Picture sitting in the drafty examining room at your doctor's office, dressed in one of those nifty blue gowns and feeling a bit green at the gills. She looks at you and tells you that you have that dreaded disease, Somali camel bite fever. Is it treatable? "Well, my cousin, who's a dermatologist in Cincinnati, saw a case a few years back and tells me that a new antibiotic called threeblindmycin seemed to work." Hmmm . . . . .

What you really wanted her to say is that she searched the world's medical journals for well executed therapeutic trials of the disease, and after a thoughtful review of the relevant literature and expert consensus . . . . .

Investing isn't much different. There is an extensive academic finance literature, and it's a pretty safe bet that your brother-in-law who sells you stocks and mutual funds isn't even dimly aware of it.

So what if I told you that the world's most prestigious finance journal, chock full of data about what works and what doesn't in investing, is available online, for free? The good news is that is in fact the case. The Journal of Finance comes out on a quarterly basis, and it is yours for the taking. The bad news is that most articles are not really written in the English language, but instead in a dense jumble of stochastic calculus and academic jargon. Only about 5%-10% of the articles are accessible to ordinary mortals for this reason. Fortunately the most relevant articles are usually the best written, but you're going to have to do a lot of sifting to find them. Here are the ground rules:

• The articles are all in pdf format, so you'll need to have downloaded and installed the Acrobat Reader.
• Rather bizarrely, pieces from future issues are featured indiviually, but when an issue finally makes it into print, you have to link to that month's edition on a separate page. If you're going to make a habit of downloading pieces, I'd recommend creating a directory\subdirectory system on your hard drive (i.e., c:\jf\dec98\ ) so you can organize them for future reference.
  
• The first pass is at the abstracts to pick out the ones you might be interested in. The second pass is a fast scan at the piece to make sure that it is not strewn with formulae. Only then do you commit your time to it.
  
• Do not reproduce without permission. If you do Gene Fama, clad in a flowing gown, will smite you with either the stone tablets in his right hand or the tennis racquet in his left.

To start you out, here are a few worthwhile pieces currently available:

• Volume, Volatility, Price, and Profit: When all Traders are Above Average
  
• What is the Intrinsic Value of the Dow?
  
• Value versus Growth: The International Evidence
  
• Global Stock Markets in the Twentieth Century
• Are Some Mutual Fund Managers Better than Others?

This may be tough sledding at first, but eventually you'll become conversant with the cutting edge of financial thought. And even if you're not, you'll learn more than enough buzzwords with which to intimidate your broker brother-in-law.

copyright (c) 1999, William J. Bernstein