What Does TC2000 Offer?

Our TC2000 Review reveals that the platform’s basic feature set is quite impressive. The platform excels at charting and analysis but also includes full trading capabilities that allow users to execute trades directly within the program. While these features are common to many competing platforms, TC2000’s offerings tend to be a bit more refined than others.

Charting

TC2000 includes all the basic charts you’d expect, like OHLC (open, high, low, close), candlesticks, lines, and more. The platform also includes some specialized charts, including Heiken-Ashi charts, a type of advanced candlestick chart that some traders prefer.

To help traders derive meaningful information from charts, TC2000 allows users to draw trendlines directly on the chart, as well as plot from a huge library of indicators. Taking it a step further, TC2000 also says that you can plot indicators of indicators, which can be helpful for more complex strategies.

One drawback to note is that the platform doesn’t seem to offer some of the automatic charting capabilities available from competitors like TrendSpider.

Learn more: Explore the best stock charting software of 2024 with our thorough reviews and comprehensive comparisons.

Trading

A standout feature we noticed when writing this TC2000 review is the platform’s direct trade execution. And unlike competitors, TC2000 isn’t just doing some clunky integration of another broker to offer direct trading. Instead, TC2000 itself is a fully-fledged broker-dealer, registered with the SEC.

That’s a great bonus that gives traders more speed and flexibility. Since trading is truly integrated, users can place trades directly from charts or add multiple stop-losses based on different indicator criteria.

Even better, TC2000 offers a robust paper trading system. That system lets you practice your strategies in real time with actual market data without putting capital at risk.

TC2000 does rely on infrastructure from Interactive Brokers. That means you’ll be paying a premium over Interactive Brokers’ standard commissions to do any actual trading. As it stands, TC2000’s commissions are very high compared to those of most brokerages: $4.95 for stocks & ETFs, and $0.65 per options contract plus $2.95 per trade.

Learn more: Discover the top paper trading platforms of 2024 to sharpen your trading skills without financial risk.

Watchlists & Alerts

TC2000 offers strong watchlist functionality, which can easily be paired with their alerts system. At their most basic, these watchlists are pre-built based on popular indices like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100. However, users can build their own watchlists in order to keep track of the assets most important to them.

Symbols can be added via search and organized via an easy drag-and-drop method. You can also link these watchlists with your charts, which causes your active chart to update as you scroll through the watchlist.

By building out a system of alerts in tandem with your watchlist, you can stay updated on your critical positions throughout the trading day. TC2000 lets users set alerts based on prices hitting specific indicators or based on a more complex, conditional methodology. Even if you’re away from your desk, you can still get notified of key alerts via email and text message.

TC2000 Advanced Features

In our TC2000 Review, we find that the platform’s basic features are certainly strong compared to its competitors, but it’s the platform’s advanced features that set it apart.

Certain tools that experienced traders may need are missing, including backtesting and strategy forecasting. However, the features that TC2000 does offer are particularly well-developed. As such, the functionality should be perfectly sufficient for most traders.

EasyScan Screener

The basic idea of a stock screener is to filter a list of stocks based on certain data points to save traders valuable research time. TC2000 takes this idea to the next level with its EasyScan feature. The EasyScan system is by far one of the most impressive parts of the whole platform and stands out in comparison to the scanning functionality of competitors.

EasyScan has a tremendous amount of built-in data points, including technical indicators, fundamental values, price action behavior, and more. Users can easily combine these data points conditionally by using and/or logic. If you need to build a more complex scan, you can use their “Personal Criteria Formula” (PCF) scripting language to do so.

Condition Wizard

TC2000 says that their condition wizard is the “heart & soul” of TC2000. While this is somewhat of an exaggeration since traders can find plenty of use for the platform without the condition wizard, the tool is fairly impressive.

The condition wizard underlies the complex scanning functionality of TC2000’s EasyScan Screener, but the conditional logic can be used in almost every area of the platform, including watchlists, trading, and alerts. Use of the PCF scripting language is only necessary for advanced conditions; simple ones can be created without coding.

Overall, the condition wizard allows users to create their own custom indicator logic by combining a wide library of pre-built data points. In addition, TC2000 offers what they call “flex” conditions, which must occur within a certain period of time.

Workspaces

In this TC2000 review, we take a closer look at the platform’s user interface. At first glance, it might not be the easiest to decipher. If you’re used to trading platforms, it may feel natural, but for newer traders, the layout can be difficult to interpret.

With time, though, TC2000’s interface begins to make sense – which helps unlock the power behind it. The workspaces are highly customizable, allowing users to tailor the interface exactly to their needs.

TC2000 includes a number of built-in layouts that offer unique visualizations of key information. For instance, with the Drilldown layout, TC2000 automatically lists the specific stock components that make up a particular industry. This lets users quickly identify individual opportunities within a sector.

Another built-in interface is the 4-timeframe layout, which automatically pulls up 15-minute, daily, weekly, and monthly charts for the selected asset. But the real power in TC2000’s workspaces involves the ability to adjust the various pre-built components to create a unique layout that complements your particular trading style.

Specialized Asset Features

One drawback of TC2000 is that it doesn’t support assets like crypto, forex, or futures. But the upside of that drawback is that TC2000 has worked hard to develop focused features for stocks and options, the assets they do support.

That focus is evident in TC2000’s charting capabilities. The platform allows traders to plot options and their underlying stocks together on the same chart so they can easily see the relationship between the two. Moreover, TC2000 lets you plot bid-ask data in certain cases, which ensures you have a usable chart for assets that don’t trade frequently, like certain low-volume options.

TC2000 also allows users to implement complicated, multi-leg options strategies in just one click. This makes it easier to execute the trades you want and reduces the likelihood of an incorrectly specified entry. Finally, mini-pictures and shaded profit & loss zones for certain options strategies help traders intuitively understand the structures of their trades at a glance.

How Does TC2000 Work?

One of the most important things to understand when getting started with TC2000 is that the platform offers two separate types of accounts. One is the software account, which allows you to use its trading and charting tools. The other is the brokerage account, which allows you to place trades through the platform.

Software Account

If you want to get up and running with TC2000’s software, you’ll need to purchase one of the plans on offer. While it is possible to set up a free account and use the web platform, its functionality is so limited that it’s likely not worth pursuing in most cases. Potential users will be much better off searching through TC2000’s library of YouTube videos to get a better feel for the platform.

With that being said, TC2000 does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, although you need to call their support number to request it. Plans are competitively priced for the industry, so users should be able to find a tier that aligns with their needs.

Once you find a pricing plan that works for you, though, the charges aren’t done. Users need to pay extra for real-time stock, options, and index data. On top of that, you can pay more for a streaming news feed. Finally, TC2000 also offers users the option to expand the capability of the software’s alert and scanning system with some extra fees.

TC2000 offers a strong online web platform. However, most traders will be better served by downloading the desktop software, which is available for either Mac or Windows. TC2000 also offers a mobile app, although the functionality is somewhat limited.

Brokerage Account

As we mentioned in this TC2000 review, you’ll need to sign up for a separate brokerage account to use TC2000’s trading features. However, if you opt not to trade through TC2000 (perhaps because of the high commissions), you’re not required to set up a brokerage account to use the software.

Like any other brokerage, you’ll need to supply documentation to TC2000 to open up an account, and it can take a few days to be approved. Once your account is activated, you’ll need to link a bank account and fund your brokerage account before you can start trading.

Looking for an in-depth #TC2000 review? Check out our latest analysis for all the details. #TradingTools

Click To Tweet

Learn more: Explore our selection of the 5 best online brokers for stock trading in 2024 to elevate your investment strategy.

Plans and Pricing

One area in which TC2000 stands out is its pricing. Even though the platform offers a fairly robust feature set with advanced functionality, its price is comparable with affordable competitors like TradingView.

Overall, the Silver plan offers little to traders. The Gold plan, though, provides users with an attractive middle ground between functionality and price. The Platinum plan will likely be most valuable to users whose strategies depend on intraday price analysis and trading.

In addition to charges for your chosen plan, you’ll also need to know the brokerage fees that TC2000 charges to trade on the platform. As it stands, TC2000 charges high commissions. In addition, they appear to charge a 1% spread over the standard Interactive Brokers margin rates.

When compared to what TC2000 charges for using their software, the relatively high brokerage fees may come as a surprise. In part, that’s likely a limitation of relying on the Interactive Brokers infrastructure to execute trades.

Is TC2000 Worth It?

TC2000’s software is impressive, especially when you consider the price point at which it’s offered. While there are a few tools missing, most traders will find themselves well-served by the platform. The pricing is also competitive; users would need to pay a much higher price to get the same tools elsewhere.

However, the same isn’t true for TC2000’s brokerage offerings. In 2023, there are plenty of opportunities for people to trade stocks and options commission-free. With that being said, it is convenient to have direct trading within your analysis platform. Whether using the TC2000 brokerage is worth it depends on how much you value the ease of transitioning from analysis to execution.

In this TC2000 review, we will break down whether the software is worth it, one offering at a time.

Silver Plan

The Silver plan is inexpensive but does not come with much functionality. While users can review various charts and create basic watchlists, all the features that make TC2000 valuable are inaccessible at this level.

At this price point, traders are likely better served by a platform like TradingView. Overall, the TC2000 Silver plan is unlikely to be worth it for most traders.

Gold Plan

With the Gold plan, you can access almost every feature that makes TC2000 special, including EasyScan, custom indicators, and advanced watchlists.

At $29.99, the monthly price is lower than one might expect for an analysis platform with these features. TrendSpider, for example, charges about $40/month for its basic level, which comes with strong limitations.

Learn more: Get an in-depth comparison of TrendSpider vs TradingView with our detailed 2024 feature analysis.

Platinum Plan

The Platinum plan does come with a substantial jump in price, but that’s because it caters mostly to high-frequency and intraday traders. When seconds matter, traders are willing to pay more for tools that give them an edge.

This tier comes with a few improvements on the Gold plan, including real-time indicators for markets and assets. Ultimately, it’s hard to say whether or not the Platinum plan is worth it since its extra value is highly dependent on an individual trader’s style. If you frequently trade intraday, though, it’s worth considering.

Verdict

To wrap our TC2000 review up, this platform is a great option for trading software featuring strong functionality at an attractive price point. Its EasyScan stock screener, conditional logic, and customized layout set it apart from competitors. Moreover, its primary offerings, which include charting, trading, and alerts, are typically better developed than those of alternative platforms.

With that being said, TC2000 only offers support for stock and options trading. If you’re a forex, futures, or crypto trader, TC2000 may not be the right platform for you. Moreover, TC2000 does not offer backtesting or strategy forecasting capabilities. That’s a big drawback, especially when so many other platforms today offer these useful tools.

TC2000 is definitely a worthwhile option to explore for U.S. stock and options traders looking for a rigorous analysis platform that supports direct trading execution. While there’s no free trial available, the platform does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if it’s not the right fit.

The post TC2000 Review: A Closer Look appeared first on FinMasters.

What Does Trade Ideas Offer?

At its core, Trade Ideas is a stock scanner and technical analysis tool. But with the wealth of additional features offered, it really acts as a comprehensive trading platform. With Trade Ideas, users can go from idea origination to trade execution, all in one place.

In this Trade Ideas review, we’ll first cover the three basic areas in which Trade Ideas can serve traders. Then, we’ll look at the advanced features that set Trade Ideas apart.

Stock Scanning

The Trade Ideas stock scanner is one of the most powerful parts of the platform. The scanner is highly configurable and updates in real-time to keep up with the pace of live trading.

This ensures you don’t have to spend time constantly rerunning scans, freeing you up for more complicated analysis. The scanner comes with plenty of preset filters but is also highly customizable; you can scan based on price action, volume, chart pattern, exchange, order flow, and more.

Unfortunately, however, the Trade Ideas “stock scanner” is really just a stock scanner. You can only research and trade stocks and ETFs on the platform, and not any of the additional instruments traders might be interested in, like currencies, crypto, or futures. Moreover, only U.S. equities are available; the platform does not allow you access to international markets.

Learn more: Interested in global markets? Understand the nuances of how to invest in foreign stocks with our latest post.

Charting

No technical analysis platform would be complete without charting capabilities. Trade Ideas offers all the charting you would expect in a well-rounded technical analysis solution.

Traders can use basic price charts, candlestick charts, and advanced tick charts, which contain the most data. These charts can be scaled across time frames, from one minute to monthly. Finally, Trade Ideas features a wide variety of pre-built indicators and patterns, as well as the ability to manually markup charts.

Training and Education

The last major area that highlights the basic functionality of Trade Ideas is the platform’s training and educational offerings. Trading can be a difficult skill to learn, with a lot of complex terminology and concepts. Trade Ideas does a good job of making that process easier for burgeoning traders.

The platform features a robust user guide, multiple video playlists, free daily support sessions, and a free trading room with an experienced trader streaming live. While these training and educational resources won’t add value for all users, inexperienced traders should find much to learn here.

Learn more: If you’re on the hunt for the best stock screeners, this post might have what you’re looking for.

Trade Ideas Advanced Features

What we’ve covered so far are just the basic features of Trade Ideas. In reality, charting, scanning, and education functionalities are fairly commonplace among trading platforms. It’s the advanced features, including some very impressive AI tools, that make Trade Ideas stand out.

Artificial Intelligence

Trade Ideas was at the forefront of leveraging AI technology to improve trading performance, having launched its own AI named “Holly” back in 2016. Since that time, they claim, Holly has consistently outperformed market benchmarks.

