I’m trying to start investing, and I’d like to be more of an enterprising investor, outperforming the market, but I don’t want to spend hundreds of hours studying charts or reading financial reports.

I’ve seen people mention services that simplify financial data and explain the logic behind investment decisions.

Has anyone here actually used anything like that? I just want to invest well, understand the market better, and still maintain some kind of work-life balance.

What are some great tools that genuinely simplify research and help you find good investing opportunities?

I’m asking this question to people who are professionals and people who invest on the side (please specify actually, I’m a bit curious now lol): what tools do you use? Do you use more than one? Or do you simply compile your own data into excel sheets/did you make your own analysis templates? And why your choice?

PS. To be entirely transparent, I will ask the same question on r/educatedinvesting. Furthermore I am asking this question more to do a type of "market research" than for personal use. Doesn't change the content of the question though!

I'm curious to hear from fellow investors - are any of you currently subscribed to paid stock screening services, investment research platforms, or financial data providers?

If you do pay for these tools, what specific features or capabilities make them worth the subscription cost for you? I'm trying to better understand what investors actually find valuable in these services.

Looking forward to learning from your experiences!

I’m interested in what everyone is using right now. What do you like and dislike about them? Do you like having one tool that does everything or multiple tools for different jobs? I feel like the “one tool for everything” is just kind of OK at everything that it does. Usually filled with a lot of bloat that really has no actual uses for analyzing companies.

Just wanted to reach out to the investing community on what investing tools you all use and if you could also list what it costs and what you like about them and what you don’t. I have been looking at tools that gives you more insight than the regular fidelity or Charles Schwab access gives you. There are services that cost you anywhere between $700-$2400 per year, as I get closer to retirement I am wondering if there are any advantages that could help me if I could subscribe to any of them. Your experiences using the tool would be helpful along with the recommendation

Curious to know what tools or services people consider the absolute best for investing. Whether it's for researching stocks, managing portfolios, or staying updated on market news—what’s your go-to?

I’m particularly interested in tools that help you identify and track businesses you fundamentally believe will grow over time, not just those driven by valuation or short-term price trends. Let me know your favorites!

Hey, I've been putting together a list of all the investing tools I could find over the last few months, and I ended up with quite a bunch.

I'm just gonna dump the list by categories here, but I also have it in a GitHub repo (open for everyone) and on a free website with filtering and searching. Those are just to make it easier for you to browse.

The thing I've liked the most about researching these tools is discovering the HIDDEN GEMS! Amazing tools I wasn’t even aware existed, and some are really cool. A few examples:

• The cost of equity and capital for US companies by sector: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/wacc.html

• Collection of stock pitches: https://www.joinyellowbrick.com

• Great for reading SEC documents, with the coolest feature being a "diff" view that shows what changed from the previous report: https://capedge.com

• Best portfolio screener I've ever used; the feature I like most is the "ranking" and backtesting: https://www.portfolio123.com

And more! I hope you find this list interesting!

For those who don’t want the GitHub repo, you can find it here And if you prefer using filters and search, check out the website

Quick note: NONE of these are affiliate links

👇 Full collection of tools by category 👇

Excel & Spreadsheet Add-ins

• MarketXLS - Excel-based market data & templates.

• Wisesheets - Spreadsheet add‑in for fundamentals & historicals.

Macro and Policy Data

• Office of Financial Research (U.S. Treasury) - Financial stability research & data.

• Federal Reserve Board (FRB.gov) - Monetary policy, releases & datasets.

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Data & Statistics - NY Fed datasets & indicators.

• FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) - Vast US macro & markets time series.

• European Central Bank (ECB) - Policy, research & statistics.

• ECB Data Portal - Euro area macro/markets statistics.

• Bank of England (Statistics & Data) - UK monetary policy & datasets.

• Bank of Japan - Statistics & Monetary Policy - BOJ policy & statistics.

• World Bank Open Data - Global development indicators.

• Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) - Trade flows & product complexity.

• BIS Data Portal (Bank for International Settlements) - Global banking & financial statistics.

• Trading Economics - Country indicators & forecasts.

• MacroMicro - Visual macro dashboards.

• CME FedWatch Tool - Implied FOMC rate probabilities.

• Damodaran Online (NYU Stern) - Valuation data & lectures.

• Damodaran - Cost of Capital by Sector (US) - Estimated WACC by US sector.

• Asset Allocation Interactive (Research Affiliates) - Expected returns & asset allocation tools.

• Macrotrends - Long‑term macro & financial charts.

• FT Markets (Markets data - Financial Times) - Market data portal.

• ICE Index Platform (ICE Data Indices) - Index & benchmark data.

Bank, Registry and Exchange Data

• FDIC - BankFind Suite (Institutions & API) - US bank lookup & API.

• NYSE (Exchange Data & Tech) - Listings, market & reference data.

• Nasdaq.com - Listings, market data & calendars.

• Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) - Listings, filings & market data.

• Find and update company information (Companies House) - UK company registry.

• OpenCorporates - Global company registries search.

• PCAOB AuditorSearch - Find registered audit firms.

ETF Screeners and Analytics

• ETF Insider

• ETF Central

• Trackinsight

• ETF Action

• ETF Research Center

• ETF.com

• ETF Database (ETFdb)

• justETF

News & Market Portals

• Bloomberg

• The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

• Barron's

• Reuters

• MarketWatch

• Benzinga

• MSN Money

• Investing.com

• Yahoo Finance

• Google Finance

• The Motley Fool

• Stock Analysis

Portfolio Tracking and Analytics

• Sharesight

• Portseido

• Track Your Dividends (TYD)

• PortfoliosLab

• Portfolio Visualizer - Portfolio backtests & Monte Carlo.

• okama - Open‑source portfolio analytics.

• Statfolio

• Stock Unlock

• Yellowbrick Investing

• Qfinr

• Invesst

• Fintool

• Roic AI

• Beanvest

• Ghostfolio

• Firefly III - Self‑hosted personal finance manager.

• Tradervue - Trade journaling & analytics.

Options and Derivatives

• OptionCharts - Options dashboards & charts.

• Options Profit Calculator - Options payoff & scenario calc.

• OptionStrat - Strategy builder & flow.

Data APIs & Quant Platforms

• OpenBB - Open‑source investment research terminal & SDK.

• QuantRocket - Quant research & live trading platform.

• QuantConnect - Cloud backtesting & live trading.

• Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) - Fundamentals & market data API.

• EODHD (EOD Historical Data) - Global end‑of‑day & fundamentals API.

• Intrinio - Market & fundamentals APIs.

• marketstack - Real‑time & historical stock data API.

• Tiingo - Market data API & feeds.

• Alpha Vantage - Free market data APIs.

Filings, Insiders and Ownership

• SEC.gov (EDGAR) - Official US company filings.

• BamSEC - Filings search & workflow.

• SEC API (sec-api.io) - Filings API & real‑time streams.

• edmundSEC - EDGAR/SEC filings search.

• CapEdge - Filings, transcripts & corporate docs.

• AlphaSense - Document search & research workspace.

• OpenInsider - Insider trades & alerts.

• SecForm4.Com - Insider Form 4 tracker.

• Insider Screener - Insider & institutional activity.

• Fintel - Ownership, holdings & short interest.

• ORTEX - Short interest & positioning analytics.

• IBorrowDesk - Stock borrow rates & availability.

• ShortSqueeze.com - Short interest analytics.

• HighShortInterest.com - High short‑interest lists.

• Strike.Market - Market dashboards & unusual activity.

• DATAROMA - Superinvestor holdings tracker.

Earnings, Transcripts and Calendars

• Earnings Hub

• Earnings Whispers

• Quartr - Company calls, decks & transcripts.

