The Investor Awareness Index is the only resource that analyzes and rates the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of a company's initiatives to generate awareness for its stock within the investment community. The Index is a valuable analytic tool specifically designed to augment and enhance the due diligence process so investors can make more informed decisions.

The Index is designed to assist in the investment research process by providing investors with unique insight into a critical element for a successful investment: understanding if a company is doing the right things to generate broad awareness of its stock among individual investors, portfolio managers, and stock analysts.

"The company ratings presented on the site can be a valuable tool for investors who are constantly searching for new ways to help them support investment decisions." City Sun

Each company's score on our 0-10 rating scale is based on a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of specific investor awareness attributes. A list of criteria used in our scoring can be found on the Investor Awareness Index Scoring page. The Index disregards, and does not include in its scoring, activities solely designed to create short-lived spikes in volume and stock price ((i.e. stock promotion tactics).

A higher score on the 0-10 scale indicates that a company is actively and effectively engaging in many or most of the investor awareness activities that comprise the scoring criteria. Based upon these activities, more of the investment community is likely to be knowledgeable of, familiar with, or aware of the company. A lower score indicates that a company is engaged in only a few of the visibility-enhancing activities that are considered in our scoring system.

As with any marketplace, stock prices are a function of supply and demand.  The greater the demand, the higher the stock price.  Accordingly, the efforts a company makes to generate demand for its stock have a significant impact on the performance of that security.  Investor Awareness speaks directly to the effectiveness of a company's efforts to stimulate demand by putting its stock on the "radar screen" of as many investors as possible.

With thousands of publicly traded companies in the United States, investors have no shortage of stocks to consider.  So how do sophisticated investors determine which of these stocks they will add to their portfolios?  In addition to utilizing quantitative screening methodologies, investors also generate investment ideas through items such as the following:

• Recommendations from sell-side research analysts
• Presentations from companies at investment conferences
• One-on-one meetings with management teams
• Media coverage of public companies

By analyzing factors such as the amount of analyst coverage, the number of appearances at investment conferences, the amount of media coverage, the level of institutional ownership, etc,. the Investor Awareness Index provides valuable insight into whether a company is doing the right things to generate demand for its stock.  When companies are effectively generating awareness and demand, the opportunities for a successful investment are increased.

To see how our ratings can benefit both the investment community and public companies, please visit Benefits & Uses.

What the Investor Awareness Index is NOT:

Company scores on the Investor Awareness Index are not based on nor a reflection of a company's actual performance, stock price, trading volume, management team, balance sheet, revenues, or any of the other factors that have typically influenced investor decisions.

Rather, the Investor Awareness Index looks at specific investor awareness initiatives and rates each company based on the number and the effectiveness of the initiatives in which it is engaged, as well as the degree of involvement in these activities and strategies that can create visibility in the investment community.

Advisors to the Investor Awareness Index include leading professionals and experts from the investment banking, investor relations, search engine optimization, public relations, marketing, analyst/research, mortgage, investment advisory, and insurance industries.