Investments Course Innovation - Using the Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service

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Investments Course Innovation--Using the Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service

As the financial crisis of October 19, 1987, demonstrates, investment conditions can change virtually overnight. Yet a normal textbook takes months, if not years, to write and revise. Consequently, a gap grows between reality and the information found in investment textbooks. (As a case in point, Investments: An Introduction, by Herbert Mayo, which has a 1988 copyright, states that a crisis similar to that of the 1929 stock market crash is highly unlikely.)

Many investment instructors try to bring in reality by requiring the reading of financial publications. Problems arise, however, in that:

a) Delivery is delayed until a journal or other financial publication can add students to its mailing list.

b) Journals deal with news to which the market may already have reacted.

c) A journal's limited space requires that only the most crucial information be provided and that the story background be cut short. This lessens its value for students completing term papers. Furthermore, a journal does not indicate when the last story on the company or security was reported in it, making research difficult.

d) Focusing solely upon a particular journal leaves out a wide range of information available from other sources; these could be Barrons, The Associated Press and various brokerage houses.

e) The search for new information on s specific industry, economic condition or governmental-unit pronouncement may also be quite difficult without prior knowledge suggesting that new information would be forthcoming on a specific day.

f) Little is provided on a continuing basis in the way of performance information relative to a given industry, analysts' recommendations …