The Best Stock Market Sites of Them All
I'm often asked what are the best stock-related sites on the web? Here's my list of my personal favorites.
For me, a real favorite is Yahoo! Finance. This site has a great depth of information on stocks. Once you type in a quote on a stock, say 'AAPL' for Apple Computer, there is a blue column on the left with about 20 different topics. Clicking on any of these will bring up great detail on that topic. Sample topics include charts, news headlines, financial blogs, company profile and, my favorite, 'Key Statistics' - a one-page summary of all the key numerical statistics on the company.
What the heck is Investopedia? Well, it's a great place to learn, that's what it is. This site is chock-full of educational articles on a wide variety of topics. Best of all, it's easily navigated with links in the black bar on the left. Click on the 'Articles' topic there and you then get about 20 topic areas such as 'investing basics', 'Forex', 'bonds', 'retirement' and more. Click on any and you'll find dozens of articles. Here's a great sample article Ostrich Approach To Investing A Bird-Brained Idea . With a title like that, how can you resist clicking through and reading?
The Motley Fool. What a wild name for an investing advice site. I still don't know what it means. Be warned, the goal of this site is to get you to give them money - they want you to subscribe to their site to get their premium advice. It might be a good deal, I don't know, I've never tried it. I just can't get myself to subscribe to sites like this - I'm always asking myself, 'if their investing advice is so great, why haven't they made a zillion dollars following it themselves and retired by now?' Nevertheless, I like 'the Fool' as a site because they always have some freely accessible articles that are very topical to today's market conditions, and based on solid fundamentals. Take this article, for example, where they say:
"But when my colleague Tim Hanson and I looked back at the 10 best-performing mutual funds of the past decade, we found two factors that mattered most: low expenses/fees and long-tenured managers."
How can you not like this kind of writing - where investing advice matches common sense: keep your costs low, and align yourself with managers who have both a track record and a commitment.
Your online brokerage's website such as Schwab.com and ETrade.com. I don't want to sell you on one online brokerage over another. But in recent years I've experienced two personally both Schwab & ETrade and I can recommend them. Both of these online brokerages made a wealth of information and tools available to account holders who are logged in to their accounts. The tools range from awesome real time quotes to model portfolios and Morningstar reports. The power and breadth of the tools and information has to exceed what even professional traders had available even ten years ago.
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The guys at Vanguard practically invented the modern truism that one of the keys to successful long term investing is to keep your costs as low as possible. Their various fund products are regularly rated top performers and low cost leader. Their website, as befits stalwart stewards such as they, provides some excellent educational material.
Want my one sentence, 10 minute road to stock market wealth? Here it is: pick a firm such as Vanguard and invest small amounts of money every month into 4 or 5 of their diversified funds, and you'll end up wealthy in a few decades. It's that simple.
You should also see our list of additional recommended stock market sites.
