Top tools for retail traders and investors. Websites and apps.
I will share my personal experience and tools. I am a former institutional trader and treasurer. When I worked at the trading desk in the second-tier banks and brokerage companies, I used Bloomberg and Reuters Xtra 3000, later replaced by Eikon. I used Bloomberg anywhere platform to communicate with traders at the brokerage companies, make transactions (trades), and which is more important used it for Fundamental analysis. Bloomberg has very powerful capabilities that allow you to do many things, extract company financial data, compare them to peers, do scenario analysis, portfolio management, etc. I used Eikon for money market trades and FX trades and communicated with institutional trades. Reuters also has a compelling platform for company valuations. But unfortunately, those platforms are too costly and are not for retail investors. When I quit the trading desk, I found many good alternatives that a retail investor can use, free in many cases. Of course, they have paid option, but I use only free versions as this is enough for my daily analysis and investments. So let me share my tools.
Diversset. It is a stock screener, ETF screener, and portfolio builder that does not require you to have financial knowledge. Answer four simple questions, like your age, investment horizon, available funds, and required rate of return. The app will find you stocks and ETFs tailored for your investment strategy and construct your first well-diversified and efficient investment portfolio. I built this app. I worked for many years as a trader and treasurer, and I saw how people with no or little financial knowledge struggle to find great stocks. So, I decided to help them and facilitate their search by just offering investors to answer four simple questions. Diversset then assigns an investor to a particular group (risk-seeking, risk-averse or moderate investor), based on answers, applies complex filters that will best reflect the investor’s strategy, compares companies to their peers to find the best stocks, and provides you with the list of stocks. Diversset also constructs your efficient portfolio based on the stocks it found and gives you a volatility/return perspective.
Pros.
Diversset saves your time and provides you with the best possible option. You also don’t have to have financial knowledge. Diversset only provides you with the best possible portfolio option. With the minimum possible expected loss, given your required return.
Cons.
Diversset does not allow you to apply filters manually and construct an investment portfolio from the stocks you want and Diversset shows stocks and ETFs listed on the United States exchanges only.
Finviz. It is a stock and ETF screener. Finviz shows you different filters to apply manually to find stocks that best reflect your investment goals. You can track your selection, see market trends, monitor the sectors or industries, and see top-performing stocks. Finviz also has a graph, and you can see how stocks were trading historically. You can see a lot of data, such as market cap, volatility, and company financial ratios. And you can compare your selected company to its peers and find fundamentally interesting strong companies.
Pros.
You can apply filters manually and change the stock preferences depending on your filters. You can also see the stock graph and trading history.
Cons.
Finviz only shows stocks and ETFs listed on the United States exchanges, and it has too many filtering options that can be hard to understand or use for retail investors.
Tradingview. It is an asset charting tool and a stock and FX screener. This website is popular among technical analysts as Tradingview allows you to apply different indicators and technical models to enhance your analysis. You can compare different stocks and other financial assets, build correlations, and see the trend’s strength.
Pros.
It is very user-friendly and convenient to use. I miss many Tradingview graphical capabilities in my trading terminal.
Cons.
I did not encounter any significant cons of using Tradingview as I am not using it often, it Is a good tool for fast technical analysis, but I think they have too many technical indicators and tools for retail traders.
Morningstar. With this tool, you can analyze stocks, undertake equity valuation, analyze bonds, ETFs and funds and find attractive stocks using a powerful stock screener. Morningstar has excellent market coverage and provides in-depth market research.
Pros.
You can choose great stocks, ETFs, and funds based on Morningstar analysts' ratings. Morningstar has a complex rating system and assigns a star rating to each asset. This feature can save your time on manual fundamental analysis and help you make your final decision.
Cons.
The site’s design is not user-friendly, mainly when you use it for the first time. It took me some time before I figured out that there are two different stock screeners; one is more advanced, I couldn’t find the ETF ratings at first, but after exploring the website, I managed to see what I was looking for. The stock screener also has many filtering options that can confuse beginners.
Reuters screener. It is a good, very simple stock screener that allows you to find different stocks globally, putting in a small effort. You only apply critical filters, choose the countries you want to search stocks in, and see the stocks for your selected country.
Pros.
It is simple, has only important filters, and covers stocks globally.
Cons.
It shows you many irrelevant stocks. It can show you 2-3 different stocks from one company. The Reuters screen can display all stock issues within the company, ordinary shares, preference shares, and additional option shares. You can get the list of 100 stocks, but these stocks will be from 70 different companies. But if you use other stock screeners, you will only get 100 stocks, for example, from 100 different companies, one stock per company.
Portfolio Visualizer. This is a potent tool for constructing your efficient, well-diversified portfolio. You can also stress test your portfolio, see how it is performing, and compare different portfolios on the market. You can assign the risk probabilities with the tools like Monte Carlo simulation and VAR and construct a well-balanced portfolio using other PM models.
Pros.
You can build your portfolio with stocks and fixed income instruments, monitor your portfolio’s efficiency, and apply a wide range of portfolio management models to improve your portfolio’s performance.
Cons.
It is for more experienced investors and portfolio managers who know what they are looking for and understand how different portfolio management models work. If you are a beginner investor, your analysis can lead you in the wrong direction.
TipRanks. I cannot say a lot about this website because I was not using it often, but I can say that it is good for showing different analysts’ ratings and the rating history. You can see how stock ratings change who calculates the stock target prices and what is the analyst’s vision on some particular stocks. Some brokerage companies use this web resource to get reliable stock target price data.
InteractiveBrokers. This is the broker that I am using to trade stocks. Interactive brokers have an extremely powerful trader workstation. I can undertake fundamental analysis, use technical analysis tools, compare companies to their closest peers, and use stock screeners and bond screeners. Moreover, I can trade and analyze different financial instruments, not only stocks. And I can monitor my investment portfolio. IB executes deals fast and provides everything I need to find and analyze great stocks. You can use any of the web resources listed above or use IBKR as it has all you need.
Pros.
It has all the capabilities to find, analyze and trade great stocks and other financial instruments.
Cons.
It works very slow on my Mac M1 notebook, I managed to allocate the largest portion of Mac resources to run IBKR, but it works very slow on my laptop. But it works very fast on my iPhone. Another small con is that some beginner investors and traders find it challenging to use IBKR because you must subscribe to market price feed, understand how to undertake an analysis, have market knowledge, and be approved if you want to trade some financial instruments. But I may count it as an advantage because you must understand what you invest in and how to undertake an equity valuation or analyze the financial instruments you are about to buy. You need to have at least basic knowledge to succeed in the stock market.
I have listed the most important web resources and tools to enhance your fundamental and technical analysis and help you on your investment journey. Those web resources are for investors with different skills and market expertise. You can use one of those resources or all of them to analyze your assets from different angles. I hope my article was helpful. Thank you for reading. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need my expertise or market research. Email: skobzhan@diversset.com