What research material and advice can I get from my broker?

The amount of research material available will vary from broker to broker, however most firms are able to give price data, charts and regular research on the markets. Note also that there are plenty of financial websites out there that allow you to filter stocks including Digital Look, Thomson Reuters, Datastream and ShareScope; some of these services are free while others carry a subscription. Make sure to keep an eye for key company earnings dates (if you are dealing in individual shares) and/or upcoming economic data before you place trades.

Yahoo Finance

I’ll start with the site I probably spend more time on than any other, Yahoo Finance. The site is great for real time quotes, interactive charts and of course general market information, announcments, etc. It may not be the best at any of these but for the ease of having one place you can go to for all this information I think it’s hard to beat Yahoo Finance. Some things I particularly like are:

• You can create your own portfolios of stocks which are saved for you. The information displayed for each stock is fully customisable, so far example I have name, ticker, last traded price, price change, % change, volume, related info listed for my stocks, but you can change this to show whatever info your interested in.
• When you go into the stocks themselves, as well as the last traded price listed, what I find very useful is that they also list the Pre-market prices (from about an hr before the market officially opens) and After Hours prices (handy if are wondering how a stock is trading who has just announced their results after the market closed).
• There is lots of other useful information on specific stocks such as 52 week range, 1 yr Target Price (based on the average of analysts estimates), Market Cap, EPS, P/E and Forward P/E (based on the company’s 1 yr guidance, handy to identify high growth companies).
• And if you have loads of time on your hands there is also lots of extra information such as company filings, competitor info, industry info, analyst opinion and estimates, blogs, message boards and financial info including P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Never Ending List…

Obviously the list of financial and investment websites is endless, a few others to consider checking out if your looking for information along the lines of what is available at Yahoo Finance are:

Market Watch
Bloomberg
Financial Times