If you’re like most of our members, you do some stock research on your own on top of reading the information in Cabot Dividend Investor. There are thousands of places to get free investing information online, and I’m sure you have your favorites, but today I want to share some of the sources that I have found most useful, reliable and unique. One of them may be able to give you a new perspective on some of the stocks you own.
Basic Information
For a quick look at any stock, I find Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance fairly comparable (google.com/finance and finance.yahoo.com). Both provide basic information like prices, trading volume and P/E ratios, and some basic earnings data. Yahoo has a bit more information, but also more annoying ads. I like Google’s charts better.
You can also find a lot of basic information on most brokers’ websites.
Financial Data
Morningstar is the best free source of financial data I know (morningstar.com). Their site supplies 10 years of annual financial information for free, as well as five years of more detailed financials (and five quarters of quarterly data). If you want to look up payout ratios, margins, cash flow or debt levels, go here. It also has good valuation data, including current and forward P/E ratios, price-to-book ratios and PEG ratios.
Analyst Estimates and Opinions
You can find a large number of analyst estimates on both Zacks (zacks.com) and Yahoo Finance. Both have some gaps in their knowledge—if you don’t see any analyst estimates on one, check the other. They usually have slightly different numbers, but you can get a good idea of earnings growth estimates and whether analyst estimates have been moving up.
I rarely read research reports, but if you’re interested in analyst opinions, many brokers provide their customers with access to analyst research.
News
Seeking Alpha is good at aggregating all the recent news, press releases and analyst comments about a stock. They’re also a reliable source of earnings call transcripts. If you create a portfolio on their site (free), you can also sign up for email alerts on your stocks. However, I suggest you take “analysis” by Seeking Alpha contributors with a grain of salt; while some are intelligent, most are not professionals (and some have conflicts of interest.)
Technical Analysis
I don’t do as much technical analysis as some of my Cabot growth colleagues, so I usually find Google Finance charts work fine for my needs. I use yCharts when I want to make and export nicer-looking charts (creating more than a couple a month requires a premium subscription). They also have a wide range of economic data, so you can chart the utilities index against interest rates, for example.
Dividend Information
Yahoo Finance keeps a comprehensive list of every dividend a stock has ever paid (go to Historical Data, show Dividends Only, and set the date range to max).
For pre-digested dividend information, such as how many years in a row a stock has increased its dividend, go to Dividend.com. Their site is also one of the most reliable and up-to-date sources of ex-dividend dates and payment dates.
Investing Ideas
Stock screeners are a great way to find new investment ideas you may not have thought of. (I recommend them above trolling the Internet for stocks other people are writing about.)
The free screener on Finviz.com offers plenty of functionality for most investors (finviz.com/screener.ashx). Just set some parameters, like yield, industry or EPS growth expectations, and the screener will return a list of stocks that may be interesting to you.
Other Information
Investopedia has loads of free articles on investing terms, concepts and strategies. It’s the place to go when you have questions like “what’s a standard deviation?” or “how are MLP distributions taxed?”
MarketWatch compiles a nice list of weekly economic reports, and includes analyst expectations vs. the results (marketwatch.com/economy-politics/calendars/economic).
Bloomberg is a good source of price information on commodities and currencies (bloomberg.com).
As for interest rate data, CNBC and MarketWatch both chart 10-year yields, a quick way to check which way interest rates are moving (cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=US10Y). For more detailed information on interest rates, including the yield curve, I use the U.S. Treasury’s website (treasury.gov). And you can check one measure of rate hike expectations using CME Group’s FedWatch tool (cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html).
Cabot Website
Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention our own website, CabotWealth.com, where you can watch our weekly videos, read all the back issues of our advisories, and find great educational articles and timely market commentary. Prime members also get a weekly digest of our recommendations, a weekly Q&A, and a quarterly market report and conference call.