There are several iterations of Holly today as Trade Ideas has improved the technology, including “Holly Neo,” “Holly Grail,” and “Holly 2.0.” Unlike other platforms, these AI tools aren’t just performing automatic pattern recognition. Instead, they’re fully-fledged trading assistants, recommending entry points, risk limits, and exit points.

Holly comes with about 60 built-in strategies that it optimizes each night with a backtest. According to Trade Ideas, Holly will recommend about 5 to 25 trades a day, with no positions held overnight. In our view, Holly is the most powerful part of the whole platform and one of the main reasons traders should consider using Trade Ideas.

Learn more: Stay informed about the evolving tech market with our overview of this year’s best AI stocks.

Streaming Alerts

On the back of Trade Ideas’ scanning functionality, the platform has built out an alert system that will help ensure traders don’t miss any of their ideal setups. As we mentioned before, the scanners on Trade Ideas aren’t just one-and-done; instead, they update in real-time as the market changes.

The scanners can be combined to provide nearly endless alert customization, and there is no limit to the number of alert windows you can create. In addition, Trade Ideas offers sound callouts when an alert is triggered, an efficient way to be notified that an opportunity has presented itself.

With many platforms, traders might have to choose between looking for new opportunities and analyzing existing opportunities. This isn’t the case with Trade Ideas.

Direct Trade Execution

Another excellent feature of Trade Ideas is the platform’s built-in trade execution. Most analysis tools require you to use your broker’s interface to place trades, which can create a sizable time gap between identifying opportunities and capitalizing on them. Unlike these alternatives, Trade Ideas offers trading through a system they call “Brokerage Plus.”

Brokerage Plus lets you place trades and monitor your current positions directly on Trade Ideas. However, it should be noted that you’ll need to link a brokerage account to Trade Ideas to do this, and not all brokers participate. Some of the more popular ones that do include Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE, and Thinkorswim.

Trade Ideas also stands out for the trading flexibility they offer. Users can place one-click trades directly through scanners or charts, significantly speeding up execution time. Moreover, you can create an automated trading system based on your own trading strategies or the recommendations of the Holly AI.

The major drawback to executing on Trade Ideas is that you are only able to trade U.S. stocks and ETFs. If your strategies rely on international stocks or any other asset class, Trade Ideas may not be the right fit for you.

Learn more: If you’re looking to optimize your stock trading, our article provides a comprehensive rundown of the best online brokers available.

Simulated Trading & Backtesting

The simulated trading functionality of Trade Ideas is just as impressive as its real trading functionality. Trade Ideas features paper trading accounts that let users train under real market conditions without putting any money at stake.

In addition, Trade Ideas lets you test your trading strategies historically with a proprietary backtesting system they call “OddsMaker.” OddsMaker is more thorough than most backtesting programs, featuring the ability to adjust your starting equity, buying power, brokerage commissions, and more. While no backtesting program can truly replicate live trading performance, OddsMaker comes close.

Once you run the backtesting program, you can study the data to improve your strategies. Trade Ideas offers detailed profit and loss information directly on the platform, as well as the ability to export the data for more thorough analysis.

Learn more: Get a clearer understanding of stock backtesting with our rundown on the leading platforms in the market.

How Does Trade Ideas Work?

Getting started with Trade Ideas isn’t quite as simple as it is with other trading platforms. One reason is that Trade Ideas does not offer a free trial, so it’s difficult to get to know the platform before committing to a subscription. However, Trade Ideas does have what they call a “Test Drive” event each quarter, where prospective users get a few weeks of access to the platform for a small fee.

The only section of the platform free users can access is a series of market dashboards. While these might be informative for some users, a better method of understanding the platform prior to paying is through the wide range of videos and guides that Trade Ideas publishes.

If you do sign up, there are several ways to use the platform in practice. Traders can download a desktop version of the platform, although it will only work on Windows computers. If you’re a Mac or Linux user, or if you just prefer not to download anything, you can use a web-based version of Trade Ideas as well. Note that there is no mobile app available for Trade Ideas.

Finally, if you decide Trade Ideas is not right for you, canceling can be done directly through the account management page. If you run into trouble, Trade Ideas says you can contact info@trade-ideas.com for support. Bear in mind that Trade Ideas does not offer refunds for unused subscriptions, which is important to know if you plan on purchasing an annual subscription.

Plans and Pricing

Another important aspect we need to cover in our Trade Ideas review is the pricing plan. Trade Ideas offers two main tiers, which can be purchased either monthly or annually (for a substantial discount). There is no free trial for Trade Ideas, but you can take advantage of the quarterly “Test Drive” of its platform for a small fee. Pricing details for the two tiers are summarized below.

While the Standard plan has a fairly robust feature set, there are some notable exclusions – like the Holly AI, which is only accessible in the Premium plan. An overview of the feature differences between the two plans can be found below.

As you can see, there are significant differences between the Standard and Premium plans. Both tiers feature charting, patterns, scanning, alerts, and more. However, the few differences that do exist are quite important. Most notably, backtesting, automated pattern recognition, and AI functionality are missing from the Standard plan.

These are some of the key features that make Trade Ideas such a powerful tool. Therefore, if traders decide to use the platform, they’re likely going to be best served by going with the Premium plan, even if it is significantly more expensive.

There are simply too many cheaper, competitive alternatives on the market to justify opting for the Standard plan. Ultimately, deciding whether or not Trade Ideas is worth it depends on your unique trading style and preferences. In the next section, we’ll offer some guidance to help you make your decision.

Is Trade Ideas Worth It?

Trade Ideas is a comprehensive, premium trading platform. That doesn’t come cheap: the plans are very expensive compared to alternative solutions you could use. But when it comes to trading, it’s important to weigh the price tag of the tool with the potential for improved profits. In other words, the best tools pay for themselves.

To understand if Trade Ideas is worth it, we’ll look at the two subscription tiers separately. While the Premium tier unlocks just a few extra features, these features are very important and make Trade Ideas a much more powerful tool.

Standard Plan

Ultimately, the Trade Ideas Standard plan is unlikely to be worth it for most traders. At its cheapest ($84/month annually), the plan is far more expensive than a competitor like TradingView (read our review of TradingView).

Even when compared with a competitor like TrendSpider, which is more expensive than TradingView, the Standard plan provides questionable value. For a similar price, users can get a superior tier on TrendSpider. If you’d like to learn more about that platform, we also have a review of TrendSpider.

Learn more: Understand the key differences and similarities with our in-depth analysis of TrendSpider vs TradingView.

Trade Ideas certainly has strong basic functionality, particularly in terms of scanning. But this basic functionality simply isn’t worth the high price traders will pay for an advanced platform.

Premium Plan

The Premium tier unlocks access to automatic pattern detection, backtesting, and, most importantly, the AI trading assistant. While the AI assistant won’t be right for every single trader, feedback from many traders online indicates that the Holly AI has helped their trading tremendously.

Therefore, the Trade Ideas Premium plan is likely worth it – with one caveat. The tools we’re highlighting are very specialized and designed for experienced traders. In fact, if you take a look at the Trade Ideas user interface, it seems like something you’d see on Wall Street.

Need insights on #TradeIdeas as a #tradingplatform? Dive into our comprehensive Trade Ideas review.

Click To Tweet

If you’re an experienced trader who believes that the advanced tools on Trade Ideas will make an appreciable contribution to improving your profits, we encourage you to use one of the quarterly Test Drives to try out the platform. For inexperienced traders who are still mastering the basics, though, Trade Ideas is probably not the right platform for you.

Verdict

We hope our Trade Ideas Review provided you with the insights needed to determine if this trading platform aligns with your investment strategies and goals. Trade Ideas is a platform with very strong functionality whose specialty features set it apart from the competition. It can serve as a comprehensive trading platform for many U.S. stock traders, taking users from opportunity discovery to trade execution. However, since Trade Ideas doesn’t offer international stocks or other asset classes, traders working in other markets should look elsewhere.

The platform’s stock scanning function, combined with a real-time alert system, is one of the best on the market. While its charting may leave something to be desired, the vast majority of traders will be well suited by its automatic pattern detection system. The wealth of educational content is also excellent.

Trade Ideas’ AI technology, which is a market leader, continues to be the feature that will draw most traders in. “Holly,” as the AI is known, can provide trade recommendations based on 60 pre-built strategies. If you need to test out any strategies, including AI-generated ones, Trade Ideas offers simulated trading and backtesting.

But all these positive attributes don’t merit an unconditional recommendation. Trade Ideas is expensive, especially for the Premium tier, in which the strongest functionality is unlocked. For many new traders, who will only be able to leverage basic features anyway, cheaper platforms would be better. If you’re an advanced user, however, Trade Ideas could help you take your trading to the next level.

The post Trade Ideas Review: Is It the Best Trading Platform This Year? appeared first on FinMasters.

Quick Compare

BEST PERSONAL BALANCE SHEET

Kubera

Kubera is one of the best portfolio analysis tools for investors who view their portfolios as encompassing all their assets and liabilities, not just their financial investments. Learn more

• Strengths: Asset-liability management, user interface, direct broker integration.
• Weaknesses: Limited statistical analysis, price.
• Financial Planning: Asset-liability management, share portfolio with advisor, family wealth tracking
• Statistical Analysis: Asset returns
• Fundamental Analysis: None
• Screening: None
• Broker Integration: Yes
• Additional Features: Car valuation, domain valuation, dead man’s switch

Pricing
Kubera Personal	$150/year
Kubera Family	$225/year

Visit Website

BEST FREE TOOL

Empower

Empower is a free platform that focuses on financial planning, including net worth, budgeting, and retirement analysis. Learn more

• Strengths: Price, financial planning analytics, direct broker integration
• Weaknesses: Limited statistical and fundamental analysis, advisory upselling tactics
• Financial Planning: Budgeting, retirement planning, net worth tracker
• Statistical Analysis: Basic Monte Carlo and efficient frontier analysis
• Fundamental Analysis: None
• Screening: None
• Broker Integration: Yes
• Additional Features: Target allocations to monitor drift

Pricing: Free

Visit Website

BEST STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Portfolio Visualizer

Portfolio Visualizer is one of the best portfolio analysis tools for investors interested in statistical optimization. The platform includes advanced backtesting, Monte Carlo simulations, and more. Learn more

• Strengths: Statistical functionality, visualizations
• Weaknesses: No direct broker integration, price
• Financial Planning: None
• Statistical Analysis: Portfolio backtesting, Monte Carlo simulation, optimization, timing models
• Fundamental Analysis: Basic asset analytics
• Screening: None
• Broker Integration: No
• Additional Features: Customized PDF reports

Pricing
Free Plan	–
Basic	$19/month
Pro	$39/month

Visit Website

BEST FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS

Morningstar Investor

Morningstar Investor is among the best portfolio analysis tools for fundamental analysis and research and is designed for investors who take a value-based approach. Learn more

• Strengths: Fundamental analytics, direct broker integration, research access
• Weaknesses: Limited statistics, price
• Financial Planning: None
• Statistical Analysis: Asset performance
• Fundamental Analysis: Portfolio valuation ratios, stock valuation ratios
• Screening: Stock screener, including profitability, valuation, size criteria, and more
• Broker Integration: Yes
• Additional Features: Stock intersection analysis, X-ray analysis

Pricing: $34.95/month

Visit Website

BEST ESG FOCUSED

Ziggma

Ziggma is a good general analytics platform but stands out as one of the best portfolio analysis tools for ESG-conscious investors, including metrics for carbon intensity and environmental score in screeners. Learn more

• Basic Plan: $9.90/month
• Strengths: Price, good technical and fundamental analysis, ESG focus
• Weaknesses: Crowded UI
• Financial Planning: None
• Statistical Analysis: Portfolio simulator backtest
• Fundamental Analysis: Valuation metrics for ETFs and stocks, saved research, curated newsfeed
• Screening: ETF screener and stock screener, including quant scoring
• Broker Integration: Yes
• Additional Features: Climate score, carbon intensity metrics, guru portfolios

Pricing
Free Plan	–
Premium Plan	$9.90/month

Visit Website

BEST FOR DIVIDENDS AND TAXES

Sharesight

Sharesight is among the best portfolio analysis tools for international investors, making dividend tracking and tax management seamless. The platform also offers an attractive UI and good visualizations. Learn more

• Strengths: Taxes and dividends, backtesting, and optimization
• Weaknesses: Limited risk metrics
• Financial Planning: Tax management, future dividend income tracking
• Statistical Analysis: Benchmarking, diversity analysis, distribution analysis
• Fundamental Analysis: Automatic dividend management, multi-currency valuation, multi-period valuation
• Screening: None
• Broker Integration: Yes
• Additional Features: Limited holdings for lower tiers, unlimited holdings for higher tiers

Pricing
Free Plan	–
Starter	$15/month
Investor	$24/month
Expert	$31/month

Visit Website

Best Portfolio Analysis Tools Compared

1. Kubera

Best Personal Balance Sheet

Kubera aims to track the value of all your assets and liabilities, but it doesn’t offer the statistical firepower some investors need.

Kubera is a powerful portfolio analysis tool that bills itself as “the world’s most modern wealth tracker.” In addition to Kubera’s sleek interface, which is a refreshing break from legacy financial software, Kubera supports a wide variety of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

What makes it one of the best portfolio analysis tools, though, is support for tracking non-financial assets. For example, Kubera allows users to track the value of their vehicles, with estimated market prices updated over time. Users can also manually input real estate holdings or private investments. While incorporating your car into the value of your total portfolio might not impact your investment decisions, the ability to get an overview of your entire financial picture at a glance is vital for users who care primarily about understanding their personal balance sheet.

