Tools I Use

I would like to highlight some of the tools I use when investing.

1. MarketWatch.com. MarketWatch is one of the most useful sites I have come across, and it's free.

I use this site to track my portfolio online, and of all the portfolio sites I have tried, this one is by far the easiest one to enter information into. The site also has interesting and up-to-date articles. But in my opinion, the most useful feature of all is the stock quotes it provides. The "Profile" view tells me basically everything that I want to know. The link takes to the quote for DUK, and it shows you the profitability, basic information about the company (including location and # of employees), Per Share data (including earnings, P/E, cash flow, annual dividend, and book value - some of the most important things I want to know), many of the different rations (return on equity, price/earnings, etc.), Insider Transactions, News, and there's even a link to download the current annual report (for many stocks). Most of the categories can be expanded on by clicking on it.

This is basically the same information you can find on other good sites like Morningstar, Google, Yahoo, etc, but all on one page! When I'm researching, I hate having to keep clicking on different pages to see all the information. Having most all the information all together is wonderful!

2. DividendInvestor.com. This site is an absolute neccesity for information about a dividend.

It tells you things like the average 5-year yield, the current payout ratio and 5-yr average, dividend growth rate, years of dividend increases, and important dates for the dividend (Declaration, ex-dividend, record, and payout dates). It also tells you if the stock is available for direct investment through a plan (be warned that if the company does not sponser the plan themselves, there's usually a bunch of fees involved). The only thing it does lack is a history of the dividends.

3. For a history of dividends, I use Yahoo Finance.

Go to the Historical Prices and select "Dividends Only". This allows me to easily see a listing of all the dividends the stock has paid. There is also a Messege Board for each stock, and sometimes it's very helpful and on topic (as in the case for BGS/BGF) and other times the posts are not even related to the stock (DUK). I did not care for the portfolio tool.

4. I also like to go to Schwab.com for reports.

It's free to open an account with Schwab (you can even open an account and invest only $100 in a mutual fund). One of the benefits of having an account is the stock reports they provide you with. You'll get the S&P report, and many stocks have an Argus Research Report, which I find very helpful. For a mutual fund, Schwab has their own reports that puts a whole bunch of information all in one place.

5. Morningstar.com.

Though I don't like Morningstar's setup (involves too many clicks to get information, and I keep being reminded with a pop-up to sign up for their Premium Membership, which gets very annoying real fast!), if you're looking at a mutual fund or an ETF, the Portfolio information is very helpful in letting you know what is in it. You can also see the top 25 holdings (though I wish you could see all of them).

Also, you can put a list of stocks in your portfolio and set different alerts. I set this up so that I would recieve an e-mail when any of my stocks paid a dividend, but this seems to be hit or miss. I tried using Morningstar for my portfolio, but I found it was time consuming to add or change information about your holdings.

A month ago, I wrote a review of the Premium Membership at Morningstar.

If you use different tools, please leave a comment and let me know.