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Writer's pictureAlan Brochstein, CFA

Some Tools to Help You Invest

If you aren't investing yet but should be, you can begin investing on your own or else hire a professional to help you. This article is aimed at those who want to self-invest, which takes a lot of time to learn to do well and can be challenging. This isn't a list of "the top tools", but it is a discussion of tools that are free or reasonably priced that I use to help me invest.


Staying on Top of the Market


In the olden days, reading the Wall Street Journal the next day was the most popular way to stay on top of the market. The periodical focused solely on economics and markets, and it didn't have much competition. Now, it focuses on a lot more, but it also publishes real-time around the clock. The cost is reasonable, and it's a pretty good resource. Dow Jones, a News Corp company, owns it.


Barron's is the weekly periodical published by the owner of the Wall Street Journal. It helps me keep up with the market, but many rely upon it for its articles on companies too. Barron's offers its subscribers a discount at times if they subscribe to the WSJ at times.


One of my favorite resources is Bloomberg. The NYC-based company leases information terminals to institutional investors. That's how I got to know them in the 80s! The website is a great tool in my view for keeping up with stock indexes, bond rates, commodity prices and currency exchange rates. I pay for the digital subscription, which is a lot less of an offering than their core information box, the Bloomberg Terminal, at a much lower price.


I read a bunch of magazines too that help me stay on top of the market and the economy, including Forbes and Fast Company. Some other good magazines to consider are Business Week, now owned by Bloomberg, and Fortune. There are lots of other media that can help investors. I think investors doing it on their own need to stay on top of the markets, and hopefully these tools are a good starting point.


Picking Stocks


The idea of finding a resource that will deliver good stock picks all of the time is questionable, and I don't expect the resources in this section to do that. But, stock pickers need a starting place, and this section tries to cover it. Remember, a good idea is only an idea, and an investor should fully research the potential ideas. The Wall Street Journal and Barron's, which I use for their ability to help me stay on top of the markets, do offer stories on companies too as do some of the magazines I mentioned.


Many professional investors either don't care about doing stock research (i.e they may be strictly quantitative) or they just get ideas from brokers (who make a commission on their buys and sells). Retail investors can engage a broker too, but this doesn't seem very promising to me. Lots of retail investors want to invest like Peter Lynch, the famous institutional investor who did very well at Fidelity Investments with his Magellan Fund. He has written several books that could inspire you and teach you how to be a good investor. I know Lynch best for his idea of "investing in what you know" rather than what's popular.


I am a stock picker myself, and I rely upon a few resources to help me stay on top of my watch list. I pay for briefing.com, which offers all sorts of tools, including headlines on upgrades and downgrades of stocks from brokers. The service helps me stay on top of stocks, but it also allows me to stay on top of the markets. I pay $360 a year for the Platinum service, but I am not sure that they sell new subscriptions. They have some more expensive options, including the Briefing Investor for $600 a year.


I started contributing to Seeking Alpha in 2007 and have written hundreds of articles there. Their idea is to publish the works of investors and analysts. I think the service is an excellent one for investors and believe in it so much that I have been a premium subscriber, which gets the broadest access. They have more than 200K subscribers to this service, and it is $119 for the first year currently. I use Seeking Alpha as a source of ideas, and they also publish a lot of things that help me stay on top of my watch list and holdings, like earnings call transcripts.


For those investing in American stocks, reading the SEC filings is essential in my view. This includes quarterly and annual updates but so much more, like insider trades and ownership updates, company updates, and proxies. The information is free, but there isn't a good alert system. I pay to receive alerts from EDGAR Online.


There's a lot more that investors can do to help manage the information flow, but most of the other things I would discuss are very costly, including a system to help look at valuations and to screen for stocks on quantitative measures. I think that the tools I have shared are a great start for everyone, but keep in mind that there is more too.


Conclusion


Investors can just buy and sell securities without doing research, but this isn't likely going to deliver good returns. I believe that investors can beat the market, if they desire, but it takes a lot of work to do so. I have shared some tools here that help me stay on top of the markets and my stocks and potential stocks, but I know that there are many other options too. As I have mentioned in other articles, beating the market sounds great, but it's not for everyone. I believe strongly that many or most people can learn to be passive investors and save the time and effort required to try to beat the market and just match it. I am an active investor, for sure, but I am also a passive investor to a small extent.

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