Tools of the Trade

Every investor has a set of tools that he uses on a regular basis. I also have my toolset. In this post, I will cover these and try to describe how I use each of them.

Hope you find these useful. Also, if you use any tool which is not in this list and find it compelling, do let me know. I gravitate towards free resources whenever possible, but if there is a great paid resource, then it is fine as well.

Information Management

Microsoft OneNote

This is my primary note-taking app. I have it on my laptop, tab and mobile. I have notebook for investing with the following sections, with each section comprised of many pages. For example, every company that I look at and study have a separate page, where I keep adding my notes over time.

Feedly

I use Feedly as my repository of most of all my online blog subscriptions. Here again, I have separate tags like economics, fundamental, technoquant etc.

Pocket

If I find a good article on the web, I use Pocket to save it for future reference. I use it extensively on all my devices.

Twitter

I used twitter very sparingly before. Recently, I have repurposed my usage. I have made lists like News, Investing, People I know, Technoquant etc. This helps me in segregating my feed. I have also started using twitter as a short term micro note taking app for what I may be reading or thinking at any time. At the end of the week, I review what I have noted and then copy any notes in OneNote.

Gmail

I have a gmail id where I save or forward all reading materials, especially broker reports, that I get from multiple sources like whatsapp or email or on the web. The benefit of using gmail is it is easy to search later.

JioNews App

I have migrated nearly all my reading to electronic form. JioNews app is a great resource where I can quickly skim through newspapers and business and current affairs magazines.

Kindle

I have been reading books on an e-reader for nearly 15 years now. I started with using an Infibeam Pi and then migrated to Kindle when it started becoming available in India. Currently, am on my 3rd Kindle device. I have the basic version with backlight and absolutely love it. nearly all my book reading is on Kindle. Highlights and note-taking are the main features I love in the Kindle.

Portfolio Tracker

Google Sheets

I track my portfolio and watchlist on google sheets. Again, the advantage is I can access it on all my devices and I can customize my views and reports.

Fundamental Analysis

www.screener.in

The first port of call to look up a new company. I have a premium subscription. I use screener extensively for tracking my watchlist stocks, monitoring quarterly results, company announcements etc. Having added my favourite ratios to the company page, I can quickly view and understand the basic fundamentals of a company in under 5 minutes. I have customised the excel download feature and added some basic things I check myself. Although my custom excel is not as beautiful as a lot of others that are available, it seems to work well for me.

http://forum.valuepickr.com

The second port of call for getting up to speed on any company.

www.trendlyne.com

I use the “Discover” feature extensively. Helps in surfacing specific announcements based on topic/category.

www.tijorifinance.com

I will quickly go through tijori once in a while to see if something comes up that has been missed in screener.

www.bseindia.com

When in doubt about numbers or while searching for annual reports, BSE site is my port of call.

www.tradingeconomics.com

Data and visualisations for all macro data.

www.ourworldindata.org

Interesting data, visualisations and reports on important topics.

Technical Analysis

www.investing.com

I love tradingview charting but the free version has a lot of restrictions. investing.com uses the same tradingview charts but has no limitations (or at least none that I have found that hinders my usage).

www.chartink.com

Use this for basic explorations or scans.

Metastock

Use Metastock nowadays only for slightly complex explorations which cannot be done on chartink.

Global Investing

www.finviz.com

A very good fundamental and technical scanner for US listed stocks

www.koyfin.com

Perhaps the best dashboard app out there. I use it for looking at global stocks that I own or have on my watchlist.