Kubera is limited in its ability to provide the advanced statistical tools that some investors depend on. For instance, you won’t be able to do backtests or compare your portfolio with an efficient frontier. However, Kubera makes it clear which type of investors it is designed for – those who need a platform that encompasses all of their assets and liabilities, not just their stocks and bonds.

Pricing

Intro Offer: 14 days for $1

Best Portfolio Analysis Tools. Learn More: New to the stock market? Discover actionable steps to create your first portfolio in our latest post.

2. Empower

Best Free Tool

Empower offers a suite of free portfolio tools, although they are geared toward budgeting and retirement planning at the expense of comprehensive analytics.

Empower, formerly Personal Capital, offers a free personal dashboard that features budgeting tools, a net worth calculator, and a retirement planner. While the dashboard is primarily used as a marketing device to introduce investors to Empower’s advisory services, it offers users a comprehensive overview of their portfolio and some useful scenario planning tools.

Empower lets you link a wide variety of accounts to the dashboard, including bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts. This gives you the ability to track both your net worth and your budget goals in real time. Moreover, Empower lets users set target allocations for their investment portfolios, meaning you can monitor drift and see if you need to rebalance.

The dashboard also features efficient frontier calculations and Monte Carlo simulations, although both are more limited compared to other best portfolio analysis tools we’ll examine. Some Empower users have reported frustration with the company’s sales tactics, with advisors repeatedly contacting high-net-worth users to try and convert them to advisor clients. Additionally, there are reports of difficulty with account integration since the Empower rebranding. For most people, though, these are small prices to pay for an otherwise free tool.

Pricing

Learn more: Get a clear picture of your retirement finances with our simple, step-by-step guide to calculating your retirement number.

3. Portfolio Visualizer

Best for Statistical Analysis

Portfolio Visualizer’s price is justified by its excellent statistical tools, but investors who aren’t used to advanced analytics should look elsewhere.

Portfolio Visualizer is considered one of the best portfolio analysis tools on the market, specifically designed for investors interested in statistical optimization. In addition to robust backtesting and Monte Carlo tools, the platform lets users analyze asset correlations, explore factor allocation models, and much more. This advanced functionality, though, also comes with a significant learning curve, especially for investors not well-versed in portfolio theory.

Portfolio Visualizer offers a free tier with strong functionality, but users won’t have the ability to save their models or customize certain data assumptions. One major limitation of Portfolio Visualizer is the lack of direct integration with brokerage firms, meaning users have to import their existing portfolios to the platform manually. Additionally, investors looking for a tool with robust retirement or cash flow planning should look elsewhere.

While Portfolio Visualizer is more expensive than other offerings, the price is justified by the number of distinct analytics tools on offer. While other platforms may provide clearer fundamental valuation metrics, no other platform matches the Portfolio Visualizer’s statistical tools. For investors looking to understand the statistical characteristics of their portfolio without needing to code the analytics themselves, Portfolio Visualizer is likely well worth the price.

Pricing

Intro Offer: 14-day free trial

Learn more: Gain insights into the top stock backtesting platforms and streamline your investment approach with our latest guide.

4. Morningstar Investor

Best for Fundamental Analysis

Morningstar Investor excels in fundamental portfolio analysis and investment research, but a high price and limited forecasting tools make this tool inappropriate for some investors.

Morningstar Investor, formerly Morningstar Portfolio Manager, is a robust portfolio analysis platform for investors that excels in providing fundamental portfolio analysis. While Morningstar does a fine job reporting performance, with some limited statistical offerings, it stands out as one of the best portfolio analysis tools for investors who are primarily interested in up-to-date valuation metrics and fundamental research for their portfolios.

While the platform offers some basic charting tools, which are helpful to see the change in the value of a portfolio or security over time, Morningstar’s history as an independent research firm is responsible for the clear focus on fundamental analysis of ETFs, stocks, and funds. Additionally, Morningstar’s screeners, which cover a variety of different instruments, will help investors find new investment opportunities.

The main drawback of the platform is its high price. While this is unsurprising given Morningstar’s history of catering to institutional clients and asset management firms, the platform is unlikely to be worth the price unless an investor has a particular affinity for fundamental analysis. Additional Morningstar-specific tools that may partially justify the price include the stock intersection analysis (which evaluates specific fund holdings to determine real stock exposure) and the X-ray analysis function (which evaluates portfolio exposure by asset class, sector, geography, and more).

Pricing

Intro Offer: Seven-day free trial

Learn more: Investing in stocks requires robust research. Find a comprehensive roundup of the best stock research tools in our latest post.

5. Ziggma

Best for ESG-Conscious Investors

In addition to being a specialized tool for ESG-focused investors, Ziggma is a general analytics platform that performs well in a variety of areas.

While Ziggma is versatile enough to serve a broad audience, it stands out as one of the best portfolio analysis tools for investors who are particularly focused on ESG investments and climate change. In addition to a comprehensive assortment of traditional metrics, Ziggma screeners include considerations for a firm’s climate score and carbon intensity, helping investors sort by the greenest firms. Asset coverage is not limited merely to ESG investments, though; Ziggma offers charts and data for equities, fixed-income investments, crypto, and commodities.

In addition to its ESG focus, Ziggma offers an assortment of great analytics tools for a reasonable price. While the platform lacks financial planning tools, there are model portfolio allocations to guide your own investments. Additionally, Ziggma features a simulator tool to evaluate the impact of potential trades on your portfolio’s beta, yield, and diversification.

Ziggma also features direct broker integration, which will save you from having to add your existing portfolio positions manually. In totality, the platform serves as a strong hybrid analytics platform. While it does not do fundamental analysis, technical analysis, or statistical optimization, as well as platforms that focus on those specific areas, Ziggma serves as an effective tool for investors who need suitable functionality in all areas.

Pricing

Intro Offer: Seven-day free trial

Learn more: Interested in responsible investing? Our recent post outlines the best ESG ETFs you might want to consider.

6. Sharesight

Best for Dividends and Taxes

Sharesight is one of the best portfolio analysis tools when it comes to dividend and tax features, but risk and return metrics could be improved to grant clearer portfolio insights.

Sharesight is a portfolio analytics platform designed to make dividend and tax tracking as simple as possible. While Sharesight offers a number of other features, including limited backtesting, direct broker integration, and good visualizations, it is the focus on dividends and taxes that will likely be the strongest value add for investors concerned with those areas.

Sharesight allows you to quickly see your entire dividend history, ensuring that you never miss a payout. Unlike some other platforms, Sharesight breaks down total return metrics by capital gains and dividends, letting investors see the precise factors driving returns. Finally, the ease of monitoring reinvested dividends and upcoming dividends, along with built-in calculations of dividend yield at the security level and the portfolio level, makes this platform a clear winner for dividend-focused investors.

Sharesight could be an excellent option for investors frustrated at the challenge of organizing their investment taxes. The platform can generate a detailed taxable income report based on a user-specified timeline, which can be used to file taxes yourself or given to an accountant to file on your behalf. To make this process even easier, Sharesight lets you share your portfolio directly with an accountant.

Pricing

Intro Offer: Seven-day free trial.

Learn more: Keen on understanding an investment strategy with a focus on steadily increasing dividends? Our recent post delves deep.

Step up your #investment game with indispensable analysis tools revealed in our newest post. Your #portfolio will thank you!

Click To Tweet

Best Portfolio Analysis Tools: Comparison Table

Selecting the right portfolio analytics tools can be difficult, particularly because there is no one definition for what constitutes a fully-fledged platform. Investors should keep in mind how they personally define the limits of their portfolio, whether that includes their entire financial lives or just their investment holdings. Then, it is important to determine the analysis you want to perform on this portfolio. Different platforms specialize in different areas, so it’s vital to consider the relative value of fundamental analysis, financial planning, and statistical analysis for your needs. In the table below, we compare the best portfolio analysis tools on offer based on these metrics as well as pricing.

The post 6 of the Absolute Best Portfolio Analysis Tools Compared appeared first on FinMasters.

Quick Compare

BEST FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS

CrowdStreet

CrowdStreet is a slick, user-friendly platform that connects accredited investors with commercial real estate investment opportunities. If you qualify as an accredited investor and meet the minimum investment threshold, you’ll have an opportunity to dip your toes into the world of commercial real estate. Just be aware of the company’s recent troubles! Read more

CrowdStreet
Minimum Investment	$25,000
Fees	Long-term varies by deal
Investment Types	Commercial real estate, rental properties, diversified funds
Expected Investment Length	Long-term Varies by deal

Visit Website

BEST FOR SMALL INVESTORS

Fundrise

Fundrise is a platform that allows you to buy into one or more of the real estate funds that they manage. You can buy in with as little as $10, the fees are very low, and the whole investing process is as easy as can be. It may not be your first choice if you really want to have a say in what properties are acquired and how they’re managed, but everyone else will find a streamlined – and potentially very profitable – investment opportunity. Read more

Fundrise
Minimum Investment	$10
Fees	0.15% annual advisory fee
Investment Types	Real estate funds with a broad range of underlying assets
Expected Investment Length	5-year minimum

Visit Website

BEST FOR ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS

Yieldstreet

Yieldstreet is a platform that specializes in a wide range of alternative investments. You can buy into art portfolios, REITs, real estate deals, and even short-term notes without leaving the site. The only downside is that you need to be accredited to access most of the cooler stuff. Read more

Yieldstreet
Minimum Investment	$10,000 – Growth and Income REIT and YieldStreet Prism Fund; Varies for other investments
Fees	0 – 2.5% annual management fees; Additional fees vary by investment
Investment Types	REITs, funds, real estate, art, and other alternative investments
Expected Investment Length	Varies by investment

Visit Website

BEST FOR MULTIFAMILY REAL ESTATE INVESTING

DiversyFund

DiversyFund gives everyday investors a chance to get a piece of the multifamily property pie. It’s easy to sign up, has low minimum investment requirements, and is designed to make investing in multifamily real estate as simple and painless as possible. And the best part? You don’t even need to be accredited to access most of their offerings. Read more

DiversyFund
Minimum Investment	$500 – Growth REITs; $25,000 – Premier Opportunity Fund (accredited); $50,000 – Premier Direct SPVs (accredited)
Fees	Varies based on investment
Investment Types	REITs, multifamily dwellings, private real estate
Expected Investment Length	5 – 7 years

Visit Website

SECOND BEST FOR ACCREDITED INVESTORS

EquityMultiple

EquityMultiple is another accredited investor-only platform that matches investors with opportunities that they won’t find elsewhere. The investment minimums are fairly high, and you do have to put your trust in the expertise of the staff who pick the opportunities, but the chance to score big returns on private real estate transactions and funds more than makes up for any downsides. Read more

EquityMultiple
Minimum Investment	$5,000 minimum; $10,000 – $30,000 typical range
Fees	0.5 – 1.5% annual fee: Common Equity; 1% servicing fee: Debt/Preferred Equity; $30 – $70 annual Administrative Expense
Investment Types	Equity, REITs, debt, funds
Expected Investment Length	Varies by investment

Visit Website

The Best Real Estate Investment Apps

Investing in real estate is a terrific way to diversify your portfolio, earn passive income, and secure your financial future, but it’s historically been out of reach for most investors. Until recently, you had to do a marathon’s worth of legwork to find properties, secure financing, and find tenants, not to mention securing adequate insurance and qualified building managers.

You can still go with the old-school approach if you want, but it’s no longer the only way to go. A number of apps and services have emerged in recent years that promise to democratize access to real estate investing, giving even small-time investors the chance to buy into and profit off of big properties. The question is: which ones are worth your time?

Learn more: By the way, if you’re aiming to grasp real estate investing, this post lists books that can offer clarity.

What Is an Accredited Investor?

Many platforms that allow you to invest in large or risky assets are legally required to verify that you’re an accredited investor before letting you do business with them. It’s not all that hard to qualify as an accredited investor, but you do need to meet at least one of these criteria:

• Have a pre-tax income of at least $200,000 as an individual or $300,000 as a couple
• Have a net worth of at least $1 million, not including your primary residence
• Hold Series 7, Series 82, and Series 65 certifications

Most people don’t meet these criteria. If you do, however, you should have no problem investing with any of the following apps. And if not, there are still some opportunities here for you.

1. CrowdStreet

Best for Accredited Investors

CrowdStreet bills itself as the leading online commercial real estate investing platform. They act as a sort of commercial real estate matchmaking service that connects accredited investors to sponsors looking for capital.

There usually aren’t that many offers available on their marketplace at any given time (though this depends heavily on the overall real estate market), but in a way, that’s kind of a good thing. Since CrowdStreet makes its money by facilitating transactions, they’re directly incentivized to do meaningful due diligence on every offer that comes their way. In other words, they aren’t afraid to turn down offers that they don’t think are good enough for their users.

Though the platform is free, easy to use, and takes a lot of the headache out of commercial real estate investing, it isn’t perfect. There are two main downsides: the fairly hefty minimum investment of $25,000 and the fact that it’s restricted to accredited investors.

In late July 2023, CrowdStreet was hit by the news that Nightingale Properties, which had raised $63 million from CrowdStreet investors in the largest deals ever hosted on the platform, had moved virtually all of the funds into accounts controlled by Nightingale CEO Elie Schwartz.

Nightingale is currently in bankruptcy and under investigation by the DoJ and SEC. The money is missing and it is not clear whether investors will recover any of it. CrowdStreet has not been accused of fraud, but the deal raises questions about the firm’s vetting process and CEO/Cofounder Tore Steen has been forced to step down.

