Best Online Investment Tools Options

[Timbo]

I'm partially curious what is actually available out there, be it installable programs, websites, resources, indexes, etc. What are some of your favorites that you've found particularly useful? I'd appreciate hearing what people use.

[dauss]

What is it that you are looking for? Research into stocks? Tools to manage your portfolio?

All the discount brokers have tools for limited research and reports for stocks and funds. E*TRADE, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Scottrade.
There's full service brokers which provide research, advice, financial management, but with commissions and larger fees. Raymond James, Oppenheimer, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs.

Personally, I use the resources available at Charles Schwab and my dad.
I use Google Finance(finance.google.com/finance) to look at prices, historical charts, etc, because I love the layout of the charts. Another interesting thing about the Google one is there's a discussion forum where people can post and talk about a certain stock. Most of the discussions are crap, but sometimes you find interesting ones.
I use Yahoo! Finance(finance.yahoo.com) to read the market news, check overseas markets, futures, and they generally have interesting articles.
I use Bloomberg(bloomberg.com) to read other financial news and check stocks for related news and press releases.
I listen to Marketplace(marketplace.org) everyday, for interesting stories and other news that I may have missed.

[Timbo]

What is it that you are looking for? Research into stocks? Tools to manage your portfolio?

All the discount brokers have tools for limited research and reports for stocks and funds. E*TRADE, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Scottrade.
There's full service brokers which provide research, advice, financial management, but with commissions and larger fees. Raymond James, Oppenheimer, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs.

Personally, I use the resources available at Charles Schwab and my dad.
I use Google Finance(finance.google.com/finance) to look at prices, historical charts, etc, because I love the layout of the charts. Another interesting thing about the Google one is there's a discussion forum where people can post and talk about a certain stock. Most of the discussions are crap, but sometimes you find interesting ones.
I use Yahoo! Finance(finance.yahoo.com) to read the market news, check overseas markets, futures, and they generally have interesting articles.
I use Bloomberg(bloomberg.com) to read other financial news and check stocks for related news and press releases.
I listen to Marketplace(marketplace.org) everyday, for interesting stories and other news that I may have missed.

You know, here's a question I've often wondered, and I am serious about this. What and how does reading business news stories affect my investing?

[dauss]

You know, here's a question I've often wondered, and I am serious about this. What and how does reading business news stories affect my investing?

One should definitely have a diversified portfolio so losses aren’t quite so drastic.

Reading the news is a good way to pick stocks for the future. Plus, these companies run businesses, so things in the news do affect them. Most of the stock I pick are for the long term(1 year plus). I don’t have the time to day trade.

Here's a personal example. 1st quarter of 2007, I read an article about how there was an increasingly strong demand for biofuels in Investor's Business Daily. The article went on to mention how farmers were using GMO and a lot of fertilizers to increase yield to try to keep up with the demand. Along with news of mandated legislation to increase the amount of ethanol that needs to be blended into gasoline, I started searching for fertilizer companies. Did some research and found POT, the Potash Corp./ Saskatchewan. This company did both GMO seeds and fertilizers, I considered the stock at that time a good value for the money and everything else seemed to be in order. I bought some in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

In July of 2008, oil hit a record high, and POT hit a record high the previous month. Keeping up with the news about how the end of the subprime mortgage crisis was in sight, the gasoline prices were really starting to hurt consumers, food prices skyrocketing, sagging truck and SUV sales, people trading in their big cars for little cars, increasing unemployment, more layoffs, and the Bejing Olympics.

Now you might be thinking why the Olympics would have any effect on this, because they had to shut down factories and take hundreds of thousands of cars off the road to try to reduce the pollution for the Olympics, which means even less demand on oil.

Anyways, all those were signs that it was time to get out, plus it had already been over a year since I bought it. So, I more than doubled my money and I qualified for long term capital gains tax.



Right now, I’m looking at buying stock in the energy sector. Reasoning, falling oil prices most likely point to that the US is in a recession, decreased global demand due to weakening economies all of the world, and decreased usage of trucks and SUVs when people replaced traded them in and/or bought cars. Many energy stocks are off at least 15%-20% from a couple weeks ago, but from reading the news I know that OPEC has a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to decrease output. I think they will decrease output (but that’s my opinion and I can’t predict the future). Many refineries in the Gulf have already evacuated workers and cut production in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav, and are still delaying normal operations due to Hurricane Ike. We’re still in hurricane season, and Ike will most likely pick up strength. If Ike really tears up the gulf and knocks refineries out, oil will probably jump, as will energy companies. Probably could make a good 10%-15% easy in a couple weeks depending on the path of Hurricane Ike. Other things to factor would be the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which strengthened the dollar, causing oil to fall as well. I probably won’t due anything due to how the chances of everything coming together in a perfect storm is unknown, but it’s fun to consider.