Have you decided to quit your job and start trading stocks? Or maybe you’re still trying to get your foot in the door. Either way, you want to know where to get started. You’ve considered all of the options, but you aren’t sure which platform is best for your needs.
Maybe the best thing to do is consider several stock trading platforms and determine which one would be ideal for what you’re trying to accomplish. Here are the best stock platform Australia!
Morning Brew
Morning Brew is a free 5-minute daily digest covering the latest stock market news and investing trends. I personally like the recaps as I can see the key happenings in the stock market that I can use to find new investment ideas and also plan my financial future.
You can then use the Brew’s findings to research stocks in a stock screener or with your online broker.
Analyzing WMT with Finscreener
Finscreener
Finscreener is another in-depth tool that makes it easy to analyze stock fundamentals and so basic technical analysis. Some of the advanced features you may like include:
- Insider trading
- SEC filings
- Technical charts
- Financial charts
- Heat maps and bubble charts
You can also use Finscreener to track and screen forex, commodities and cryptocurrency.
Catch two large investing headlines every morning. Finimize takes up to 3 minutes total to read.
Finimize
Finimize is a free daily newsletter that tells you about the two largest market events from the day before. Maybe it’s earning reports, a proposed merger, or new product launches. It only takes a few minutes to read the free report and it’s an easy way to keep track of market happenings and gauge public sentiment.
The AskFinny homepage with trending questions. Don’t be afraid to ask your own.
AskFinny
AskFinny is a growing AI-powered question and answer tool. It’s kinda like Google and Quora in one platform. You can view trending investing questions and some of the most popular. Maybe you’re a beginner investor and don’t know what to ask yet. Meet AskFinny.
Another reason I like this tool is the detailed pros (bull case) and cons (bear case) for each company. The research is pretty good for a free tool. You can access this information:
- Price charts
- Key finance stats and company description
- Analyst opinions
- Recent news articles and press releases
My benchmark for most research sites is stock ticker NSC (Norfolk Southern) because I worked there for 7 years. I have a good insight into the company. I appreciate the sources for the fundamental data and easy-to-use platform.
eSignal
- Available: eSignal
- Price: $176/mo
eSignal is a comprehensive stock trading software. It has research capabilities and advanced charting. Users have access to global coverage of stocks, bonds, funds, derivatives, forex, and alert features.
eSignal has different levels of complexity and is available at various price points depending on how many features you want.
Upgraded tiers allow you to download data, see extended histories, and conduct backtesting. If you’re brand new to investing, eSignal might be too complex and expensive for you.
People who are unsure if they have enough investing experience to make good use of the software can do a free trial to test it out.
Seeking Alpha – Best for Investment Research + Stock Recommendations
- Available: Sign up here
- Price: Free; $19.99/mo billed annually for Premium (or $29.99/mo monthly); $199.99/mo billed annually for Pro (or $299.99/mo monthly); contains ads and in-app purchases
Seeking Alpha Premium caters to the needs of intermediate and advanced investors looking for an affordable, all-inclusive, one-stop-shop for their investing needs.
Seeking Alpha Premium acts as an all-in-one investing research and recommendation service that offers insightful analysis of financial news, stocks, and more—all designed to help you make better investing decisions.
Whether you’re looking to invest on the go or dedicate time for more in-depth research and analysis, Seeking Alpha provides features that meet your needs.
No other site provides what Seeking Alpha does, providing unlimited access to everything from:
- Earnings calls transcripts
- Seeking Alpha Author Ratings and Author Performance metrics
- 10 years worth of financial statements
- Ability to compare stocks side-by-side with peers
- Access to dividend and earnings forecasts and much, much more.
Finviz Stock Screener
- Who it’s for: All levels
- Price: Free for the basic version, $25 a month for Finviz Elite
By far one of the most intuitive and easiest stock screening tools available on the market, Finviz is an asset for both beginning traders and seasoned professionals alike.
The name Finviz comes from a combination of the words financial and visualization, referring to the site’s wide array of candlestick charts and easy-to-comprehend visuals that tell you how the market is doing with a single glance.