Potential investors will want to review the situation thoroughly before deciding to proceed.

2. Fundrise

Best for Smaller Investments

Fundrise is somewhere on the other side of the spectrum from CrowdStreet. You don’t need to be accredited to invest with Fundrise, and you certainly don’t need to invest a minimum of $25,000. Users can get started investing on Fundrise with as little as $10, though you will need a much higher account balance to access some of the more exclusive offers. This is what makes Fundrise one of the best real estate investment apps for smaller investments.

Fundrise uses a combination of technologies and innovative management systems to provide a highly versatile service at a surprisingly low cost, letting it offer its users a set of tantalizing investment opportunities without bogging them down with fees.

The main downside of Fundrise is that you’re kept at arm’s length from the actual assets underlying their funds. When you invest, you aren’t actually buying a piece of a building or home, you’re buying into a portfolio that Fundrise manages. You’re giving up a bit of control in terms of picking and managing real estate investments, but that could be a good thing for investors who don’t have the time or expertise to do the due diligence that Fundrise performs on your behalf.

3. Yieldstreet

Best for Alternative Investments

Yieldstreet understands that real estate isn’t the only alternative asset class that investors turn to when they look for yield outside the equity markets. In addition to real estate—of which they have plenty on offer—Yieldstreet gives investors the chance to invest in over ten alternative asset classes, including art, short-term notes, private equity, and private credit.

Accredited investors will find a wide range of alternative investments available on Yieldstreet, most of which would otherwise be out of reach for all but big companies and the ultra-rich. You’ll be able to buy into art portfolios, short-term notes, private equity deals, and a bunch of other assets you’d have a hard time finding anywhere else, making the best real estate investment app for alternative investments.

Looking to invest in #realestate through your phone? Discover top apps that are changing the game in our latest post! #RealEstateTech

Click To Tweet

If you’re not accredited, you’ll be locked out of most of those opportunities, but not all of them. Yieldstreet lets unaccredited investors get a piece of the action via their Growth and Income REIT and their Yieldstreet Prism Fund, both of which give you the chance to profit off of all of the alternative investments they handle. The $10,000 minimum investment requirements are kind of steep, but it’s a small price to pay for such exclusive opportunities.

4. DiversyFund

Best for Multifamily Real Estate Investing

DiversyFund is one of the best real estate investment apps as it gives unaccredited investors the opportunity to get as close to direct real estate investments as the law allows. The company itself specializes in multifamily properties and makes its money by buying, improving, holding, and reselling the properties. The easy-to-use app gives investors the chance to get in on the action.

While you do need to be accredited to get in on some of their premium opportunities, DiversyFund doesn’t require accreditation to buy into their slate of REITs and private real estate investments. The investments they offer aren’t as liquid as stocks, bonds, or most other things you’ll find on the larger market—and buying in locks you in for a number of years before you can sell—but their steady returns and stable valuations make them an ideal way to diversify your medium- to long-term holdings.

One might think that a company in a relatively niche market would skimp on its mobile presence, but that isn’t the case with DiversyFund. Their app is built from the ground up to make investing in real estate feel seamless and intuitive. Everything from the investing interface to the auto-invest feature is made with ease of use in mind, and the care they put into developing the app shines through with every tap.

Learn more: By the way, if you’re intrigued by the concept of living in a part of your investment property and renting out the rest, house hacking is a strategy you might want to explore.

5. EquityMultiple

Second Best for Accredited Investors

EquityMultiple has this very self-explanatory quote on their home page from Nerdwallet:

“EquityMultiple blends crowdfunding with a more traditional real estate investing approach that can lead to high returns.”

And though we would have stopped at “approach” for the sake of brevity, the Nerdwallet quote sums up EquityMultiple’s overall ethos quite nicely. The company sources potential investments from real estate firms all around the country, evaluates them using their proprietary algorithms and underwriting methodologies, and places the very best opportunities up for investment on their platform. EquityMultiple’s team manages every aspect of the investments from start to finish, so all you have to worry about is picking an investment and putting your capital to use.

Accredited investors who sign up for EquityMultiple will find themselves knee-deep in opportunities to invest in direct real estate transactions and real estate funds that run the gamut across markets and asset types. There are enough different offerings with a wide enough range of return profiles that any experienced accredited investor should be able to find the missing piece to their portfolio within minutes.

The post 5 of the Best Real Estate Investment Apps Tested for 2024 appeared first on FinMasters.

The question is which of these services is worth your time and money, and which is best suited to your investing style? We’ve reviewed the best stock-picking services to give you some answers.

The Best Stock Picking Services: Summary

BEST FOR LONG-TERM INVESTORS

The Motley Fool

The Motley Fool combines decades of experience, data-driven analysis, and intuition to provide some of the best stock recommendations in the business. Each of their managed portfolios follows a slightly different theme and investing strategy, but each will give you about two new stock picks per month that are meant to be held for at least five years. Read more

Pricing
Stock Advisor	$199/year
Rule Breakers	$299/year
Everlasting Stocks	$299/year
Full Access	$13,999/year

Visit Website

BEST COMMUNITY-DRIVEN STOCK RECOMMENDATIONS

Seeking Alpha

Seeking Alpha is a diverse community of investors that provides crowdsourced research, analysis, and recommendations. Signing up for a paid membership gets you a massive number of reports and analyses from independent analysts, access to their advanced Quant Ratings, and more information than you probably know what to do with.  Read more

Pricing
Basic	Free
Premium	$4.95 for the first month, then $239/year
PRO	$2,400/year

Visit Website

BEST AI-POWERD SERVICE

Trade Ideas

Trade Ideas uses the power of artificial intelligence to optimize every aspect of the trading process. You’ll get constant real-time updates, suggestions for when to enter and exit trades, and assistance for everything from charting to portfolio optimization. It’s best suited to day traders, but almost any investor can find a ton of value in the recommendations that the AI provides. Read more

Pricing
Standard	$84/month
Premium	$167/month

Visit Website

BEST FOR BIG READERS

Morningstar Investor

Morningstar Investor is a paid subscription service run by the legendary stock and investing research firm itself. A subscription gets you access to years of best-in-class research on all kinds of different securities, plus the ability to check out Morningstar’s list of incredibly accurate ratings and recommendations that they’ve compiled over the years. Read more

Pricing
Investor	$34.95/monthly or $249/year

Visit Website

BEST FOR ACTIVE INVESTORS

Zacks Investor Collection

Zacks Investment Research uses a complex set of algorithms and data-driven quantitative models to identify companies with outsize growth potential and recommends them to their customers. Subscribing to their Zacks Investor Collection service gets you access to a library of managed portfolios, each of which provides its own recommendations each month. If you aren’t a fan of one portfolio, you can always look to find one or more that fit your personal philosophy or focus on your preferred industries.  Read more

Pricing
Zacks Investor Collection	$59/month

Visit Website

The Best Stock Picking Services Compared in Detail

Let’s take a closer look at the best stock-picking services.

1. The Motley Fool

Best for Long-Term Investors

The Motley Fool is a stock-picking service that prides itself on its dedication to telling the whole, unvarnished truth, no matter how unpopular it might be.

The Motley Fool makes a point to only tell the truth about investments that they arrive at using a combination of big data, in-depth fundamental analysis, and the combined knowledge and experience of their big and growing team. They have little patience for flavor-of-the-month plays or even for good companies with fair stock prices. They make their money by digging deeper into the data, analyzing the trends, and finding companies that are currently undervalued and poised for big gains in the future.

You can subscribe to any one or a combination of the Motley Fool’s managed portfolios, each of which will give you a set of detailed recommendations, past performance comparisons, and at least two new recommendations each month. Their Stock Advisor service is their flagship product with the longest track record, but there’s plenty of value in each portfolio.

Learn more: When we talk about stocks and money, understanding the basics is key, and this post serves as a quick-start guide for beginners in stock investing.

2. Seeking Alpha

Best Community-Driven Stock Recommendations

Seeking Alpha is an investing community with a semi-crowdsourced base of knowledge, research, and analysis on pretty much every kind of investment out there. This is one of the best stock-picking services if you’re looking for an incredibly diverse range of data-backed opinions from thousands of finance and investing professionals. You can access a huge trove of information without signing up for any of their subscription tiers, but you really need to sign up for at least the Premium tier if you want to get your eyes on the best information.

Seeking Alpha’s value doesn’t just come from the sheer volume of crowdsourced analysis that it pumps out every month. The service itself goes out of its way to monitor analyst performance, keeps track of their ratings and track record, and weighs their advice based on their calculations, which is very helpful when you’re sifting through page after page of analysis looking for good material. They also employ a quantitative system they call their Quant Ratings to grade each and every stock, meaning you can combine human advice and predictions with pure math to make better, more timely picks.

Learn more: If you’re delving into the world of stocks, you might find this post on the best stock backtesting platforms useful for optimizing your strategies.

3. Trade Ideas

Best AI-Powered Service

Trade Ideas is a little different from the other services on this list for one major reason: Holly. Holly is an AI that acts as a researcher, assistant, watchdog, analyst, and stock recommendation service all rolled into one.

Maximize your returns with the right tools! Check out our post on the best #stock-picking services.

Click To Tweet

Learn more: For those interested in emerging technologies, this post discusses the top AI stocks & ETFs to watch this year.

Most stock-picking services give you a couple of recommendations each month. That makes it nice and easy for long-term investors looking to place a few trades here and there and pretty much forget about their portfolios the rest of the time. Trade Ideas does things a bit differently. Holly stays active around the clock, running numbers and simulating outcomes millions of times each day, which means she’s going to give you more than two trade ideas each month.

This service is a bit more involved than the ones that just send monthly recommendations, but it’s one of the best stock-picking services for anyone who wants to leverage the power of AI to take their day trading to another level. You’ll get real-time recommendations for entry and exit points for stocks, suggestions for optimizing your portfolio, and even the ability to run your own simulations and backtesting to find ideas that even Holly might have missed.

Learn more: Aspiring to learn from the best in the field? This post outlines the composition of Warren Buffett’s investment portfolio.

4. Morningstar Investor

Best for Big Readers

Morningstar is as close as stock research and picking services get to royalty. They’ve earned a name for themselves as one of the best, most thorough stock research companies in the business, and it isn’t hard to see why. Over 150 different professional, independent analysts—all of whom are highly educated industry veterans—come together to form what may be one of the most significant sources of fundamentals-driven research out there.

Morningstar Investor, their paid membership, gives you access to all the past, present, and future research and analysis that their team of independent analysts puts out on a regular basis. You’ll get access to volume after volume of data-driven research and analysis, plus a massive list of ratings on securities, individual managers, ESG investments, and a whole slew of other topics that touch just about every corner of the industry. You won’t get handed a couple of recommendations each month, but you will be given access to a rating system with a track record that’s so good it almost seems like cheating.

Learn more: If you’re exploring different investment analysis approaches, this post detailing the differences between fundamental and technical analysis could provide some valuable insights.

5. Zacks Investor Collection

Best for Active Investors

Zacks Investment Research was started by an MIT Ph.D. back in 1978, and it’s been building on his quantitative ideals and mathematical prowess ever since. The firm churns out some of the industry’s best, most mathematically supported recommendations on a monthly basis, almost all of which are underpinned by their original stroke of genius: the Zacks Rank system.

Much like the Motley Fool, Zacks maintains a number of recommendation services and lists that function a lot like managed portfolios, each with slightly different investing philosophies and themes. For instance, their Home Run Investor service—one of their more prominent offerings—focuses on identifying and recommending small- and mid-cap companies that have a lot of room to grow. Its recommendations have a much shorter time frame than most similar services, which makes it one of the best stock-picking services for investors who want to be more actively involved in their portfolios.

Learn more: Are you interested in stock trading? This post explains how you can practice without putting actual money on the line.

The post 5 Best Stock Picking Services Compared for 2024 appeared first on FinMasters.

Proprietary (or “prop”) trading firms evolved to solve this issue, granting traders capital in exchange for a portion of the profits generated. In this article, we’ll evaluate seven of the best prop trading firms and help you decide which one will give you the best opportunity to succeed.

Learn more: Wondering who to trust with your stock trades? Our latest post sorts through the best online brokers available today.

Remember: Prop trading involves significant risks. Be sure that you understand them before making any commitments!

