3 FREE investment support tools that I use
When it comes to investing, there are many things that we need to pay attention to in order to make sound investments. Here are 3 investment tools that I have been using and have helped to support me in my investment journey.
(1) The only news update tool I use
Needless to say, it is important to keep up to date with all the news in the world. More so when it comes to news related to our investee and also potential investees.
To that end, I utilise Google Alerts.
As most of us (if not all) uses Google Search Engine as our default nowadays, this tool searches the web daily for any articles (news or otherwise) that contain the keywords we want and collate them into an email which will be delivered to our registered Gmail.
How it works?
Firstly, key in the names of the companies I want updated:
With this, I will get notifications daily in my mail if anything comes up (I changed under settings to get “Digest” once a day so that I don’t get spammed with various emails daily.
Granted, the content can sometimes be just nonsense as it delivers everything with the keyword inputs. However, it also captures any meaningful news in the market. Just need to check it once a day.
(2) Analysis Tools
Investing requires us to digest a bunch of information, which includes the financials, the business developments, any change in management, etc.
The company’s quarterly earnings reports and also annual reports is a good source for the full information, but we need something better that can showcase trends, analysis and everything under the sun in one click.
- For this, I use a combination of Investing.com and i3Investor for my Malaysian portfolio. Both have done a good job at compiling all the information on the companies and is easy to use.
- For US portfolio, I use Seeking Alpha. This is a very powerful website with not just the information of the company, but also various analysis done by others in the same site.
They also have the function to keep track of your portfolio for you, so make sure to make full use of that. SeekingAlpha has the function to send news and analysis notifications to your email.
The key to utilising these tools is to firstly understand what we are looking at and for. Else, the overwhelming data in these sites will flood our minds and paralyze us. Hence, understanding financial statements is the basic anyone should have before diving into these.
Remember to bookmark these websites or install the apps in your phones!
(3) The “Good ol’ Excel” tracker
It is important to track the performance of our investment.
I remember not tracking any of investment during the first year of my investment journey. I relied solely on what is shown on my investment platform to tell me if I was making money or not. What was lacking was key information such as how much returns, how long was the position held for, dividend income, etc.
I had no idea about any of those other than my total investment capital has grown.
So thereafter, I relied on using Excel to track all my investment to keep an eye on how my portfolio is doing. I use Excel because it’s very versatile and can be adjusted at any time to incorporate new / remove old elements.
I’d love to share a template that can be used by the public, but the current format I use is a bit complicated. Maybe when I have the time i’ll update and simplify it so that anyone can just pick and go with it.
In Closing
These are the 3 main investment support tools that I use. I’m sure there are many others out there, but I believe in keeping things simple. No point getting a plethora of tools and options but getting paralyzed by the sheer number of information. In the end, we will still stick to the top 3 that we use most often.
Lastly, I do enjoy just accessing the comments section under i3Investor. They can be a good source of entertainment and also sometimes a good source of market sentiment gauge from the retailers. However, it is just that… an entertainment source. I’d suggest you to do the same as it bears no credibility in what goes on in the comments section.
What other tools do you use in your investment journey? Feel free to share them with me!