• Estimize - Crowdsourced earnings estimates.

• IPOScoop - IPO calendar & stats.

Research, Expert Networks and Market Intelligence

• Smartkarma

• In Practise

• Tegus

• Variant

• CB Insights

• Frost & Sullivan

• Euromonitor (Passport)

• IBISWorld

• Trefis

• Morningstar Investor

• GuruFocus

• Finbox

• Business Quant

• Reflexivity

• TipRanks

• Seeking Alpha

• Bridgewater Associates - Research & perspectives.

• Fiscal.ai

• Perplexity Finance

Alternative Data and Web Intelligence

• Google Trends

• Ahrefs

• Similarweb

• Sensor Tower

• Semrush

• Social Blade

• MarineTraffic - Vessel tracking & shipping intel.

• Quiver Quantitative - Crowd/alt‑data dashboards.

• Main Street Data - US economic & sector datasets.

• FlightAware

• camelcamelcamel (UK) - Amazon price history.

• Hunter - Company contact discovery.

• Glassdoor - Employee reviews & salary data.

• ConsumerAffairs - Product & service reviews.

Screeners, Charting and Models

• Koyfin

• TradingView

• MarketInOut

• StockCharts

• TC2000

• FINVIZ

• StockFetcher

• FAST Graphs

• Portfolio123

• YCharts

• Simply Wall St

• Stock Rover

• Stockopedia

• Screener.in

• TIKR

• Tickertape

• ChartMill

• Trendlyne

• Tijori Finance - Ideas Dashboard

• Danelfin

• Autochartist - Pattern recognition & alerts.

• Trefis

Dividend Research & Trackers

• Sure Dividend

• Dividend.com

• Digrin

• Dividend.watch

Brokerage and Retail Investing Apps

• Charles Schwab

• Fidelity (Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC)

• Interactive Brokers

• DEGIRO

• Robinhood

• eToro

• Markets.com

• Revolut (Invest)

• Wise (Interest & Stocks)

• N26

• Scalable Capital

• Cash App

Communities, Letters and Idea Sources

• Stocktwits

• Value Investors Club (VIC)

• ValuePickr Forum

• Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax (COBF)

• 10X EBITDA - Hedge Fund Presentations

• Wealth Hub - Hedge Fund Letters

• Investment Masters Class (MastersInvest.com)

• Finimize

• Visual Capitalist

• The Zen of Investing

Energy and Commodities

• Oilprice.com

Education & Learning

• Khan Academy (Economics & Finance)

• Investopedia

• Tweenvest

Utilities

• Diffchecker - Compare docs & snippets.

• NerdWallet Compound Interest Calculator

I'm also looking for new ideas! If you know a great tool that isn’t on the list, drop it in the comments and I’ll add it! 💪

I'm curious if there are any tools like ChatGPT, Claude—or perhaps even more advanced ones that you're using to assist with your investment decisions or enhance the efficiency.

I invest on the side and mostly use TradingView, Yahoo Finance, and spreadsheets.

Portfolio-level risk is still the part I find hardest to understand — lots of data, not always clear conclusions.

Curious how others here approach this.

I'm curious about the tools and methods you all use for investment analysis - and please mention whether you're a professional in the field or someone who invests as a side activity. Are you using specific software platforms? Do you rely on multiple tools, or have you created your own system with Excel spreadsheets and custom analysis templates? What drove you to choose your particular approach?

Curious to find out what are some of the best tools for stock research and overall DD that most people are using.

This is what I'm currently using:

Fintel: https://fintel.io/

• Fintel is my go-to to find short interest and institutional ownership data.

Open Insider: http://openinsider.com/

• I've been using Open Insider to look for stacked insider buying info, cluster buys, etc.

SimplyWallstreet: https://simplywall.st/

• My go to for distilled fundamental analysis. The "snowflake score" feature is pretty useful for comparative data benchmarking.

What are your go-to stock research tools?