Quick Review

BEST ASSET COVERAGE

SurgeTrader

• Profit Split: 75% (up to 90%)
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Oil, Metals, Indices, Crypto, Some Stocks
• Drawdown Limits: 8% Max, 5% Daily 
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: $700
• Standard Leverage: 10:1

SurgeTrader is one of the most popular and reputable prop trading firms. The platform is notable for letting traders get up and running with flexible funded accounts quickly, requiring just a one-phase trial. The platform truly stands out for its wide variety of asset coverage, making it a good choice for traders whose strategies span multiple asset classes. Read more

Visit Website

BEST FOR AGGRESSIVE TRADERS

Traders With Edge

• Profit Split: 80%
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Metals, Commodities, Indices, Crypto
• Drawdown Limits: 5%-20% Max, 2.5%-10% Daily
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: $750
• Standard Leverage: 20:1

Traders With Edge is a prop trading firm noted for the flexibility it offers traders, including several different trial options that suit distinct trading styles. In addition, the firm has fairly loose risk limits, which, when paired with the platform’s allowance for many different strategies, makes it a great choice for aggressive traders. While leverage ratios could be improved, most traders will be well-suited to the existing limits. Read more

Visit Website

BEST FOR FUTURES

TopStep

• Profit Split: 100% up to $10K, then 90%
• Tradeable Assets: Futures incl. Indices, Oil, Rates, Gold
• Drawdown Limits: 3%-4% Max, 2% Daily
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: $325/month
• Standard Leverage: Dependent, expressed in total contracts

TopStep is one of the best prop trading firms as it focuses on serving futures traders. The firm has been in the business for a decade, earning it a strong reputation. This history, along with a notably high profit split, makes the platform an especially good choice for futures traders looking to expand their capital base with a reliable partner. Read more

Visit Website

BEST FOR INSTANT FUNDING

The 5%ers

• Profit Split: 50%-100%
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Metals, Indices
• Drawdown Limits: 4%-6% Max
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: $495
• Standard Leverage: 30:1

The 5%ers offers a strong platform overall, although it is somewhat held back by a relatively poor profit split and strict drawdown limits. Still, the company is one of the only prop trading firms to offer accounts with instant funding. While these accounts require an expensive upfront fee, The 5%ers is a strong option for those who want to get up and running right away. Read more

Visit Website

BEST FOR FOREX

FTMO

• Profit Split: 80%-90%
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Indices, Commodities, Crypto
• Drawdown Limits: 10%-20% Max, 5%-10% Daily
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: € 540
• Standard Leverage: 100:1

While FTMO offers access to some other asset classes, it is a firm primarily built for forex traders. Through the platform, users can trade most major pairs as well as a number of smaller cross pairs. FTMO is also notable for its high leverage limits and good payout structure. Read more

Visit Website

BEST OVERALL

The Funded Trader

• Profit Split: 80%-90%
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Oil, Metals, Indices, Crypto
• Drawdown Limits: 6%-12% Max, 3%-6% Daily
• Price for Standard $100K Acct.: $499
• Standard Leverage: 60:1

At first glance, The Funded Trader may not seem like a serious contender due to its presentation as a game-like platform. Under the surface, though, The Funded Trader is a solid prop trading firm with a good reputation, offering a variety of account options and asset classes. While the company does not stand out in any one area, traders looking for a generally strong platform will do well with The Funded Trader. Read more

Visit Website

BEST PREMIUM SERVICE

FidelCrest

• Profit Split: 80%-90%
• Tradeable Assets: FX, Stocks, Metals, Commodities
• Drawdown Limits: 10%-20% Max, 5%-10% daily
• Price for $250K Acct. (No $100K Option): €999
• Standard Leverage: 100:1

FidelCrest has relatively higher prices for its accounts than many other firms, making it one of the best prop trading firms for traders who require a premium service. The firm has fairly lenient risk limits, high leverage, and a solid profit split. Due to the extensive trial process, though, new traders will likely be best served by other firms. Read more

Visit Website

The Best Prop Trading Firms

Here’s a closer look at the best prop trading firms.

1. SurgeTrader

SurgeTrader is one of the best prop trading firms, and for a good reason. The company focuses on getting traders up and running quickly, requiring a one-phase trial with a 10% profit target.

While SurgeTrader emphasizes that traders can achieve up to a 90% profit split, this advantage comes with the requirement of an additional fee. The standard profit split is only 75%. Still, traders can expect to trade a wide variety of assets on the platform, making SurgeTrader a great option for traders whose strategies span multiple asset classes.

Leean more: Interested in the reality of day trading profits? Check out our post “How Many Day Traders Make Money?“, where we delve into the numbers.

One of SurgeTrader’s downsides is a fairly low leverage limit, which caps potential profit opportunities for traders. In addition, the fees are higher than other platforms for comparable account sizes. Still, some traders may find SurgeTrader worth the higher price due to the platform’s ease of use and reputation.

Features

Pricing

2. Traders With Edge

While Traders With Edge is somewhat newer to the industry than some other members of this list, it has earned a positive reputation for the flexibility and freedom it offers traders. For example, Traders With Edge permits some trading styles that are deemed too risky for other firms, making the platform a potentially good choice for aggressive traders who don’t want unnecessary restrictions.

In addition, Traders With Edge offers multiple options for getting funding approval. Traders can either pursue the one-phase ‘Turtle’ challenge, which is good for slow and steady traders, or the two-phase ‘Hare’ challenge, oriented toward those who generate quick profits. For newer traders who are still exploring their style, trading on a platform that accommodates diverse approaches could be helpful for learning such a complex field. To bolster Traders With Edge’s reputation for flexibility, the platform has a fairly quick payout structure, offering withdrawals every two weeks.

Features

Pricing

3. TopStep

TopStep is a platform with an excellent reputation in the futures trading community. The firm has been in operation for a decade and is dedicated to engaging with traders who operate in the futures market. While this clear concentration on one market could be a value-add for focused traders, newer users should be wary of the lack of flexibility they will have to test strategies in new markets.

With that being said, TopStep is also one of the few firms that shows a clear desire to educate and train emerging traders. The platform offers access to coaching, educational courses, and a community of traders where experience can be shared.

Navigate the world of #PropTrading with ease – our newest post sheds light on the best firms out there...

Click To Tweet

TopStep has a somewhat different trial process than most, requiring a monthly subscription while traders pass a two-step “Trader Combine.” Navigating the process can be worth it, as TopStep’s 90% profit ratio is one of the highest in the industry, making it one of the best prop trading firms options.

Features

Pricing

4. The 5%ers

For those with no desire to wait before diving into live trading, The 5%ers is one of the only platforms to offer an instantaneous funding option. The “Hyper-Growth” program lets you get set up right away, with the possibility of expanding account funding if certain profit targets are hit. Traders should be aware of the high upfront cost of this program, however, especially compared to the account size.

For those who are a bit more patient, The 5%ers have several options for more traditional trials. These trials are actually quite a bit cheaper than the industry average, so this could be a good platform for those sensitive to high trial fees. Still, the biggest drawback to the platform is a poor profit split, with a standard payout ratio of only 50%. This low level might make the platform unattractive to successful traders.

Features

Pricing

5. FTMO

FTMO is a prop trading firm focused on forex, although the platform also supports trading indices, crypto, and commodities. Forex users are likely to feel at home, though, with an ample mix of major pairs and cross pairs to trade.

FTMO’s trading challenge is not as simple as those of other firms, requiring a two-step process with different profit targets. While FTMO’s profit split starts at 80%, this can increase to 90% for a successful trader. FTMO’s “scaling plan” provides some additional incentives for traders to succeed once they are on the platform.

Additionally, FTMO has somewhat strict risk limits, including requiring positions to be closed out overnight for most accounts. This may be inappropriate for medium-term traders. Still, while FTMO may not be right for everyone, it has a strong reputation in the forex community and continues to be a popular choice overall.

Learn more: Curious about paper trading platforms? Our recent post, “Best Paper Trading Platforms,” offers a close-up view of the best ones in the market.

Features

Pricing

6. The Funded Trader

The Funded Trader emphasizes the gamification of its platform, presenting its website as almost like a video game. Don’t be fooled. The company is a legitimate prop trading firm with a strong history. Some traders might enjoy the video game approach for the way it eases the pressure of trading, as well as the community that has sprung up around the firm.

The Funded Trader offers a number of different ways to get set up with an account, allowing good flexibility for different trading styles. Trial fees can vary widely among these different options, but the firm is notable for allowing slightly higher maximum drawdowns on its standard accounts than other platforms.

In addition, the leverage allowable on The Funded Trader is higher than traders might find elsewhere, with limits in certain scenarios being as high as 200:1. These factors mean this firm might be one of the best prop trading firms for traders running high-risk, high-reward strategies.

Features

Pricing

7. FidelCrest

FidelCrest is a premium prop trading firm that offers flexibility and a high payout ratio in exchange for larger upfront costs. For example, its “Aggressive” $250K account has a profit split of 90% and a max drawdown of 20% but has a trial price of more than $2,000. With that being said, FidelCrest offers unlimited trial retries for all its account types, unlike some firms which charge an additional fee.

In addition, FidelCrest offers access to “Micro Trader” accounts, which come with significantly reduced account sizes. If you are looking for a prop trading firm, however, it’s likely that such accounts, which range from $15,000 to $60,000, will not move the needle on your trading strategies.

Learn more: Get a grip on stock trading without risking your money – check out our post for a how-to guide.

Non-European traders should also keep in mind that FidelCrest has a 3^rd party withdrawal fee of about $50 to send payments outside Europe, which could impact the bottom line of some traders.

Features

Pricing

The post 7 Best Prop Trading Firms of 2024 Reviewed appeared first on FinMasters.

Head-to-Head Comparison

To see how TrendSpider and TradingView size up with each other, we’ll first compare their competing features and then look at the price points they offer. Then, we’ll give a quick summary of each platform’s pros and cons before diving into a more in-depth comparison.

Automated Chart Patterns	Yes, the main focus of the platform	Yes, although somewhat limited
Free Trial	7 days	30 days
Community	Official Discord	Built-in community platform, including live streams, education, and trade ideas
News	Real-time through Benzinga	“News Flow” aggregates many sources
Backtesting	Yes, with an automated pattern search	Backtesting done with Pine Script language
Data	Market data, plus alternative data	Standard market data
Custom Indicators	Yes, created with JavaScript	Yes, created with Pine Script
Broker Integration	No	Yes
Heatmaps	Yes, for specific price action on charts	Yes, for markets as a whole
Markets	U.S. stocks & futures, crypto, forex	U.S. stocks & futures, int’l stocks & futures, crypto, forex
Screener	Built-in community platform, including live streams, education, and trade ideas	Yes, with fundamental factors
	Read review	Read review
	Visit Website	Visit Website

Pricing

While TrendSpider has some features that TradingView lacks, those features come at a price. TrendSpider is more expensive than TradingView at each competing tier. You’ll have to decide whether those features are important to you.

	Price (Monthly)
TrendSpider Essential	$39
TrendSpider Elite	$79
TrendSpider Elite Plus	$179

	Price (Monthly)
TradingView Basic	Free
TradingView Pro	$14.95
TradingView Pro+	$29.95
TradingView Premium	$59.95

Pros & Cons

While both platforms offer plenty of features for technical traders, these features do not come without certain drawbacks. Here are the major pros and cons of each tool.

TrendSpider Pros & Cons

TradingView Pros & Cons

Now that we’ve seen a broad overview of how the two platforms stack up let’s evaluate the specific similarities and differences between TrendSpider and TradingView.

TrendSpider vs. TradingView: Which Is the Best Charting and Trading Tool?

Click To Tweet

TrendSpider vs. TradingView: Similarities

As we saw in the comparison, TrendSpider and TradingView each offer some unique features to draw traders to their respective platforms. Still, they target the same audience, and they have a lot in common.

Charting

Excellent charting functionality is essential for any platform designed to help with technical analysis. Both TradingView and TrendSpider offer fantastic charting systems to help you study patterns, generate ideas, and time trades properly.

While each platform differs slightly in the specifics, they both offer candlestick charts, advanced drawing tools, and a wealth of indicators based on price or volume action. Whether you use Fibonacci retracements, trendlines, or support & resistance analysis in your trading, both TrendSpider and TradingView will have what you need.

In addition, both TrendSpider and TradingView have some form of automated pattern-seeking, which can help save you time when looking for trading opportunities. TradingView’s automated pattern-seeking seems limited to just a few very popular chart patterns. TrendSpider’s technology is more sophisticated, including the ability to identify over 200 different candlestick patterns.

Each platform offers flexibility for chart layouts, which is perfect for customizing your setup to fit your unique trading style. Besides being able to set up multiple charts side-by-side, both TrendSpider and TradingView allow you to view multiple timeframes within the same chart, which can help contextualize possible patterns within different time scales.

Trading View chart

TrendSpider chart

Screening

Analyzing thousands of charts individually to search for the best trade would be impractical. Thankfully, these two platforms include screening functionality to quickly narrow down possible opportunities.

TrendSpider’s screening is impressive for the way it allows traders to mix and match technical indicators to find the ideal setup. The visual interface lets you combine factors to easily identify unique opportunities – like, for instance, a specific bullish chart pattern occurring on a stock with high volume and an upcoming earnings release. This screening can be done on entire stock indices, specific crypto exchanges, or even on a custom watchlist of assets.

While TradingView’s screening features do not offer the expansive technical functionality of TrendSpider’s, TradingView makes up for it by including better fundamental information. For instance, TradingView allows users to filter by balance sheet factors like the debt/equity ratio or by income statement factors like EBITDA.

The ability to integrate fundamental and technical information will be desirable to traders who work with both data sets. If you use fundamental analysis to decide what to buy and sell and technical analysis to decide when you will buy and sell, this will be an important feature.

Verdict: While TradingView might offer better screening for traders who consider both technical and fundamental factors in their decision making, users will find great value in the screening and scanning functionality on both platforms.

Alerts

Great trading opportunities don’t always occur when you’re sitting at your desk. Thankfully, both TradingView and TrendSpider offer alerts to inform traders when specific situations occur, wherever the trader might be.

Each platform allows users to activate real-time alerts based on price action, technical indicators, or custom strategies. The most common way to deliver these alerts is via SMS or email, but each platform also has support for webhooks, which opens up exciting automation opportunities for advanced traders.

Webhooks allow a trader to ping specific links when an event occurs. By connecting these links to a broker that accepts trading via webhooks, advanced users can turn TrendSpider or TradingView into automated trading tools. While most users will feel more comfortable entering trades manually if you find a winning strategy, both TrendSpider and TradingView can help you turn it into an automated profit machine.

