Hi All, I'm new to investing and trading. Long post, simple question. I've made a couple smart moves and a couple dumb moves. My goal is to swing trade. I accept that I'm kind of gambling at the moment. But I am spending more time every day researching and studying, and taking a greater interest every day. I'm reading articles/books on trading techniques, stock movements, overall investing philosophy, and trading platforms. Thing is, I'm still kind of flailing. I basically jump back and forth between Etrade, TDAmeritrade (browser & ThinkorSwim), and Yahoo Finance. Slowly getting to know FinViz. There are many chart and trading websites. I read articles every day on stocks to watch. But between these different platforms, I don't have a single system in place for monitoring and action. I just don't have enough usage yet to have a system in place. I'd like to quickly create and edit watch lists based on sectors, articles I've read, positions I hold, positions I'm considering dumping, or any other way my mind categorizes them. I've heard ThinkOrSwim is designed for active trading, but I find the interface completely difficult to navigate and it takes several minutes to load and login. Yahoo Finance is a good combination of charts and news, but time consuming to personalize. I find Etrade easiest to actually Buy/Sell. I see pros and cons in each platform, so I'm just bouncing around. It's very time consuming and inefficient. Ideally, I'd like to have one or two platforms that I access quickly and do everything. Any suggestions?
Get a tradingview.com account, it's free. You can upload a watch list (via .txt with the tickers in it), so there's that; I believe this can be done with free account. You definitely can do the simple thing, and type a ticker into a list that you manually create. I don't think Yahoo Finance has anything you need. If you want news, it can be found at other places (I like ToS and finviz, and don't forget your own broker). The charting is primitive compared to TradingView. The message boards back in the day were fun, but that site is going kaput. So...I use TradingView for charting, I use ToS for news and after-hours charts (primarily on earnings reports). I also use finviz for fundamental info (growth rate, daily volume, market cap, etc.). There's also stockrow.com that I like (since nasdaq.com has changed its site) for seeing quarterly revenues and EPS, I mentally get an idea of growth rate, and can see if a stock has consistent quarterly growth or if it is "chunky" (ie high % of revenues in Christmas quarter). I know this doesn't really reduce things, but imo they are all quality services worth knowing about.
Start with finviz: has news, basic charts, fundamental info. Add TradingView when you want to create your own charts, draw your own lines Keep ToS, it is powerful but is slow. Eventually you'll get it.
Gotcha ok thank you very much. Finviz and Trading View. I guess you're using all these for research and analysis, then you go to your broker of choice to trade?
Yeah I do. Maybe not the best/most efficient set up, but it works for me. Get all the info I want, to make a decision.
