Speak with any successful trader and they will tell you that the secret to making money on the stock market is to do your research.

The problem is that with so much information out there and so many potential shares to buy, how do you collect, collate and understand all of the data?

In this post, we are looking at the 5 best tools you can use to make your life easier and your investing much more profitable.

• Companies House beta service
• Scanners
• Pocket
• Google sheets
• Technical analysis tools

Companies House beta service

If you are a fundamental trader, in other words, you look at the results of a company to decide whether you wish to invest, then you need to find your way to the rather special Companies House Beta Service.

This is a government service that makes company information available online including filed company accounts, details of directors and charges that have been registered on the company assets.

The great thing is that all of the information is public and available to download for free, meaning that setting up a fundamental analysis of your target company is a piece of cake.

You can even set alerts so that when any other information is filed for your watched companies, you get an email.
This has to be the first port of call for anyone who wants to invest in shares.

Stock scanners

If you have a list of target shares, or even if you are looking at the market trying to choose opportunities then you could spend hours a day sifting through market information to inform your decision making.

If this is the case then stock scanners should be a useful resource.

A stock scanner allows you to set criteria for shares that you’d like to invest in like volume traded, p/e ratio or sector.

Then the software does its work, analysing thousands of shares in seconds and identifying potential targets for you to buy.

There are a large number of scanners out there and as with all things, they vary widely in price and quality and they also vary depending upon the type of criteria you want to set.

Technical scanners allow you to set chart criteria, fundamental will deal with ratio analysis and these can be split down further into intraday (what the market does when it’s open) and post-market (based on a closed market).

You can choose to look at specific sectors and only consider shares that fall into your ringfenced option or you can look across the market.

Stock scanners make a huge difference to the amount of time you have to invest in identifying possible targets so that you can then carry out your in-depth research on the shares it finds.

Pocket

Imagine you are browsing the web one day and you find a snippet of information about a company and you decide that you’d like to save it for later research.

Pocket is a free tool that allows you to snip from the web and save for later.

This has the benefit that you can then go back to your pocket when you have time and carry out further research, adding each piece of data as you go and tagging them with the name of the company.

You can even include original source links to build up a full picture of potential share purchases.

For sentiment or noise traders, this is ideal because it is a simple way to drag all the information you need to make a decision into one place and course information for fundamental analysis such as company reports can be included too.

Google sheets

So you have your information and you make your buy but how do you keep a record of your transactions?

Google Sheets is the perfect place to set up a spreadsheet of your trades and value your current portfolio. You can buy expensive portfolio management software out there but frankly, for most people, the free options provided by Sheets is all they need.

You can use the extensive financial formulas to work out information like yield and earnings and your records can be used for completing your self-assessment returns.
Again this is a free service and as it lives in the cloud you can access it anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.

Technical analysis tools

Some stock traders fall into the category of a technical investor.

A technical trader will use specifics of the market like trading volume and historical pricing to decide which shares to invest in. The theory behind this is that markets are essentially cyclical and by analysing huge amounts of data you can spot trends and act accordingly.

Which is great if you work for a top trading house because city brokers have access to the latest software but not so good if you are trading on your own account.

The good news is that there are a large number of technical trading tools out there that can help you analyse market dynamics and identify and keep an eye on potential targets.

Like most things available on the web, there’s good and bad out there.

Some are free and some charge a hefty subscription fee but to put it in context, how many excellent trades would you have to complete to pay a month’s subscription?

The best suggestion is to have a go with the free options and see if they offer what you need, if not search out something more sophisticated and of course more expensive.

Using tech to take the strain

We’re blessed today with so many different forms of tech that is seems silly not to use as much as we can when looking to invest.

Our picks have been chosen to give a mix of simple and sophisticated tools that can be free or paid for so that you have a variety of options.

Why not check out some of our suggestions and see if they are right for you?