5 Free Websites to Research Stocks to Buy | Investing 101

We have been buying dividend growth stocks for over a decade. Since 2014, we have been documenting our journey to financial freedom on this website by purchasing undervalued dividend growth stocks. A few years ago, we also started sharing our journey via video on our YouTube Channel. We developed our own simple 3 Step Dividend Stock Screener to help identify undervalued dividend stocks. However, one critical question remains unanswered….until now. What websites and tools do we use to find undervalued stocks to buy? This article will provide the 5 FREE websites to research stocks to buy used by the two of us!

The beauty of the internet and information age is that all the information we need to make an informed investing decision is available. Finding stocks to buy does not have to be complicated…or expense. There is no need to buy a subscription to fancy website to find a stock to buy when all the information you need is available for free. That is why we are going to share 5 free websites to research stocks that we use (along with a bonus resource) today!

#1: Dividend Investor

This is one of our O.G.s for researching a stock’s dividend history. Dividend Investor (www.dividendinvestor.com) provides several, easy to use free websites to quickly understand a company’s dividend growth history.

Each profile is simple. The information is presented in a consistent manner for all companies and the key information is included on the company’s main page.

The data points included in the profile that we frequently use while reviewing a stock to includes:

    • Dividend Yield
    • Dividend Yield (5 Year Average)
    • Dividend Payout Ratio
    • Dividend Growth Rate (3 Year Average)
    • Dividend Growth Rate (5 Year Average)
    • Consecutive Dividend Increases
    • Dividend Amount
    • Dividend Payment Information (Ex Date, Payment Date)

If you’re looking for purely dividend information for a company, we’d highly recommend that you bookmark Dividend Investor and make this a part of your investor toolkit.  The pros outweigh the few cons (a lot of ads, consecutive years of dividend increases is sometimes thrown off by stock splits).

Attached below are two screenshots of Johnson & Johnson’s profile on Dividend Investor.

#2: Finviz

Finviz (www.finviz.com) is one of our favorite free stock screening tools. It allows you to screen for all stocks (dividend paying and not dividend paying), using a wide spectrum of metrics. The list includes the 3 metrics of our Dividend Stock Screener and plenty of other critical fundamental metrics. The list includes other metrics such as dividend yield, current ratio, quick ratio, debt to equity, YTD performance, and more.

After running the screening metrics, I typically sort by industry. This will allow you to compare the company’s in the sector side by side to quickly determine which stock comes out on top.

Another nice feature with Finviz is that it allows you to create custom views for the screener results. The screenshot above shows the company’s background information, industry, and a few metrics. In reality though, once you set up a profile, you can customize the view to show whatever metrics you want!

Lastly, in addition to screening for stocks, it also provides a screenshot for each company. Once you search a company or select them from the screener, it takes you to a detailed page. The page shows the company’s stock price chart, every metric for the company, and a feed of recent articles for each stock.

#3: Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha (www.seekingalpha.com) is an excellent resource for investors. Their platform has evolved over the years to contain some great information for dividend investors. If desired, Seeking Alpha has enough information to allow it to be your one stop shop for dividend stock screening.

Now, there is a free version of Seeking Alpha and a paid subscription. The free version gets you access to the critical information needed to research stocks. This will inckud background information, dividend information, performance, and earnings estimates. The paid version gets you access to advanced research and articles written.

In particular, I like the company’s dividend specific information. The dividend section of each company’s profile easily shows a company’s dividend history, including the consecutive dividend increases, average dividend growth rate, and every single dividned payment the company has made.  That’s a lot of dividend information available, for free!

In addition to the company specific information, we love the Dividend News Feed that Seeking Alpha provides. The news feed simply aggregates all dividend announcements. They highlight dividend increases, and the percent increase announced, and regular dividends. Its a quick way to see what is going on and what companies helped grow your income. We use it when writing our monthly expected dividend increases article!

#4: Google Finance & Yahoo Finance

For free resource number four, I thought I’d group the two free news sources together. Essentially they are one in the same for the purposes of this article. Now, chances are, you’re either a Google Finance or a Yahoo! Finance person!

The websites provide you with instant stock price quotes (when the market is open) and a ton of information about a stock. This includes the market cap, dividend yield, recent news, major stories, stock charts for any time period, earnings estimates, and more.

Each of the websites also offers great information about the current market and what’s going on each day. Like Seeking Alpha, you could use one of these two sites exclusively or your stock research needs if you choose. Althoigh, to be honest, the dividend history information isn’t as strong as Seeking Alpha or Dividend Investor.

There are plenty of untapped featuers on these two websites as well. For example, you can upload your full portfolio to each website. What is cool about this feature is that it will then customize your dahsboards and news feeds to provide information about your current holdings.

The two websites have also improved the user experience signficantly as well. As an Android user, I love how Google Finance flows from my computer to my phone seemlessly.

#5: Your Brokerage Account

Did you know that your brokerage account typically provides you with a ton of great, free research tools.  In addition to the company profiles and detailed information about your holdings, each brokerage will share additinoal information to differentiate themselves for others.

Some brokerages, such as Fidelity (which I use), provide you access to analyst research reports. This include analyst perspectives, buy ratings, and industry specific details that will help you inform your investment decision.

Sometimes, we spend so much time looking for the best research tools online, without realizing that the one right under our nose may have all the information we need!

Note: Lanny uses Ally Investing for investing and additional information is available on SoFi’s Investing Platform. Lanny uses SoFi for his VOO purchases while I have a few very small holdings at the brokerage account.

Honorable Mention: YouTube!

No, I promise this isn’t a shameless plug for our YouTube Channel. However, if you aren’t already, we’d love to have you as a subscriber to our channel.  The reality is that we are not the only YouTube Channel that provides investing and dividend investing related content. There are countless channels of hardworking individuals looking to share their investing research.

Next time, rather than going down a sports highlights or pet video wormhole, we suggest that you start learning about investing and how to find undervalued stocks to buy!

Summary

There we have it. 5 free websites to research stocks….and one bonus one! There are plenty of other websites that provide free websites to buy stocks; however, these are the main ones that we use!

Let us know in the comments section if you use these free websites and what other websites you use to research stocks! We’re looking forward to your feedback and the discussion.

Bert

One thought on “5 Free Websites to Research Stocks to Buy | Investing 101

  1. Great post. I use all of these sites at least on a weekly basis. Seeking Alpha, Finviz, Google Finance, and Yahoo Finance are all sites that I use pretty much every day personally and professionally.

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