Backtesting

At the end of the day, even the most logically sound trading strategy needs to be tested in the market to determine its value. To that end, both TrendSpider and TradingView offer access to one of the most vital tools in a trader’s belt: historical backtesting.

TrendSpider’s backtesting is ideal for traders who want to get up and running quickly since it lets users define a custom trading strategy with no coding required. Despite this simplicity, traders can generate and test sophisticated trading strategies with TrendSpider, all expressed using a series of logical conditions.

In TradingView, using backtesting requires learning the Pine Script language, which is used to define custom strategies. While Pine Script is a fairly easy language to learn, this does create more of a barrier to backtesting than TrendSpider’s no-code tools. Still, once a strategy is set up, the process is simple and robust. TradingView allows you to backtest strategies in several different ways, including a mode called “Deep Backtesting”, which utilizes all historical data for a specific symbol.

TrendSpider vs. TradingView: Differences

While TrendSpider and TradingView share many important features, traders should be aware of their differences before settling on one of the two platforms. Let’s briefly review what sets each tool apart.

Pricing

Pricing is the most obvious difference between TrendSpider and TradingView, and it’s important enough to merit real consideration.

Both TrendSpider and TradingView offer three paid tiers:

• For TradingView, these are priced at $14.95, $29.95, and $59.95 when paid monthly.
• For TrendSpider, the tiers are priced at $39, $79, and $179 when paid monthly.

In other words, at each membership level, TrendSpider is more than double the price of TradingView.

TradingView also has more generous free offerings. TradingView’s free trial for any of its tiers is 30 days, while TrendSpider offers just 7. TradingView has a free tier that users can sign up for right away, although it comes with severely limited features.

Verdict: While traders will have to decide for themselves if TrendSpider’s features justify such a price difference, newer traders may find the high price a significant expense compared to their total capital base, especially if they are not likely to use TrendSpider’s more advanced features.

Broker Integration

One of the most significant advantages that TradingView has over TrendSpider is direct broker integration. TradingView allows the integration of many popular brokers, including Interactive Brokers, TradeStation, and Alpaca.

Having direct broker integration means that TradingView can serve as an all-in-one trading solution, including both analysis and execution. For traders who frequently execute intraday transactions, the speed involved in having an integrated broker could be a significant benefit.

Verdict: As we mentioned before, though, both TradingView and TrendSpider do support webhooks to automate trading. Surprisingly, TradingView does not support automated trading directly through the broker integration itself, so the system used to perform automated trading on either platform will actually end up looking quite similar.

Learn more: If you happen to be stuck trying to choose a broker for trading stocks, check out our review of the best online brokers.

Community Features

One of TradingView’s major draws is its social platform, which is built right into the tool. TradingView has an active community that frequently shares trade ideas, learning materials, and strategy scripts. In addition, there are trader live streams you can watch in real time, which can help newer traders learn from experienced veterans.

Any online social platform will certainly deal with some useless, misleading, or rude content, but TradingView’s community platform does generate surprisingly good ideas and discussions. Still, some traders could find the community features distracting, so TrendSpider’s approach, which keeps its official Discord server separate from the platform, might be preferred.  

Advanced Functionality

While TradingView might have TrendSpider beat as far as price and community are concerned, TrendSpider’s advanced functionality could prove to be a real difference maker for experienced traders.

While both platforms include tools to create custom indicators, TrendSpider allows users to go into more depth. To create custom indicators on TrendSpider, users must code in JavaScript rather than the simpler, proprietary Pine Script language that TradingView uses. While JavaScript is more difficult to learn, it is also much more general, allowing users to bypass the possible limitations of indicators made in Pine Script.

Additionally, TrendSpider bills itself as the foremost platform for automated chart pattern recognition. While TradingView does offer automated chart patterns as well, it does not integrate these patterns into screening as TrendSpider does. TrendSpider’s approach makes it possible to scan thousands of assets at once for a specific pattern, helping you find the best opportunities more quickly. TradingView, on the other hand, only allows you to search for patterns on one chart at a time.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps are a tremendously valuable tool for traders, as they can translate numerical data into visual data, letting you spot patterns far quicker than you otherwise might. While both TradingView and TrendSpider offer some form of heatmaps, each platform’s approach to doing so differs widely.

TradingView offers heatmaps of markets as a whole, with the two main focuses being the stock market and the crypto market. Within the stock market heatmap, traders can select the typical American exchanges or other international ones. The heatmap is further broken down by sector, letting you easily spot market movements on the fly, which is especially important if your strategy depends on volatility.

TrendSpider, on the other hand, tailors its heatmaps to focus on specific price action. These heatmaps can be displayed directly on the trading chart and automatically identify factors like market depth, trendlines, and support & resistance levels. For traders who might look at hundreds of charts a day, being able to quickly visually interpret the most important elements of a chart should speed up opportunity analysis significantly.

Markets and Data

The final main difference between the two platforms lies in the range of support for different markets and data. For the most part, TrendSpider and TradingView support the same markets, but TrendSpider edges out TradingView when it comes to alternative data sources. Traders should note that accessing most real-time data through these platforms will require an additional fee.

TrendSpider supports real-time stock, crypto, futures, and forex data, along with delayed index data. The platform stands out for also offering some interesting alternative data sources, which could be valuable for certain trading strategies. For instance, TrendSpider grants users access to data on unusual options order flow, the percentage of retail trading activity in the market, and the total dark pool volume for certain assets.

TradingView also supports real-time stock, crypto, futures, and forex data, as well as real-time index data. Unlike TrendSpider, TradingView also offers access to a significant number of international markets, including Australian, Indian, and Japanese stocks. While the alternative data offered by TrendSpider is attractive, international users should carefully consider the markets to which they need access.

Which One Should You Use?

TrendSpider and TradingView can both be great solutions for traders, but choosing the right one for you will ultimately depend on your personal preferences and your unique trading style. With that in mind, this section will break down which platform could be right for specific users, depending on the features they’re interested in.

Remember, both TrendSpider and TradingView offer free trials, so we advise you to take each tool out for a test run before committing to either one.

TrendSpider is a fantastic tool for experienced traders that need advanced functionality, but its high price is likely to be off-putting for new traders. In addition, TrendSpider’s complexity comes with a cost: the user interface is not particularly intuitive, and the platform can be difficult to learn. For inexperienced traders who are still learning the ins and outs of technical analysis, learning TrendSpider is unlikely to be the best use of their time.

We cannot ignore the excellent pattern recognition tools that TrendSpider provides, particularly in the way they are integrated directly with advanced screeners. While the platform might take time to learn, you should consider the time you might save by having TrendSpider search thousands of assets for specific trading opportunities in the blink of an eye. TrendSpider’s in-depth backtesting tools, which link well to the platform’s no-code trading strategies, are an added draw.

While TradingView can replicate some of these features, its comparative simplicity is one of the main reasons it is a more popular tool overall than TrendSpider. Newer traders will have a much easier time getting up and running on TradingView. Moreover, the community features, including learning material and live streams from veteran traders, dovetail well with TradingView’s focus on the burgeoning technical analyst.

Still, some features of TradingView will be key difference-makers for certain traders. Non-US users, in particular, are likely to prefer TradingView due to the range of international markets the platform supports. In addition, traders who want to execute trades directly from their analysis program will need TradingView’s broker integration.

Ultimately, there is no one answer to which platform is better since traders differ in their needs and want. But with the guidance above, you should be able to choose the tool that will best help you succeed in the markets.

Our rating: 3.1/5

Try TrendSpider

VS

Our rating: 4.3/5

Try TradingView

The post TrendSpider vs. TradingView: Detailed 2024 Feature Comparison appeared first on FinMasters.

In addition to the essentials, like charting and backtesting, TrendSpider offers advanced functionality for experienced users. The platform’s high cost and complexity, though, make it unappealing for entry-level traders.

What Does TrendSpider Do?

TrendSpider presents itself as an all-in-one trading solution, offering everything from basic data retrieval to automated trading bots. While the claims of complete trading integration are exaggerated, the platform does offer a surprising number of capabilities, especially once a user is accustomed to the interface.

TrendSpider’s web interface presents a vast amount of information, so users with a large screen or multiple monitors will have the easiest time navigating it. TrendSpider has a mobile app, but it is designed to supplement the web interface by providing basic charts and updated stock watchlists while on the go.

First, we’ll review TrendSpider’s basic functions, including those most essential to technical analysis. Next, we’ll show you how to complete some common trading tasks. Later, we’ll review TrendSpider’s advanced functionality and see what it offers the most experienced traders.

Charting

While TrendSpider allows you to draw lines and arrows in order to chart manually, traders will have a much easier time using TrendSpider’s automated charting tools. Below, we’ve added a simple moving average and automated trend lines to our original chart, all with the click of two buttons.

More advanced charting, like the detection of candlesticks or chart patterns, can be done by exploring the options at the top of the dashboard. Each selection offers deep customization, from selecting the color to searching for unique patterns to detect.

While this depth is useful in theory, in practice, it is difficult to utilize since there is little explanation for the different options. This is especially true for inexperienced technicians, who may be lost when presented with long lists of chart patterns with names like “Rickshaw Man” and “Gravestone Doji”.

News and Watchlists

TrendSpider offers an impressive amount of pre-built watchlists, allowing users to search for current price movements among different position segments quickly. Users can also create their own custom watchlists. By pairing this with a real-time news feed through Benzinga, traders can stay up-to-date on the positions that interest them most.

TrendSpider also includes scanner watchlists, which can be used to scan indices for specific patterns or events. For instance, traders can find all the companies in the S&P 500 with earnings in the next 7 days or those with specific volume trends. This can speed up the time it takes to search for different trading opportunities.

Data

TrendSpider offers data access to a fairly broad set of instruments, including stocks, ETFs, crypto, FX, and futures. Note that access to most of this data requires signing exchange agreements, and access to some (like futures) requires paying a separate exchange fee. Notably, bonds are missing from this list, which could make it difficult for traders to analyze strategies that correlate bonds with other instruments.

Unlike other trading platforms, TrendSpider also integrates certain alternative data sources. These include information on off-exchange trading volumes, social sentiment, and retail trading activity.

Most of this data can be incorporated into the existing chart for each instrument, although some manifest as a separate chart. There are additional difficulties in incorporating alternative data based on the length of the timeframe. As is typically the case for TrendSpider, what seems simple on the surface hides complexity underneath.

An additional data feature, which is still in beta testing, is the Data Flow feed. This is a real-time flow of certain data sources, such as unusual options activity or insider trading alerts. While this feature might prove useful to some traders, it is debatable whether additions of dubious utility justify the increase in complexity associated with their inclusion.

Backtesting

TrendSpider offers a no-code backtesting feature that allows traders to see the historical performance of strategies of interest. While all backtesting is subject to limitations of liquidity and price impact, TrendSpider’s Strategy Tester allows the creation of fairly sophisticated trading strategies without the need to touch the underlying code.

For instance, here is the result of a strategy that involves going long USD-JPY when the last price is greater than the exponential moving average indicator and selling when the price falls below that indicator (with a 2% fallback stop-loss). 

While the data presented might take a while for newer traders to digest, the ability to have historical data integrated into a no-code tool makes TrendSpider a very powerful tool for traders with little coding experience.

Scanning

TrendSpider includes a robust scanning suite to discover trading opportunities based on specific criteria. We saw a compartmentalized version of TrendSpider’s scanning capabilities when looking at watchlists, but an independent scanning tool can also be utilized.

Below, we see the results of a scan that finds stocks in the S&P 500 that finished 2% or more above their previous close. As you’ll see, a scrollable list of all suitable stocks appears on the right-hand side, allowing us to easily dive further into one of the positions by clicking it and pulling up its respective chart.

Note that TrendSpider’s plans differ in the number of results allowed by each scan. In the screenshot above, we are limited to just the first 100 of the suitable stocks unless we choose to upgrade. Moreover, we cannot make edits to the scan we ran, as it was a sample scan provided to us.

Now that we have a broad overview of the basic capabilities of the platform, we can dive in to understand how to use it effectively. In the next section, we’ll further explore the way TrendSpider works by creating our own custom scan and finding patterns in the resulting chart.

How to Use TrendSpider to Scan for Stocks

One way to leverage TrendSpider’s focus on serving technical traders is to use the platform’s built-in pattern scanners to filter positions for attractive opportunities quickly. To understand what this looks like in practice, we’ll go through a step-by-step example that highlights some of the platform’s offerings.

Step 1: Set Up the Scanner

To pull up TrendSpider’s market scanner, navigate to the main dashboard of the interface. In the top right, click Scanner. This will add the market scanner tab right below whatever chart is currently active.

You’ll see a place to name our new strategy right next to the scanner search bar. Let’s name our strategy “FinMasters Tutorial.

Now, we can go about adding parameters to our scanner. One simple scan is to filter on the condition that the daily closing price is greater than the daily simple moving average indicator, which could indicate positive momentum in the stock. Supposing we are only interested in tech companies, perhaps because we are looking for high-beta opportunities, we can filter specifically on the Technology sector.

Our setup will look like the following.

Step 2: Run the Scanner, Select a Stock

Now that we’re ready, we click Scan to generate a list of stocks that meet our criteria. Note that the total number of positions scanned could be limited by the plan we have.

Scrolling through the list on the right-hand side, you might find positions of interest as potential trading opportunities. Since the scanner is a broad tool, we’ll need to dive deeper into any specific stock to decide whether the position is actionable. On the list, Adobe (ADBE) might catch our eye. It is a large, reputable tech firm with a strong previous close. Let’s click the stock to pull up the chart.

