Tools I use
These are the main tools I use in my investment research process. Please note, this is not an endorsement and I am in no way getting paid to recommend them. Over time, I have experimented with multiple tools and found these to be the most useful for my process. Before we jump to the list, a quick summary of my process:
Quick Glance & Screening - First step in picking stocks, I use is a quick glance at what the business does, high level metrics including - Market Cap, Debt on book, revenue, margins and growth. For stocks in my portfolio, I look at the daily % change. If any of them are moving more than +/- 3%, I check for any news on them.
Bottom up deep dive - If I think the business is analysable (based on my circle of competence and complexity of the business), I pick up their recent 10K or Annual Reports. I prefer annual reports as they sometimes have letters to shareholders. 10K feels like reading a very dry textbook.
The tools I use pretty much end here. Beyond deep-dives, it is mostly Excel and reading more 10Ks & Annual Reports.
Tools for Quick Glance & Screening
This section is where I try to use most of the tools. Honestly I could be using lesser tools but I prefer having the optionality as some of them stop working for certain stocks or not cover certain geographies, markets etc.
Google Finance
Google Finance commands on Sheets is a super-power. If you have the time and patience, you can build a dashboard covering key stocks, ETFs, Indices into one sheet that will get updated real time. The idea comes from Roaring Kitty (Thank you Keith Gill!). I must confess - I screenshotted his sheets from his live-streams and created mine word for word. Here is mine:
It lights up for certain range of percentages. So I always know which ones to take a quick look first. Rest I ignore.
Screeners
My favourite screeners are ones with very limited conditions. Earlier I used to set very pre-defined conditions. But these days I have switched to a more brute force method. Technically, I use more lists and less ‘screens’.
Also you must know that I am a cheapskate. So where possible, I try to avoid paying for premium features. Most below have amazing premium features that I have decided to live without (except Seeking Alpha).
But if you are into screeners, here are my top picks:
Seeking Alpha (US, Canada, UK, Australia) - Seeking Alpha has one of the best screeners out there. Granted it is not super user-friendly but if you would like to cover multiple geos, SA does a great job. Yahoo Finance had a great screener too but they tried to update it and now it constantly crashes or refreshes.
Screener.in (India) - This is my go-to screener for Indian stocks. My favourite feature in this is ability to give SQL type commands such as ‘Market Cap > XX M AND P/E < YY OR P/B < ZZ’. Strangely this amazing feature has not been copied by anyone else.
Finviz (US listed) - Minimalistic website that offers extensive filters to run screens & comes with good charts, recent news
OTCMarkets - If you are looking for those OTC traded, Pink, Expert Market stocks, OTC Market has a default screener. The filters are not extensive but enough to get the job done
Fundamentals
To clarify, I look at fundamentals twice. One for quick glance and one while doing my deep-dive. Quick glances are usually for high-level metrics where I use some tools. But for deep-dives I usually build the model on excel by inputting numbers off 10Ks manually. There is something about building those models from scratch which force you to spend time on every metric that gets missed when you are reading it off a ready-made table. Enough pontification.
Income statement, Balance Sheet & Cashflows
Quickfs - This has become my go-to website for analysing fundamentals. The free tier offers US and Canada stocks while premium feature offers EU and Australia too. Very neat and beautiful interface.
Roic.ai - Another great website with data going by decades in some cases. I find the interface a bit difficult to read but their Value line lookalike interface is a sweet call-back to those yesteryears.
Insider Buying
OpenInsider has the best collection and most up to date information on Insider buying. But this is only listed to US listed stocks (OTC ones are not listed here either)
Ownership
Whale Wisdom and Yahoo Finance has good repository of Ownership details such as who owns the stock, how much % is owned. Sometimes it is good to ride the coattails of super investors! ;)
13-Fs
Whale Wisdom and Dataroma offer really good details on what the funds are buying and selling. I use this mainly as an idea generation tools.
Beyond this, tools have lower utility for me. It boils down doing the grunt work of reading pages and pages of reports and building excel models from scratch. If you like to discuss further, you can always reach out to me on X here.