A Guide on Finding Information About Canadian Investing

VANCOUVER -- Information, as they say, is power. That helps explain why Americans -- never short of media devoted to their own financial markets -- often choose to invest domestically.

Before the dawn of the Internet, getting information about the Canadian markets in the U.S. was next to impossible.

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Outside of a few niche publications and the odd story in The Wall Street Journal, the pickings were slim when it came to talking up Canada. Thankfully, the dot-com universe has changed all of that. Americans looking to stash a few dollars north of the border can now do so based on their own research, as opposed to a tip or rumor.

Several Canadian-specific financial Web sites report that a significant chunk of their audience comes from the States. "We definitely have a lot of American users," says Jeff Berwick, founder and president of Stockhouse.ca, one of the more popular investment sites in the country. "Fifty percent of the traffic on our site is American."

Part of the allure of sites like Stockhouse.ca is its strong focus on small-cap stocks, many of which have enjoyed stellar returns on the Canadian Venture Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange during the past year. Other sites that do a good job of covering the Canadian small-cap spectrum include Smallcapcenter.com and Stockscape.com.

Canada is also well regarded for its abundance of natural resource companies, particularly mining and exploration outfits. Two sites on the perennial dig for investor information include InfoMine and The Prospector.

One of the better starting points for the American investor is About.com's Investing:Canada section. The section features information on everything from the country's high-tech sector to penny stocks to homegrown IPOs. It also maintains a section devoted exclusively to American investors looking to take the Canadian plunge.

The official Web sites for Canada's major stock exchanges are also worth a visit. The Toronto Stock Exchange site is regularly updated with quotes, news and information related to its listings. And the Canadian Venture Exchange's official site is particularly useful, thanks to a section called InfoCDNX -- a database containing information on the exchange's nearly 2300 companies, covering everything from insider trading to stock trading statistics.

For the big-picture and blue-chip investor, research is easy to come by via the country's national newspapers, The National Post and The Globe & Mail. Both publications maintain worthwhile Web sites, the National Post Online and GlobeInvestor.com, respectively. The two newspapers are known for maintaining editorial standards of the highest caliber -- something that counts for a lot on both sides of the border.

"We're definitely getting reached in the south," says Jeff Fredericks, Web marketer for Globe Interactive, the new media division of The Globe & Mail.