Finviz’s stock screener is impressive, sorting and scanning stocks with over 60 technical, descriptive, and fundamental characteristics.
Access to Finviz’s real-time market data comes with its $25 per month Elite version — but for professional traders, this is money well spent for a gold mine of data.
Best For
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Morningstar
- Available: Sign up here
- Price: Free 14-day trial and then $199 for 1 year; $339 for 2 years; $439 for 3 years; or $23.95 monthly
Morningstar is a popular resource for investors looking to find, evaluate, and monitor investments which best meet their interests and needs.
The company has provided market and stock research for almost four decades and prides itself on its independence and reputation for objectivity.
The service includes access to stock screeners, research reports and in-depth analysis to assess your investing options.
Moomoo
- Who it’s for: Cost-conscious traders
- Price: Free
Moomoo was designed as a platform for smart trading, while investors can also enjoy the benefits of low fees.
This mobile trading platform built their advanced tools well-organized in one app. It’s free and easy to use for both beginners and experienced traders. A host of research tools can help you make smart investment decisions. There’s also a paper trading feature with real-time data if you want to simulate the investment experience before going all in.
Moomoo allows you to invest when it’s convenient for you. You can initiate trades whether to go or at home, with your customized set-ups synced on different devices. Plus, there’s no minimum deposit to open an account.
StockCharts: Best for Advanced Charts & Experts Analysis
Worthy of consideration is StockCharts.com, which also comes with a solid recommendation. Worth mentioning are the sharp charts, which are visually impressive, and its array of exotic indicators may excite the more advanced investor. One thing to mention, this service offers excellent Point and Figure Charts, which, to my knowledge, no other free service offers.
Missing trend lines, rolling EPS, and a weak news service do not do it justice. They do also offer, like the other service providers, a monthly Membership service with increased functionality.-
Yahoo Finance: Good Free Charts + Broker Integration
Yahoo has updated its interactive charting experience, it is a clean experience and full screen, so now it is actually very good indeed. With 114 different technical indicators, you are well covered with Yahoo Finance. The interactive charts also now allow you to draw trendlines, linear regressions, and even quadrant lines. A nice new addition is that Yahoo now provides real-time quotes and charts via the BATS system.
Yahoo Finance is working hard to make its charting system a respectable alternative to other free vendors. They have actually done something quite innovative. You can now trade stocks through the Yahoo Finance charts. Yahoo has partnered with “Trade.It” which essentially provides an interface to transport trade requests to many mainstream US brokers.
This means, using Yahoo, you can trade stocks with your broker. It is a nice feature, but if you have a brokerage account, you will already have access to real-time data, charts, and quotes and can trade directly with them, so it seems a little redundant but still a step forward.
Research & News
Yahoo finance does provide a news aggregation engine and actually contributes original news via the Yahoo Finance news team. If you opt for Yahoo Finance Premium, you will get a good selection of analyst research reports. These are static reports which could be useful, but again for the price tag of $49.99 per month, it might not be worth it because most mainstream brokers offer research reports for free. In fact, Firstrade offers free stock trades and research reports from both Zacks and Morningstar.
Profit & Loss & Performance Reporting
Yahoo Finance can connect to a wide variety of brokers. It can then download your stock position data and then perform analytics on your portfolio, but again you will require the overpriced Yahoo Premium subscription. There is currently no functionality in Yahoo Finance Premium for Portfolio Weighting & Rebalancing or Automated Portfolio Management.
However, they do provide reporting on your Portfolio Asset Allocation per industry sector and dividend income reporting.
[Related Article: The Top 10 Best Stock Trading Platforms. Trade From Charts]
However, Yahoo has climbed from nearly last place to fourth place in this review thanks to their constant improvements. Coming in higher than Google in our review, Yahoo, it seems, can do at least one thing better than Google.
Conclusion
Many beginners start out by choosing a stock trading platform at random. This is not the right way. The right way to do it instead is to choose one that suits your needs best. It should be easy to use, fast and it should offer plenty of useful information about the products you are choosing to buy.