Searching for the best stocks. (Source: fool.com)

Today, we are going to focus on the two main sources which I find most of my stock ideas.

Online Forums and Blogs

Before I head out to try a new cafe or restaurant, I will always look through online forums and food blogs to check out the reviews. Similarly, you can also search for stocks through online forums and blogs. I always thought that this is like peeking into the minds of the other investors and their thought process. (aka Investment Voyeurism)

Following are the online forums and blogs which I frequent to get stock ideas from:

NextInsights: Founded by Leong Chan Teik and Kathy Zhang in 2007, NextInsights is a website that provides articles and reviews from different analysts and investors. They are primarily focused on stocks listed in Singapore. In my opinion, the primary value of NextInsights are the articles and analyst reports. They are often my source of undervalued stocks. They also have a forum for discussion and questions.

Motley Fool: This stock research powerhouse in the US was founded by the Gardner brothers. They provide subscription services on stock advisory for US stocks, and sometimes international markets too. While their subscription services require a fee, they also provide free reports and analysis on certain stocks. Their main focus is on growth stocks so if you choose to follow their recommendation, do bear that in mind.

Seeking Alpha: I call this a “crowdsourcing” stock analysis website. Seeking Alpha does not publish their own research and analysis, instead it is a website where the public are allowed to contribute articles of their own research and publish on Seeking Alpha. My favourite part about it is the portfolio monitoring function. You can input your list of stocks into the Portfolio function, and Seeking Alpha will help to filter for articles and news that are related to those stocks. This keeps me updated on the public opinion of my stocks. Take note that since it is made up of individual opinions, the comments section can be quite hostile when people disagree with each other.

Sharejunction: This is a Singapore stock online forum. The main value of Sharejunction is the active membership. Often, when there is a major shift in the market or news on certain companies, you will probably hear it first on Sharejunction and their members will be analysing and commenting almost real time. Most importantly, it is free!

Stock Screeners

Stock screeners are like filters of the stock market. They work the best if you have a pre-determined set of criteria on the companies which you are interested in.

For example, if you are interested in profitable companies, your criteria could be a healthy profit margin of 10% or more. However, it will take you days or even weeks to plough through all the annual reports of all the companies to search for suitable companies

Here is where stock screeners come in handy. You just need to input your criteria into the screeners and they will show you the list of companies fulfil the criteria.

Below are the screeners which I personally used:

Google Finance: This is the most international stock screener around. You can pretty much screen for all stock markets in the world. The only limitation is the range of criteria available, only the more common criteria are available. Otherwise, it is a great place for beginners.

FinViz: Once you are more familiar with screening criteria, you can move on to FinViz. It is mainly used for US market with limited info on international markets. The main plus point of FinViz is the number of criteria available. You can find almost all the criteria that are used by most analysts. You can also save the screener template so that you don’t have to key it in manually everytime you want to use it.

SGX Stockfacts: For those who just want to screen for Singapore stocks, your best bet would be SGX Stockfacts. It provides the most up to date info on Singapore stocks. However, it has limited number of screener criteria.

Notables: The other screeners which I used are Reuters and Marketwatch. While they only have fixed screener templates to choose from, I do find them useful to confirm the results from other screeners.

Important: While these screeners are convenient and useful, they are also free. This means you must double-check their results. This is just to make sure that the companies in the screeners are indeed fulfilling your criteria. Don’t be surprised if sometimes the results are not up to date or even accurate, there is no free lunch.

See you soon!

Investing Always,

Pete

Please refer to the disclaimer here