I started being interested in stocks when a business partner told me about his blue-chip portfolio and how happy he is with the compounding mechanism. The market was coming back to life after the subprime mortgage crisis and there was a good vibe again about stocks.
Without any guidance, I started to read trading and investing books and subscribe to different trading sites. For me, this approach worked very well because I was curious and I wanted to understand all types of trading before discovering what was going to work best for me.
All these bits of knowledge you get from different methods may guide finding your edge or may confuse you. I remember being in both situations, but in the end, I do think that all the discovered insights forced me to take what suits me and move forward. Most traders or programs you interact with will say that they can teach you everything to succeed. Even if they have the best intentions, there are two caveats here:
A certain method can not be applied by everybody. Trading is not an exact science, we are all different, we come from different backgrounds and one trading style fit for one person may not work for another.
It is very hard to find the perfect mentor that will explain to you all his knowledge and secrets learned in tens of years. I would like to be wrong, but my experience proved to me that you will not have access to that 1%, the key facts that veteran trades use in a blink of a second to evaluate a bet. These abilities can be learned by hard work only and... alone.
Learning to trade is a long path. If you have access to the internet, you have access to education. There are many ways of self-learning and many programs or mentorships try to hook you in and to keep you a subscriber for a long time. I do not recommend this approach, but I do recommend trying them for a limited period of time (1-2-3 months). Maybe with an exception: IBD Marektsmith for their RS Rating (more details soon).
All the time I found something interesting. But, I often spent too much time on some irrelevant things. And here I can help with this guide by showing you the resources I used and what they taught me. You can decide if they are useful for you or not.
These are not affiliate programs and I do not have any kind of connection with them. I just used their services (free, trials, or paid) for a limited time.
Just take into consideration that I do not recommend at all trading or investing immediately when you think you understand a concept. Both trading and investing are about a lot of concepts.
IBD is probably the most known platform used to evaluate stocks and find new ideas using their watchlist. The owner of Investors.com is William O’Neal who began studying the best stocks of all time, analyzing every available performance metric. O’Neil found that year after year, decade after decade, the best stocks display seven common traits just before they make their biggest gains. Each letter in the CAN SLIM Investing System stands for one of those seven traits, and they form the basis of the buy rules (more on his book “How to Make Money in Stocks” I will write later about). On the website can be accessed:
Researches / Lessons / Interviews
IBD Live is an interactive broadcast where their stock pickers, analysts, and portfolio managers watch the market action and discuss the day’s top trade ideas.
Leaderboard is an investing research solution powered by advanced algorithms, a team of experts, and the CAN SLIM Investing System.
Swingtrader is the place for swing trade ideas handpicked by their experts plus full trading plans.
Marketsmith is a very powerful tool to identify the best-performing stocks with the optimal entry and exit points. Look for resources here, especially the interviews with the top traders.
I used all their services in the past. The only one that really stands is Marketsmith where you can build watchlists based on different criteria, especially by RS. The RS Rating tracks a stock’s share price performance over the last 52 weeks and then compares the result to that of all other stocks. The rating shows clearly if the stock is a market leader or laggard in terms of price performance.
From time to time they make offers, 2–3 weeks for each of their offered services. Always take their trials and decide if they are good resources for you.
Zacks is one of the largest providers of independent stock, ETF, and mutual fund research in the U.S. They offer a lot of services and the good part is that you can use their “Zacks Ultimate” one month for $1. This was a very good experience with a big knowledge gain, especially on investing. They present here a lot of methods and ways to invest money. Take your time to read their studies to understand different methodologies.
They also have a method for ranking stocks, from 1 (strong buy) to 5 (strong sell). I used to use it in the past before building my personal watchlist conditions. Anyway, take everything with a grain of salt as not once I noticed divergences. Definitely, Zacks is a great tool to learn.
Chaikin Analytics is a suite of stock research tools and portfolio management services that help pick winning stocks and drop losing stocks ahead of market shifts. The Chaikin Power Gauge Rating is the centerpiece of Chaikin Analytics — it’s an accurate indicator of where a stock is headed over the next 3 to 6 months, at least this is the way they advertise. I tried their solution when they had a free trial. It’s an interesting tool and very easy to use.
There are a lot of things to check and learn, so, if they offer again a trail, you might consider giving them a try.
HGSI Investment Software organizes stocks, ETFs, and market indexes into 4 types of groups: Reference Groups (defined by the HGSI software), Custom Groups (the results of an HGSI custom solution), Smart Groups (created using HGSI filtering and ranking tools), and User Groups (your custom-designed groups). These groups give you a quick way to find a starting set of stocks to rank and compare. Each stock in the group database has over 400 fields of technical and fundamental performance information about the stock.
You can quickly narrow investment candidates to analyze with our stock charting features. The software has an old layout, but I found it very well organized. They offer a 30-day free trial.
Gurufocus is an essential screener with both technical and fundamental criteria that can be applied to find stocks. They cater predominantly to the long-term investment style of trading with opportunities for swing trades.
The site tracks the trading action of over 175 “gurus” — typically fund managers and wealthy individual investors — and company CEOs and CFOs to help traders get an edge on the market.
SimplyWallStreet is a stock tool that focuses heavily on visualizing fundamental company data. The platform promises to eliminate spreadsheets and instead offers relatively advanced visual data displays that can help traders quickly evaluate stocks. The platform offers a decent amount of functionality for free, and it’s helpful enough for stock discovery that many traders will find investing in a paid plan worthwhile. All the stock analysis reports are generated automatically in the same format, using data from company financials as well as analysts’ revenue estimates.
There are a total of 10 sections in the stock report: Executive Summary, Share Price & News, Valuation, Future Growth, Past Performance, Financial Health, Dividend, Management, Ownership, Company Information. It is a very good tool, I used it a few times and I recommend it especially to investors. They offer a free plan.
Simply Safe Dividends provide investors with a predictive window into dividend risk to navigate these murky situations. Their scoring system has the only proven, real-time track record in the industry. It avoided 98% of dividend cuts. A dividend investor will be able to identify holdings at heightened risk of a dividend cut.
This is a tool made for dividend investors and here are a lot of resources for building such a portfolio. They offer a 14-day free trial.
I do recommend taking your time and checking their trails, mostly are free. Discover different ways to evaluate stocks, study, and build your own method.
Information that every beginner should know.
Thank you!