EDIT: Thank you for all the resource suggestions.

Based on the input that I've received from everyone via comments and dm's these are some additional resources and tools that everyone seems to love:

Trading View: http://www.tradingview.com/

• Best stock performance charts in the game.

Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/

• The go-to for stock market news and content.

Public: https://public.com/

• Similar to Robinhood but with much better community features.

Option Samurai: https://optionsamurai.com/

• The de-facto tool for options scanning.

Validea: https://www.validea.com/

• Factor-based models based on strategies from legendary investors.

Curious what this sub pays for because I feel like I'm either overpaying or missing something.

Free tiers of most platforms are fine for basics but limited in annoying ways. Premium pricing is $30 to $50 monthly which adds up fast.

Currently piecing things together. Yahoo for quick checks, SEC site for filings, random free tools for screening. Works but clunky.

Considering paying for something but can't decide. Koyfin seems powerful. Tikr looks clean. Tried valuesense recently and it surprised me. Morningstar premium exists too.

For those paying for investing tools for fundamental analysis, what made you pick yours? Do you use it enough to justify cost or is it a subscription you forget about?

I want to be a long-term/passive investor and looking for more resources to help me. I don't want to try and get rich overnight, I just want to slowly and safely make my money work for me.

It has taken me years to reach a point where I have money to invest, so I want to be tactical about it. I’m also not at a point where I need a financial advisor, so I got the next best thing: Reddit. Like I said, I intend on being a more long-term/passive investor and looking for more resources to help me. What do you use that helps you ?

Premium Tools Worth the Investment

• Tegus ($$$) - Comprehensive database containing expert network calls across industries. Excellent for deep industry research with a user-friendly mobile interface

• InsiderScore by Verity ($) - Advanced screening platform for tracking executive changes, audit firm switches, stock buybacks, and insider trading patterns. Includes detailed historical data on board members

• TheTikr (~$15/month) - Streamlined platform for analyzing financial statements and earnings call transcripts. Known for its intuitive interface

• VisualPing (~$25/month) - Website monitoring service that alerts you to changes in company websites, executive biographies, or disclosure documents

• Bedrock AI ($) - Emerging technology that uses machine learning to identify potential red flags in regulatory filings

Essential Free Research Tools

• SEC Full-Text Search - Navigate through two decades of SEC filings with advanced search capabilities for terms, individuals, or organizations

• PCAOB Auditor Search - Research audit firms and individual partners, including their complete audit history and any disciplinary actions

• OpenCorporates - Comprehensive database for researching private company executives, board composition, and state registrations

• ROIC AI - Access to three decades of financial statement data with visualization tools

• SocialBlade - Analytics platform for tracking company and individual social media metrics

Market Data Resources

• IBorrowDesk - Real-time tracking of stock borrow rates and short sale availability

• ShortSqueeze - Comprehensive short interest data and analytics

• OpenInsider - Real-time and historical insider trading activity tracker

• Dataroma - Analytics platform showing major hedge fund portfolio holdings

• Finviz Industry Charts - Sector-based chart generator for identifying potential investment opportunities

Consumer Research Tools

• CFPB Complaint Database - Searchable repository of consumer complaints filed with federal regulators

• Glassdoor - Employee reviews and salary data for company culture analysis

• Blind - Anonymous professional network focusing on tech industry insights

• SiteJabber & TrustPilot - Aggregators of consumer reviews for online businesses

• BBB - Non-profit platform providing business ratings and consumer complaint history

Healthcare Industry Resources

• Open Payments Data - Database tracking payments from healthcare companies to medical professionals

• CMS Drug Spending - Transparency tool for Medicare/Medicaid pharmaceutical expenditures

Research Enhancement Tools

• Wayback Machine - Digital archive showing historical versions of company websites