We can save our scanner for later use by clicking Save.

Step 3: Evaluate the Chart with Patterns and Indicators

To give ourselves more room to work with the chart, we can click Scanner again on the top right to remove it from our dashboard.

Looking at Adobe’s chart, there might not be any obvious patterns to the naked eye. Let’s use TrendSpider’s automated pattern recognition to see if there’s anything we missed.

Click the three dots next to Chrt.P. We’ll look for bullish chart patterns to see if there might be positive momentum in the stock. Choose Channel Ascending, Triangle Ascending, and Wedge Rising. Then click apply.

Interestingly, it appears there were some positive patterns that we missed. To reflect our initial scan and understand Adobe’s price change over time, let’s add a simple moving average indicator to the chart. Click the three dots next to Indicators, and if it is not added already, search for Simple Moving Average. Then click Apply.

As we would expect, given our scan, the stock’s recent close was above its simple moving average. It appears the average was declining but has started to reverse around the time bullish chart patterns appeared. While this might indicate an opportunity, TrendSpider offers some additional tools to research our position further.

Step 4: Further Research with News and Analyst Ratings

Sometimes, charts are just not enough to make a trading decision. Luckily, we can utilize TrendSpider’s alternative data sources to conduct additional research.

On the right-hand side of your screen, select both Analysts and News. This should immediately pull up both the Adobe news feed as well as information on recent Wall Street ratings.

It looks like there was no major Adobe news in the past several weeks, although we might want to look into the insider sales that have taken place in case they represent a lack of confidence by management or major investors. Additionally, analyst estimates on Adobe seem fairly positive, with no recommendations to sell.

Ultimately, making a trading decision like this is a personal choice, but this tutorial showed how TrendSpider could be used to intelligently inform those choices, especially once a trader is familiar with the interface. While TrendSpider specializes in supporting technical analysis, the alternative data sources it offers strongly supplement additional research.

While TrendSpider lacks the ability to place trades directly inside the platform, the next section will detail how to replicate this ability with some advanced features.

Advanced Features

Although TrendSpider offers too much depth to fully evaluate in this article, here is a brief overview of the tools that experienced traders will find particularly useful on the platform.

Chart Scripting

With TrendSpider’s code editor, traders can create custom chart patterns and indicators in case the built-in options are insufficient for the needs of advanced users. This tool, combined with the custom backtesting strategies we reviewed earlier, creates powerful options for uniquely tailored analysis and charting techniques.

Trading Bots and Alerts

Trading bots are a method to begin automating live trading for custom strategies. At a basic level, a user could create a bot to send them a text message whenever a strategy has an entry or exit alert. This would allow the user to go to their broker manually and execute the necessary trades.

Once a trader is confident in their strategy, they can modify the bot to send requests to a URL via webhooks automatically. Most major retail brokerages, including TD Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers, allow trades to be executed automatically through these webhooks.

While TrendSpider does not allow direct integration with brokerages, this method lets users replicate the functionality. Additionally, TrendSpider allows integration with a platform called SignalStack to centralize webhook management among multiple brokers.

Similar to bots, TrendSpider offers dynamic alerts for users to be notified of action for essentially any indicator or trend line. These tools, once you learn to use them, turn TrendSpider into much more than just a charting system and partially justify the platform’s high price.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some common questions about TrendSpider and its uses.

Is TrendSpider Better Than TradingView?

TrendSpider and TradingView are both robust trading tools. TrendSpider shines with its advanced automated chart pattern recognition and no-code backtesting, but lacks broker integration. TradingView, however, offers a vibrant community platform, fundamental information screening, and direct broker integration. The choice between the two depends on the user’s experience level and budget.

While the two platforms are comparable in terms of basic functionality, TrendSpider is significantly more expensive than TradingView. 

For experienced traders, TrendSpider’s price could be worth it for access to advanced features like automated charting, trading bots, and custom scripting. For newer traders, the robust feature suite and lower price point of TradingView likely make the platform more attractive in comparison. Luckily, both platforms offer a free trial so you can test them out for yourself.

To see how TrendSpider and TradingView size up with each other, take a look at our detailed comparison of the two.

Is TrendSpider Good for Day Trading?

TrendSpider is an effective tool to support day trading, but you cannot trade directly through the platform. This is a big drawback to TrendSpider, and means that the platform is not an all-in-one solution for technical day traders.

In comparison, competitors like TradingView do allow users to place trades via direct broker integration. Ultimately, unless you are trading at a particularly high frequency, the time it takes to enter trades to a separate platform is unlikely to be a significant difference maker in your performance. Still, traders who prefer a solution that bundles trading with analysis should look beyond TrendSpider.

Is TrendSpider Good for Beginners?

No, TrendSpider is not a beginner’s tool. The user interface is somewhat convoluted and the feature set is complex, meaning that new traders will have a significant learning curve as they adjust to the platform.

Considering that most beginners will want to focus on the fundamentals of trading, not spend their time learning a specific platform, new traders will likely find better value in simpler, more intuitive trading tools.

With that being said, some beginners want to choose a feature-rich platform to learn, so that they can utilize its full functionality further down the line. For these types of users, TrendSpider could be a good option, especially if these users eventually want to leverage automated tools. To help beginners get started, TrendSpider does offer documentation and educational resources that guide users through the platform.

Can I Use TrendSpider for Free?

While TrendSpider offers a seven-day free trial, you must pay to use the platform after this period. Unlike other trading analysis software, TrendSpider has no free tier, with the cheapest level being $35/month when paid annually. TrendSpider does say that you can email them to request an extension of your free trial if you need more time to make a decision, though.

Plans and Pricing

TrendSpider’s free trial lasts for seven days, although they say users can email support to ask for an extended trial. TrendSpider offers three plans of varying price and quality, which are summarized in the table below.

Below are the features that TrendSpider offers with all plans.

	Essential	Elite	Elite Plus
Real-Time Data	US stocks & ETFs, Pre-market & after hours, Forex & currencies.	Digital crypto assets, OTC/pink-sheets (delayed), US Futures (exchange fee).	CBOE Indices (delayed), Benzinga Pro news, Corporate calendars.
Capabilities	Traditional charting, Raindrop charts, Over 190 indicators built-in, Unlim. indicators per chart, Up to 16 charts per screen, No advertising – ever, Unlimited watch lists, Trend line detection, Breakout detection.	Candlestick recognition, Chart pattern recognition, Automatic Fibonacci, Price heat maps, Anchored indicators, Robust drawing tools, Integrated backtesting, Real-time scanning, Smart checklists.	Multi-symbol view, Multi-timeframe analysis, Dynamic price alerts, Real-time data flow, Volume profile tools, Intraday exotic charts, 100s of other features!
Support	TrendSpider University	E-mail support	Live chat support

Essential

The Essential plan is the most limited of the three. The scanning results, one of TrendSpider’s most useful tools, are limited to just 25. Only two simultaneous workspaces are allowed, which would be difficult to manage given the cluttered nature of the interface. Moreover, there is no access to most of the alternative data that TrendSpider offers, including insider trading or social sentiment.

Finally, and most critically, the Essential plan does not include multi-factor alerts or trading bots. This will limit the main utility of TrendSpider, which is the ability to automate complex trading processes. For most users, the Essential plan is unlikely to be worth the price.

Elite

The Elite plan, which offers up to four workspaces, six trading bots, and multi-factor alerts, opens access to far more of TrendSpider’s platform. Importantly, this tier includes all the alternative data TrendSpider has to offer. The biggest limitation is that scanning results are limited to 100.

Still, this is likely going to be the best plan for most users. It offers access to TrendSpider’s complexity at less than half the price of the Elite Plus plan. Additionally, the Elite tier allows users to access priority support options, which could be critical if an important trading strategy breaks down.

Elite Plus

The Elite Plus plan improves on the Elite plan by offering up to 50 bots, the largest backtesting depth, and unlimited scanner results. TrendSpider offers free 1-on-1 training at this level to help traders understand the platform and use it most effectively.

While this tier clearly improves on the features offered in the Elite plan, it comes at a high price, which is unlikely to be worth it for anyone except professional traders or those running particularly complicated trading strategies.

Is TrendSpider Worth It?

TrendSpider is a complex tool that has both positives and negatives.

For advanced users, the ability to create custom indicators and connect trading bots with webhooks will prove useful (although direct broker integration would be even more useful). Automated pattern-finding in charts and advanced stock screening tools should speed up the time it takes to evaluate opportunities.

At the same time, users pay for this complexity both in the price and in the time it will take to learn the platform. TrendSpider’s interface is lacking, and many of the advanced features are hidden behind several layers of options. While TrendSpider does offer a solid amount of documentation and educational resources, this still creates a barrier for new users to get started.

TrendSpider is expensive, especially compared with TradingView, one of the largest software platforms in the technical analysis space. You can read our review of TradingView, which highlights its superior price point.

Inexperienced traders are unlikely to find TrendSpider’s price worth the value. For advanced users, spending the time necessary to learn the platform via TrendSpider’s free trial is only likely to be worth it if one of the advanced features could be a particular difference-maker for your trading strategy.

Verdict

While TrendSpider has its drawbacks, including a poor user interface and lack of direct broker integration, the automated pattern recognition when charting and a strong capacity for customization could make it the right tool for advanced traders.

Although its high price and complexity will be off-putting to newer traders, the wealth of accessible data and no-code backtesting options could still provide inexperienced users value. With a free trial and no charge as long as users cancel before the billing period begins, traders looking for a software platform focused on technical analysis would be wise to spend some time exploring TrendSpider.

TrendSpider Review

Our rating: 3.1/5

Visit Website

The post TrendSpider Review 2024: Our Verdict on Features & Pricing appeared first on FinMasters.

Best Stock Charting Software

Note: Some of these charting packages are integrated with trading platforms. If you’re looking for a broker that offers advanced charting capabilities, consider these. If you have a broker and are looking for an analysis tool, consider stand-alone charting software.

#1

TradingView

TradingView is an impressive piece of charting software. Its charts are more modifiable than most, and it has an amazing array of indicators, algorithms, chart types, and anything else you might want. The only downside is that you need to pay to access the best features, but it’s priced reasonably enough that it’s worth a look for anyone even somewhat interested in charting. 

TradingView is a stand-alone charting and research platform. Read more

Visit Website

#2

Thinkorswim

Thinkorswim is TD Ameritrade’s proprietary platform. It’s free to use, full of features, and lets you buy and sell within the interface without having to connect to any other services. It’s streamlined, versatile, powerful, and worth a look, at the very least.

Thinkorswim is integrated with the TD Ameritrade trading platform. Read more

Visit Website

#3

TradeStation

This downloadable software will set you back a few bucks, but it’s hard to beat the level of customizability that its EasyLanguage code offers to the computer savvy. Its charting features run incredibly deep, perfect for doing technical analysis from any angle you can imagine.

TradeStation is an integrated trading platform with advanced charting capabilities. Read more

Visit Website

#4

TC2000

This software isn’t as easy on the eyes as some others, but it comes from a venerable company that’s had over two decades to perfect its product. You’ll find an amazing range of charting features, technical indicators, analytical features, and anything else you’ll need to find and seize the trading opportunities you’ve been looking for.

TC2000 is a trading platform with charting capabilities. Read more

Visit Website

#5

Trade Ideas

This AI-driven software puts the power of the future in your hands. Holly, your AI, runs millions of simulations and backtests every night to identify trading opportunities and generate buy/sell signals, and it comes equipped with the ability to run, analyze, and optimize simulations based on all of your trade ideas. It’s expensive, but it may be worth the price.

Trade Ideas is a stand-alone analysis tool. Read more

Visit Website

#6

eSignal

eSignal may have some of the most impressive charting features on the market. In addition to the staggering array of drawing tools, indicators, and chart types, it lets you click on and adjust almost every aspect of every chart you open. You can connect charts together, set custom intervals, and do pretty much anything else you can imagine with eSignal’s charts.  

eSignal is a stand-alone charting and analysis package. Read more

Visit Website

#7

MetaStock

This downloadable software takes a little while to get the hang of, but it’s powerful and flexible enough to be worth climbing the learning curve. Its set of built-in tools will help you scan, analyze, and identify all the best trading opportunities, and it gives you the power to create your own tools for a truly custom investing experience. 

MetaSock is a charting and research package that you would use alongside your brokerage platform. Read more

Visit Website

The Best Charting Software

There are plenty of different investing programs, websites, and apps on the market, and all of them promise that they do what they do best. Having all those different choices is nice, but it’s not easy to sift through all the options to find the ones that really work for you. Thankfully, we’re here to take that off your plate and make your choice nice and easy. 

1. TradingView

TradingView is a beast among charting applications. Custom intervals, scales, chart types, indicators, modifiable scripts—it’s almost insane how much this application can do. 

You get over 100 technical indicators to play with right off the jump on top of the over 100,000 indicators made by other members of the community. There are over 50 drawing tools you can use to mark up any chart, plus pattern-recognition algorithms, Fibonacci retracements, multi-timeframe analyses, and way, way more. It’s hard even to explain how much this software can do. 

TradingView has a great free version available, though you’ll want to sign up for Pro or Premium to access everything it has to offer. Thankfully, even the Premium tier isn’t all that expensive compared to some of the pricier services out there.  

Price:

• Free tier available
• 30 day free trial

2. Thinkorswim

Thinkorswim is TD Ameritrade’s proprietary trading platform. It’s available as a downloadable program, a smartphone app, and on your web browser. Each version has its own strengths, but you’re really going to want to go for the desktop version for the most complete experience. 

