It's easy to forget how tedious it used to be to research a stock before investment Web sites started multiplying like baby rabbits. A lot of investors who didn't pay huge brokerage commissions in exchange for advice trudged to the library to check out Value Line Investment Research or Standard & Poor's Outlook. You could wait weeks before the SEC would mail copies of a company's annual or quarterly reports (and you'd get billed for photocopying and postage). Your source for daily quotes was the newspaper.

Now there's so much free information available on the Web that investors have a new problem: information overload. So many investing sites offer so many pages of statistics, it's impossible to wade through them all. Plus, many sites feature more or less the same information from the same suppliers.

But certain sites stand out. They put together nearly all the resources you need, provide tidbits of information that others lack, present the numbers in a more understandable format, or offer free information that you may have to pay for elsewhere on the Internet.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Sites that list a company's vital statistics and provide charts and quotes are a dime a dozen. Among the best--and a main supplier to other sites--is MarketGuide (www.marketguide.com). It has ample financial data, including real-time quotes, price-to-cash-flow and price-to-sales ratios, return on equity, return on assets and profit margin. But if you want to see all the data on one screen, check out StockSheet (www.stocksheet.com). It provides financial information for the past several years in an easy-to-view and easy-to-print format. A link to a list of other businesses in the sector lets you see how the company stacks up against the competition. The "data definitions" link explains what the statistics mean.

But unless you're a seasoned investor, it can be tough to figure out what to do with all of this information. Two sites that provide the statistics also do a good job of helping you make sense of them: Microsoft's MoneyCentral Investor (www.moneycentral.com) and Quicken.com (www.quicken.com). Both walk you step by step through the research process--explaining the significance of key figures, alerting you to potential problems and comparing the company's results to those of its peers. (For details about tools that help you sift through the numbers at these sites, see the box on page 102.)

Call Up the Feds

Once you have all the data, you still don't have a clue why the company performed the way it did. One way to track down its story is to read the company's annual and quarterly reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reports are free at the SEC's Edgar Database (www.sec.gov) and FreeEdgar (www.freeedgar.com) sites, but it's tedious to plow through the filings and their arcane designation--let alone figure out what they mean.

MoneyCentral includes direct links to important sections of key filings--such as management's discussion, legal issues and business description. The filings often include frank management discussions about competitive pressures, for example, without the happy spin that pervades many annual reports to shareholders.

The Inside Scoop

Have the officers--who know the business better than anyone else--put their money where their mouths are? Corporate executives and big shareholders must tell the SEC whenever they buy or sell their company's stock. Insiders can sell shares for a variety of reasons--they may think the stock price is about to tank, or they may just need the money to send a kid to college. So it's best to look for trends, such as a buying or selling binge by a number of the company's officers or directors.

Several sites report these insiders' activities; most use information provided by Vickers Insider Trading. Quicken.com presents the information in the easiest-to-read format (type in the company's symbol, then click on "insider trading" in the left column). Note, however, that there's a short lag between the time insiders sell their shares and the time the trades are reported.

The Experts' View

Management's discussions and insiders' trading can be revealing, but they don't tell the whole story. You need to look to analysts for an outside assessment of the company's future.

If you visit a multilink investment site such as Wall Street Research Net (wsrn.com), you'll usually find numerous links to earnings estimates. But almost all of the information comes from two providers: Zacks Investment Research and First Call. First Call charges for the information; Zacks provides a good synopsis free.

You'll get even more information from Detailed Estimates at Yahoo! Finance (go to www.yahoo.com, click on "stock quotes," then type in the company's symbol and select "research"). The page lists analysts' recommendations and consensus estimates from Zacks, shows whether any have changed recently, compares the figures with those of the company's peers, and reports whether the analysts have been on target or not.

Digging Up the Research

Even the best consensus-estimate sites don't explain where analysts come up with those numbers. For a glimpse inside their heads, you'll need to read their detailed reports.

Unfortunately, helpful analyst reports are hard to come by free on the Web. Customers of full-service firms usually have unlimited access to reports by the firms' own analysts. Some discount-brokerage firms provide other free reports. Charles Schwab customers, for example, can look up company report cards online, which provide general information in an easy-to-use format, and free analyst reports, primarily from Hambrecht & Quist and Credit Suisse First Boston.

Most public sites with an "analyst report" section link you to Multex (www.multex.com), which makes you fill out a time-consuming registration form before providing any information. The reports--mostly supplied by Prudential, Dain Rauscher Wessels and BancBoston Robertson Stephens--cost between $10 and $100 per company. The free stuff, unfortunately, will look familiar: The Analysts Consensus Estimates reports are similar to the earnings estimates from Zacks. And the Stock Snapshot, while nicely laid out, includes many of the same numbers as Stocksheet.

Multex does have links, though, to research at Merrill Lynch (www.askmerrill.com) and Salomon Smith Barney (www.smithbarney.com), both of which will supply you with excellent information free for a limited time (60 days with Smith Barney; 30 with Merrill Lynch). You must go through another detailed registration process before you can access the reports, and don't be surprised if a sales rep calls you a few days later.

You can also find helpful analysis at Standard & Poor's Personal Wealth site (www.personalwealth.com), where you can get free reports if you register at site (for a $9.95 monthly fee, you can get ten reports per month and other premium services).

For a clue about what the other brokerage firms analysts have to say, visit www.nordby.com, which provides brief summarises of broker reports free (click on "research by ticker" under "broker reports").

Late-Breaking News

Some of the best news updates are from Yahoo! Finance (www.yahoo.com, then click on "stock quotes"). It culls articles from Reuters, C-net's News.com, Red Herring, Online Investor, Business Wire, CBS MarketWatch, AP Business News, the Motley Fool and (if you sign up for a free trial) TheStreet.com.

If you're an America Online subscriber, you can request a daily e-mail about any stock you're researching--which includes market-close price updates and summaries of articles from Reuters, Bloomberg, PRNewswire and the Associated Press, with links to the full text.

Dow Jones.com does a good job of highlighting the most significant articles from its wire service (which you can read online free) and from the Wall Street Journal (its headlines are free, but to read the whole article you 11 need a Wall Street Journal Interactive subscription, which costs $59 per year, or $29 for WSJ subbscribers).

You'll find a refreshing variety of resources at the Hoover's site (www.hoovers.com), which includes links to articles about companies in magazines such as U.S. News & World Report, Business Week, Wired and the Industry Standard. Hoover's, which provides the company profiles that many other sites use, also includes a link to each company's home page. And for a small-investor reality check, try the message boards at The Motley Fool (www.fool.com).