to disclose their reporting dates to the stock exchange, it does not claim to be comprehensive. The company calendar also includes key economic data release dates.

Alerts

You can opt to receive email alerts based on either company share price movements (above or below certain thresholds, or by more than a certain amount) or on company news (get an email when we publish an article about a company). You can set alerts direct from company data pages (click on 'Alert') or from the alerts hub, which you can access from the home page link.

iC Daily email

This is a selection of articles chosen each day and accompanied by some commentary. It's a good way to keep in touch with what we're publishing if you don't have the time or inclination to browse the site. You can sign up for the email from the various sign-up boxes around the site, or from within your account.