In addition to letting you trade everything from equities and ETFs to options and futures, thinkorswim comes equipped with an incredible array of charting and analytical tools. You can add over 400 different technical indicators to any chart, swap out the lines for candles or monkey bars, draw your own lines and curves, and even use eight different Fibonacci tools to identify trends and price signals. 

As if that weren’t enough, thinkorswim provides all the economic data points you need to develop your own custom indicators and apply them to your charts to help further with spotting trends in the data. If you want even more customization, you can use the thinkScript feature to create your own analytics and algorithms using its built-in tool or by writing your own object-based code. 

Pricing:

• Fee List

3. TradeStation

If you like the idea of coding your own indicators and trading strategies, TradeStation’s Desktop 10 platform might be just what you’re looking for. Almost all of the built-in analysis techniques, indicators, and strategies are written in TradeStation’s proprietary EasyLanguage computer language, and the platform is flexible enough that you can edit or upgrade any of them with just a few lines of code. 

The code itself is pretty easy to learn, and once you have a grasp on it, the possibilities for creating new indicators and sculpting new strategies are almost limitless. You can create and backtest strategies, optimize and automate trade ideas, and run any number of simulations to get a sense of how your trades might turn out.  

That said, you don’t need to learn how to code to get a ton of value out of TradeStation’s charting features. Its RadarScreen feature lets you monitor hundreds of companies, cryptocurrencies, indices, and futures in real-time, for one, and you can pull up charts for any one of them at a moment’s notice. You can add built-in or custom technical indicators, customize any of the chart’s parameters, and use drawing tools to identify patterns—and that’s barely scratching the surface. 

Pricing:

• Fee List

4. TC2000

TC2000 is a polished charting software that you can download, access via a browser, or use on your phone. The software hit the market over 25 years ago, and since then, it’s made a name for itself as a trading platform with some of the best charting features in the game. Don’t let its slightly dated look fool you; TC2000 more than makes up for its comparatively plain presentation with a whole host of incredibly deep features. 

If you’re at all interested in stock and/or options trading, you should at least check out TC2000’s free trial versions. You’ll get to access a ton of delayed streaming data, an in-depth trade and strategy simulation feature, the ability to link up to your brokerage for in-program trading, and, of course, the charting feature. 

TC2000 has all the standard charting stuff like technical indicators, adjustable parameters, and so on. The real appeal, however, comes from the ability to plot data like option/stock relationships and bid/ask data, plus the ability to trade multi-leg options strategies right from the chart. There aren’t many platforms out there that’ll visualize the profit, loss, strike prices, and expiration dates with dynamic, color-coded zones that show you potential upside and downside at a glance. 

Pricing:

5. Trade Ideas

Artificial intelligence is poised to change the way we do just about everything, so why not harness the power of AI to make more money? Trade Ideas has a built-in AI named Holly that runs millions of scans and trading scenarios to identify potential opportunities, automatically finds ways to optimize your portfolio, and can even be directed to buy and sell equities based on your desired parameters automatically. 

Trade Ideas has a robust set of charting features, though you’ll probably be leaning more on Holly’s recommendations than your own technical analysis skills. Holly will help you run scans to find the stocks that fit your criteria, backtest your scans, evaluate results, and automatically suggest which parameters you can change to get better results. On top of that, Holly will also jump into any chart for any stock you’re looking at and suggest both data-supported entry points and exit signals, giving you a sense of what the data is pointing towards on any given day. 

Finally, Trade Ideas’ simulated trading system puts the power of AI in your hands, letting you generate and play out any number of simulated trades and trading strategies. All of the results are recorded, analyzed, and optimized based on Holly’s recommendations. 

Pricing: 

6. eSignal

eSignal’s downloadable software is its own investing information ecosystem. Though it is a bit on the pricey side, it’s hard to find a platform that has anywhere near the kind of charting features that even eSignal’s basic membership offers. If you sign up, you’ll get access to streaming intraday data (with real-time data available at higher tiers) on stocks, forex, and futures, plus the ability to twist, change, compare, adjust, and cross-check the charts of just about every one of them. 

The chart window is home to some of eSignal’s most impressive features. Almost every piece of every chart is clickable and editable, right down to the candles and lines themselves. You can easily create a chart based on any available symbol, insert your desired interval, set data ranges, choose between chart styles, and even link two or more charts together by symbol or interval. 

eSignal’s chart studies feature lets you apply hundreds of different technical studies, formulas, or add-on studies to any chart you choose. And if you want to really customize your analysis, you can create your own studies by writing them in the EFS scripting language editor or use the built-in drawing tools to add things like trend lines, regression trends, and more.  

Pricing:

7. MetaStock

MetaStock has been producing charting and analysis software for over 30 years, and they’ve gotten pretty darn good at what they do. The downloadable software combines powerful screeners, data streams, charting tools, and more to help independent traders get the best returns on stocks, options, futures, and forex.

The software’s functionality stems from prebuilt analytical modules called PowerTools. You can use these to perform scans to find securities based on specific criteria, backtest multiple strategies at once, get automated buy and sell signals, and find data-backed predictions of prices and market movements. The software comes with a set of prebuilt PowerTools, but you aren’t limited to prefabricated solutions. If you feel like any of the prebuilt tools are lacking, you can easily create your own custom set of tools for a truly bespoke analytical experience.  

Almost everything you do in MetaStock can be charted, analyzed, and compared against a long list of technical indicators. You can generate heat maps of past or potential trades, visualize suggested buy and sell signals on a number of different chart types, and even employ techniques that you can’t find elsewhere, like the Rahul Mohindar Oscillator (RMO) strategy. 

Pricing: 

• 30-Day Free Trial
• Pricing List 

Compare Stock Charting Software

In the table below we compare the key features and functionalities of all stock charting software options so you can choose the ideal solution for your investment needs.

The post Best Stock Charting Software in 2024: Reviews and Comparison appeared first on FinMasters.

BEST FOR NEWBIES AND MOBILE USERS

Robinhood

Asset Classes
Stocks, ETFs, Options, Bitcoin

Trading Fees
$0

Account Minimum
$0

Margin Rates
11.25% (7.25% with Robinhood Gold)

Robinhood is a mobile-first brokerage with mostly free trading, a straightforward interface, and the right amount of information available for newer investors. It’s a great place to start for newer investors, though regular day traders also like it for making quick trades on the go. Read More

Visit Website

BEST FOR LEVELING UP

eToro

Asset Classes
Stocks, ETFs, Options, Cryptocurrencies

Trading Fees
Stocks, Options and ETFs Free, Crypto 1% Transaction Fee

Account Minimum
$10

Margin Rates
Limited Access to Margin

eToro is a unique platform with a lot of resources for investors who want to learn how to trade like the pros. It has a virtual portfolio feature, a social network feature for trading tips, and Smart Portfolios for watching professionals allocate assets. It’s a great choice for investors who want to learn by example. Read More

Visit Website

BEST FOR OPTIONS TRADING

Webull

Asset Classes
Stocks, ETFs, Options, Crypto, ADRs, OTC

Trading Fees
$0

Account Minimum
$0

Margin Rates
5.49% to 9.49%

Webull is a user-friendly platform with a robust set of charting and analytical tools. It doesn’t offer the biggest range of tradable assets, but it does have completely fee-free trading (including options), reasonable margin rates, and free real-time in-app stock quotes. Read More

Visit Website

BEST FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADING

Interactive Brokers

Asset Classes
Stocks, ETFs, Options, Futures, Currencies, Bonds, Mutual Funds

Trading Fees
Free for US stocks and ETFs, Fixed/Tiered Pricing for Everything Else

Account Minimum
$0

Margin Rates
5.42% to 6.08%

Interactive Brokers puts near institutional-quality tools and access to 150 global markets in the hands of regular retail investors. It has a wide range of trading tools, low margin costs, and a huge amount of research available on nearly every tradable security. The one downside is that it may be too complicated for newer traders. Read More

Visit Website

BEST FOR LONG-TERM INVESTING

Fidelity

Asset Classes
Stocks, ETFs, Options, Crypto, Bonds, ADRs, Fractional Stocks, Penny Stocks, Currencies

Trading Fees
Free for US stocks and ETFs, $0.65 for Options, Varying Fees for International Trades

Account Minimum
$0

Margin Rates
8.5% to 12.825%

Fidelity is a highly-rated platform that offers a wide range of services, everything from retirement planning to trading penny stocks. You get access to global markets, a huge range of assets, and tons of research and analysis from in and outside of Fidelity itself. Read More

Visit Website

The Best Discount Brokers for Retail Investors

We’re long past the age of calling your broker to make trades and paying steep commission fees. Nowadays, retail investors can take make trades using mobile and browser-based apps, and commission fees have almost completely gone away.

There are dozens of these discount brokerages that want your business. They can’t compete on price anymore, so every one of them has been forced to distinguish itself in other ways. Figuring out which one is the best can be a chore… but we’ve done all the legwork for you. Keep reading to find out more.

Best Discount Brokers for Retail Investors

Click To Tweet

1. Robinhood

Best for Newbies and Mobile Users

Robinhood is a great place for new investors to start learning the ropes. Part of that comes from all the tutorials and how-to guides on the platform, but there are thousands of YouTube videos out there that’ll teach you the same thing.

The real reason Robinhood is so great for newer investors is that it’s a mobile-first platform with one of the most streamlined interfaces of any brokerage. It doesn’t take long at all to get acquainted with the platform, and even the greenest users can figure out how to buy and sell stocks within an hour at most.

Many brokerages give you access to a staggering amount of information, research, and analysis on every stock: more than enough to intimidate or disorient newer users. Robinhood keeps it much simpler. You’ll find some fundamentals and some charts, maybe some news stories, and a report or two, but that’s about it.

All that dedication to simplicity is a double-edged sword, however. You can only trade stocks, options, some ETFs, and Bitcoin (BTC) on Robinhood, and the lack of analytical features may frustrate more numerically oriented traders. Still, it’s a great place to start, even if you don’t stay on the platform forever.

2. eToro

Best for Leveling Up

eToro may seem similar to Robinhood at first blush, but it has a few features that set it apart. Sure, eToro is also limited to stocks, ETFs, crypto, and options, and it’s also primarily a mobile platform, but that’s where the similarities stop.

The biggest factor setting eToro apart from Robinhood and its other competitors is its focus on education and knowledge sharing. It starts with their pre-built Smart Portfolios, which give newer traders a look at how AI-assisted professionals manage portfolios of cryptocurrencies. You can follow the examples of certain traders on the platform by automatically copying (and learning from) their trades and more.

If you aren’t that interested in crypto, you can take advantage of eToro’s built-in social network to get trading ideas and advice from more experienced users. If learning by example is more your thing, eToro has a robust virtual portfolio feature that lets you test strategies without putting any of your money on the line. Add in all the tutorials, research, and analysis, and you’re basically looking at a Master’s level finance course worth of learning packed into one app.

3. Webull

Best for Options Trading

Webull is a great choice If you already know what you’re doing, don’t need much more instruction, and are ready to strike out on your own. The platform is straightforward and user friendly on both desktop and mobile, there are no minimum account balances or commission fees, and it has a lot of the same functionality as Robinhood, with some added features.

While Webull doesn’t let you trade every kind of security in existence, it does let you trade some things that Robinhood doesn’t. Webull has a much larger roster of tradable cryptocurrencies, for example, and it also lets you trade fractional shares and some over-the-counter securities. It also gives you the ability to participate in extended hours and pre-market trading.

All that’s great, but the real appeal here comes in the form of its completely fee-free options trading. Most other platforms still charge fees for options contract legs that interact with other firms. Webull waives all that. It’s no wonder that it’s such a popular destination for options traders.

Webull doesn’t have quite the same range of assets and features as some full-service brokers, though you probably won’t miss them. Webull has plenty of charting and analysis features, a simple interface, and all the free trades you can handle.

4. Interactive Brokers

Best for International Trading

Interactive Brokers is a bit different than the brokerages we’ve listed so far. They cater to both retail and institutional investors, and institutional investors tend to demand more powerful tools than the average trader. Granted, you’ll have to sign up for the less feature-rich IBKR Lite plan (the Pro plan is only for the institutional folks), but you’ll still have access to a lot of impressive features.

Interactive Brokers’ platform – especially its signature IB Trader Workstation software – gives you way more information than the previous entries in this list. You can use their free trading tools to build strategies, calculate the best time to enter and exit positions, design and simulate model portfolios, and way, way more. Then there’s the advanced charting, portfolio analysis tools, research and analyst ratings, and all the other sources of information…it’s almost too much, really.

On top of all that, Interactive Brokers gives you access to over 150 different markets around the world. You can trade stocks, options, futures, ETFs, currencies, bonds, and mutual funds in pretty much any international market you can think of. The one downside is that there are fees associated with international trading.

5. Fidelity

Best for Long-Term Investing

Fidelity is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. You can use it as a brokerage for self-directed investing, but they’re also more than happy to help you save money, plan for retirement, set up IRAs, and more.

Like Interactive Brokers, Fidelity gives you access to a ton of different assets on a ton of international markets. You can trade everything from mutual funds to penny stocks, all kinds of fixed-income products, currencies, fractional shares, ADRs, and more, usually without paying a dime in commission fees.

Fidelity’s app and browser-based platform both have a long list of features packed in. There are customizable screeners, first and third-party analyst ratings, advanced charting, an absolute deluge of research, and even tools for watching sentiments on social media.

The post Best Discount Brokers for Retail Investors in 2024 appeared first on FinMasters.