• Google Trends - Analysis tool for search volume patterns over time

• ListenNotes - Podcast transcript search engine for industry research

• Quartr App - Mobile application providing access to earnings call recordings

• PlotDigitizer - Tool for extracting numerical data from charts and graphs

Classic Investment Literature

• Charlie Munger's collected partnership letters

• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway shareholder communications

• Nick Sleep's Nomad Capital investor correspondence

• François Rochon's Giverny Capital letters

• Michael Burry's Scion Capital partnership documents

• Benjamin Graham's partner communications

• Bob Wilmers' M&T Bank annual letters

• "The Makings of a Multibagger" - Analysis of top-performing stocks

• "Confessions of a Capital Junkie" - Sergio Marchionne's automotive industry analysis

• "Financial Fraud Throughout History" - Jim Chanos' Yale course materials

Additional Resources

• ValueInvestorsClub - Community platform for investment thesis sharing

• r/growth_investing - Great subreddit for discussion on growth stocks

• Zer0es TV - Investment interviews focusing on short-selling perspectives

• StockPerks - Database of shareholder perks offered by public companies

• 10x EBITDA - Archive of activist investor presentations

If you've found other valuable resources for investment research that aren't listed here, please share them in the comments below.

I’m trying to simplify my investing process and reduce tool clutter.

Curious what people here actually rely on day-to-day.

If you had to narrow it down to your core stack, what are your main tools?

For example where do you go for:

• Financial statements
• Filings & transcripts
• Valuation work
• Portfolio tracking
• Idea generation

Do you mostly stick to EDGAR + Excel?
Or are there tools you genuinely find worth paying for?

Trying to understand what experienced investors actually use in practice.

Most "best tools" lists in this space are either outdated by a year or written by someone who trialed something for a week. I've put real time into each of these, so here's where I actually land

tikr: Strongest for historical financials, especially segment-level data across business divisions. If you're analyzing a conglomerate or a business where consolidated numbers paper over what's happening underneath, being able to pull margin trends at the division level going back a decade changes the quality of the analysis. Dense interface but it clicks into place once you're inside it.

koyfin: Best for custom dashboards and sector-wide comparisons. More useful as a first-pass layer than a deep-dive instrument. Strong for macro overlays and cross-sector work, less compelling when you're trying to build real conviction on a single name.

valuesense: The dcf and intrinsic value tooling is the core draw. It's built specifically around value investing methodology and you can feel that in what the platform prioritizes and how the data is structured. Focused scope rather than broad coverage which I think is a strength not a limitation mostly

stockanalysis: Completely free and frankly better than most paid tools for clean financial statement access. No real modeling capability but for income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow trend reading it's hard to beat at zero cost

openinsider: Aesthetically rough but the insider transaction data is free and it surfaces a signal that standard screeners leave on the table entirely

None of these replace judgment obviously but doing serious fundamental research without structured data access is just adding friction to your own process for no reason.

I've been messing around with a bunch of "AI investing" stuff lately. Half of it feels like a magic eight ball. The other half buries me in twelve tabs of charts. I’m trying to figure out which tools actually improve my decisions vs just making me feel busy and smart.

My wish list is simple: less wizardry, more clarity. If a tool helps me understand how money is actually moving or compresses the noisy stuff into a few interpretable signals, I'm in. I’m not expecting a crystal ball, just fewer dumb trades.

So far I’ve tried a mix of LLM prompts, screeners, and a couple signal focused apps. The ones that translate complex data into something like a simple 0 to 100 read I can sanity check in one glance have been easiest to stick with. Not financial advice, just one retail brain trying to avoid FOMO.

If you've got a favorite AI tool for research or risk management, what is it and why did it stick? Extra points if it teaches a repeatable process instead of just spitting tickers. Curious how everyone else is handling this?

Hi everyone! I am wondering what online investment tools/platforms everyone uses to construct portfolios? What kind of investing tools do you look for in an online platform?
I understand if some prefer not to use online platforms to construct portfolios. In that case, what general investing ideas/theories does everyone use?
I appreciate your feedback. Thanks!