The Best Stock Market Websites

This is the 2nd article in the series The Beginner’s Guide to Online Trading. The information is free in every way so why not subscribe to RSS to get the latest updates.

If you want to be a Jedi master, you’re going to need a light saber. Prior to the online trading revolution of the late 90’s most traders needed to fork out mega cash to get even a basic data feed, often over a slow dial-up modem. You can be thankful those days are behind us.

Information is power in the equities markets and you can see examples of this every single trading day. I could ramble on about the importance of a trade station, news feeds, or other tools, but for now you should get familiar with the basic services available to every online trader. As usual we prefer free versus paid, so all of these offer free services.

Traders’ Toolset: The Best Stock Market Websites

• Google Finance – Awesome stock tools, real-time quotes, killer flash charts, the best financials online. Yep we love Google. Most basic research can begin here.
• Yahoo Finance – The original finance site, and still an important source of news and data not available anywhere else. Although not free of trolls, I still like the Yahoo stock message boards.
• Finviz – Newer site (started 2007) with web 2.0 style charts and visuals, as well as another good stock screener.
• StockTwits – As it turns out Twitter + stock trading = huge WIN. The Stocktwits desktop app is a great addition to any trade station, and a very useful learning platform.
• Profit.ly – A unique website for investors to share their trades with others and follow the trades of some other big name traders.
• ShortSqueeze – Find short interest for stocks, useful in detecting a short squeeze. Still mostly free.
• StockCharts – Another oldy but a goody. One of the best websites online for building free stock charts with a plethora of options and indicators.
• Investimonials – A great place to discover other financial portals and websites, with most of them rated by fellow traders.
• The Fool – Still the original stock trading website, originally started on AOL and still going strong. Track investors picks and current articles on the hottest stocks and trends.
• ADVFN – Started in the UK in 1999 and is of the oldest stock market portals out there. Covers global markets and has a lively message board as well as data feed services.
• SeekingAlpha – Another old favorite SeekingAlpha highlights market pundits and bloggers from all walks of life. A great place to find stocks worth buying or gauge market sentiment.
• NYSE / Nasdaq – The official websites for the exchanges are also a great way to find SEC and financial information often not available elsewhere.
• ThinkorSwim – Okay I realize these guys are a broker but their free desktop trading app is a very good and free alternative to the paid options out there. Supports both PC and Mac and has some of the most complex charting tools available. Simply make a free paper trading account to use ThinkorSwim.
• QuoteTracker – Long time favourite of many technical traders, this company was bought out by Ameritrade in 2008. The software however, is still developed and completely free to download and use.
• MetaTrader4 / MetaTrade5 – Very popular applications for charting and trading forex and futures markets. Support automated trading.
• A great way to stay current with daily stock market news, and the best stock blogs is right here at StockRants. We aggregate the top sources!

I hope some of you find this useful and would love to hear some of your own favorites in the comments.

Next up: How to Keep a Trading Journal. Don’t forget to subscribe to RSS to get the latest updates.