Usually our actions in life are determined by the information and available on a specific aspect. Data, usually considered a low level of facts, normally consists a collection of numbers, images, characters representing qualitative and quantitative aspects of particular issues. Financial plays a key role in the movements of stock and other financial markets and drive investors decisions.
Financial data can be a fiscal year of a corporate – its revenue, profits etc, the GDP of a country, its fiscal deficit, the interest rates of banks, bonds etc. when compiled and presented in a proper way, yields maximum returns.
• State Clearly – Data presented without any ambiguity about the main purpose of the issue and stating a complete and meaningful picture is of utmost use to users of the data.
• Pictorial Presentation – Data often expressed with images, graphs etc not only makes the easily understood but also enables users to effortlessly make comparative analysis as well. However, choosing the right graphs holds the key.
• Expressive – Data which expresses and explains facts is more useful than just with mere dazzle of graphs.
• Facts – Rather than a perceived data, accurate information is of utmost importance for investors/users.
Investors must bear few crucial aspects while evaluating data for their decision making. Acquainting oneself with vital terms in financial and economic like trends, cycles, seasonality, index, benchmarks etc not only enables to comprehend the presented data well but also facilitates them to take proper decisions based on the data.
Various tools like data mining are being increasingly used due to their effective capability of transforming data to useful information. The process involves clustering, classification, regression and association between variables in data. Owing to its statistical analysis techniques, developing trend analysis etc it is gaining importance for data analysis.
Though data provides all the facts, figures and other information pertinent to make investment decisions, one must be wary of errors, bias in the data and make proper use of it.