Stock Software

There's a tendency to think that you need some fancy stock software to make money with stock market investing. The truth is though, that you don't need a whole lot of tools other than what IBD provides and an excel spreadsheet to keep track of your watch list. There are some programs that can make it easier, but you can get by without them. Now, what you do need is a good source of information that you can trust to be accurate an unbiased. My first tool of choice is the Investor's Business Daily and my second choice is their Daily Graphs service.

It's hard to duplicate what these tools do with the average run of the mill stock trading software. When you are first starting out, I'd probably hold off and see how you are going to set up your investment operation before you buy any. Do it by hand and then look for specific stock market software that will make the everyday steps you take to make investment decisions EASIER. You really won't know what you need until you have refined your approach.

The key here is not to confuse stock software with stock data. I use investors.com to get my data and then set up my process based on the data I get from them. Does a stock have earnings that meet my criteria? Then it can go into my excel spreadsheet and so on. Now, it could be that you might find a specific piece of stock analysis software that can help you screen stocks faster. If you can find something like that that can streamline your process so you can work quicker and more effectively at finding the stocks you want to find, then you will know that better once you start putting data into your system. The nuances of how you work, won't really be born out until you figure them out by actually working on each step of analyzing stocks that fit your criteria.

It could be that the data you put into excel, their might be some stock management software that fits nicely into YOUR system. Spend your time developing that system before you go out and buy a bunch of unnecessary software that might not fit your needs.

The other thing that this will help you to do is to really flush out your own personal investing style. Do each step by hand, then find a way to automate it.