Tools

The free tools behind the research.

Everything here is free. The first five are what I actually use to screen names, follow smart money, and read the primary sources. After that, more free tools worth a bookmark. No subscriptions required to do real research.

Screening
Finviz FREE The screener. Filter thousands of stocks by fundamentals, valuation, and technicals in seconds, and the sector heatmap shows you where money moved today. This is where a lot of my watchlist names first surfaced.
Smart money
OpenInsider FREE Insider buying. Tracks Form 4 filings, when executives buy their own stock with their own money. What I look for: cluster buys, several insiders buying at once, not one lonely purchase. WhaleWisdom FREE What the funds hold. Reads 13F filings so you can see what big hedge funds bought and sold each quarter. Slow money leaves tracks, this is where you find them. HedgeFollow FREE The 13F cross-check. Another angle on fund holdings and top buys. I use it next to WhaleWisdom to confirm accumulation before I trust the signal.
Primary sources
SEC EDGAR FREE The actual filings. Every 10-K, 10-Q, and Form 4, straight from the source. When a headline sounds too good, this is where you check what the company actually said.
More worth a bookmark
Stock Analysis FREE The fundamentals, laid out clean. Ten years of revenue, margins, and growth for any ticker on one fast page. The quickest free way to answer the "is this a real business" questions. TradingView FREE TIER The chart checks. The two trend questions in my checklist, is it above the 200-day moving average, and where is RSI, are both free here. CNN Fear & Greed Index FREE One number for market mood. The sentiment check: when this reads extreme fear and the businesses are fine, that's the setup the guide calls being greedy when others are fearful. Yahoo Finance FREE The everyday dashboard. Quotes, news, earnings dates, and basic financials in one place. Not deep, but fast, and free forever. Portfolio Visualizer FREE TIER Test the mix before you commit. Backtest an allocation and see how it would have behaved through past markets. Useful reality check on any plan, including mine. FRED FREE The actual macro numbers. The Fed's free data library: rates, inflation, jobs. When a headline sounds scary, this is where you see the real chart.
On brokerages

People ask which app to use. Honest answer: for long-term investing, any of the big zero-commission brokerages does the job, the differences are small. What actually matters is the boring stuff: starting, automating your buys, and not checking it every hour.

Mine

The framework that ties these together, how I size positions, when I buy, and the checklist I run before any name, is in the free guide + watchlist. The working-spreadsheet version is the Investing Toolkit.