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I recently spent a morning at a City library looking through old copies of the Investor's Chronicle from the 70s and 80s. I was very struck by the ads. No one was selling charting packages or SIPPs. Instead lots of listed companies were plugging their latest financial results, and in many cases the ads included a lot of detail. Then last weekend I bumped into a man I used to work with. My former colleague is -- shall we say -- entitled to a free bus pass, and is also a fund of good stories. For many years he worked as a reporter on the old trading floor at the London Stock Exchange. On Saturday he told me how news used to be released to the market. Apparently company announcements would be pinned up on a notice board on the floor, and traders would then push each other around like schoolboys as they tried to read whatever had been announced. At the same time messengers would take the statements round to brokers and the newspapers. The poor old private investor would have to rely on what his or her broker chose to pass on, wait until the annual report or interim results came through the post, or read the Investor's Chronicle. Of course, things are much better these days. Click here and you can read all of today's stock exchange announcements This can be a useful exercise if you're looking for new investment ideas. One share that caught my eye this morning was James Latham (LSE: LTHM). The timber company announced that it had sold a subsidiary to Wolseley (LSE: WOS) for £10.3m. At first glance, that looks a decent price for a business with net assets of £3.5m. Perhaps the most interesting part of the statement came in the last paragraph where the chairman warned that trading conditions for timber "have become more challenging," but added that results for the year just ended -- March 31st -- are"likely to meet market expectations" That means earnings should come in at around 14.5p a share -- not bad for a company whose share price closed last night at 168p. Admittedly, the shares have jumped 10% this morning but I'm still tempted to do some more detailed research on this one. You can also research a company's recent history. Perhaps you're thinking of buying shares in Sainsbury (LSE: SBRY). If so, click here and you'll see all the recent statements by the company. Top of the list is an encouraging trading statement in which the company said it has delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth. Of course, the next thing to look at is whether the good news is already in the share price. I'm a bit of a curmudgeon and I often say that everything is getting worse. But when it comes to accessing company information, things have definitely improved in the last few years. Make sure you use everything that is available.
