One of the key features of BullCharts is the News Desk tool. It provides access to company announcement news from the ASX, and includes a powerful search tool. There are three different types of news/announcements you can search for, one of which is very powerful – the search by Headline (see details below).

Dividends and company share sales – Some of the things you can search for a recent announcements regarding pending dividend payments, or the company director share sales/purchases in their own stock (Appendix 3Y).

The information source – The news / announcements available here come from the ASX ComNews Company Announcements feed – read more at the ASX.

How to find the News Desk tool

There are two ways to find the NewsDesk tool in BullCharts. Either from the BullCharts menu: Actions > News > News Desk, or using the toolbar button (see screen shot at right).

Types of News Services

The News Desk tool gives you access to a number of different “news services” and you can search for individual categories of news services using the first drop-down menu, or simply leave this set to “All Announcement Categories” and use the other search options described below.

If you click on the first drop-down in the top left corner of the NewsDesk window, you will see the list shown in the adjacent screen shot.

The popular options here include: Dividends, Take-over.

The NewsDesk header and the search options

When you open the BullCharts News Desk feature, the window header and the available search options are as shown in the screen shot below. The first option in the top left corner “News Services” is the one mentioned in the previous section above.

What can we search for?

In addition to the search refinement mentioned above, assuming that you leave that option at the default “All Announcement Categories”, there are three different ways to search as follows. These are selected using the “By” drop-down in the top right corner of the NewsDesk window.

• Symbol – Search for news related to a specific company symbol (ie. security code). You can enter the exact code for the company in which you are interested. Wildcard characters (eg. the question mark symbol) are not permitted. For example, to search for news / announcements about BHP, you must enter the code exactly as:  BHP
• Company – Search for news related to any part of a company name. For example, to find news for any company with the word GOLD in its name, simply enter the four letters gold into the “Search for” field, and select “By: Company”.
• Headline – By selecting this option you will be able to search for any text string that appears in the “Headline” of the news / announcements (this is one column in the results list).

Sample News Desk uses and searches

Following are just some of the search possibilities using the BullCharts News Desk tool.

Dividend announcements

Many investors and traders are interested in company dividends. For many of the stocks on the Australian market which pay a dividend, it is paid twice each year in about February and August, in line with the timing for the earnings season and AGM season. The relevant dates for payment of dividends are not usually confirmed until about 2 to 4 weeks prior to the ex-dividend date.

One way to search for dividend related news is to use the “News Service” category mentioned above. Another way to search for dividends, is to search for the word dividend within the news Headline, as shown in the screen shot sample below.

Another way to view dividend news in BullCharts – Another way to see a list of upcoming dividends is to use the menu option:
Actions > Reports > Upcoming Dividends.

“Appendix 3Y – Change of Director Interest” notices

The “Appendix 3Y” notice to the ASX is the standard notice that must be submitted when a company director buys or sells shares in their own company. These notices can be used as an indication of the “company inside knowledge” that the company ought to be worth investing in (or divesting from).

Simply enter “3y” into the search field and select “By: Headline” then click on Search (see the screen shot below).

ASX Appendix 3Y Notices – These notices are just one of many types of notices that companies are expected to file with the ASX. To see a list of all Appendix types, see the ASX Listing Rules (and click on the “Appendices” tab).

Summary

There are several ways to use the BullCharts News Desk feature, as described above. Search either by news category using the first drop-down option, or search for text within the news Headline, or search for the company by Symbol or name.

More information

For more information, also see the BullCharts internal help. In BullCharts, tap the function key <F1>, or use the BullCharts menu option: Help > BullCharts Help. Then use the “Search” tab, and in the field “Type in the keyword to find:” type in: newsdesk. Then explore the resulting list of search results.