Best Free Stock Market Research Tools

Free Stock Market Research Tools: When it comes to stock market research, don’t limit yourself. Too many investors spend time looking at stock movements without looking into why those numbers are shifting – and their portfolios take a hit because they failed to see the situation for what it was. For instance, that ill-informed investor may have thought that a retail stock was going to pop off because its quarterly report came in considerably higher than last quarter.

But what about seasonality? What about market sentiment and analyst predictions? What about the economy as a whole? Each of these realities have their impacts too.

If you are only looking at one way to quantify a stock’s performance, you are missing the forest for the tree, the cube for the square, or whatever other maxims you want to apply.

And, there is no reason that you should not be getting next-level stock market research! While many tools do come with an extra cost, there are many free assets you can use – as long as you know where to look.

Get to Know Financhill

Financhill is one of the top sites out there for free financial research.

While there is a paid membership option, the tools this site gives away for free are well worth your time. They tend to be easy to use, intuitive, and straightforward, so you don’t need a master’s degree in Finance to figure out what the numbers mean.

The site interprets the numbers for you and displays stock ratings in the form of “stock scores” and projections alongside the current numbers, so you always know exactly where a stock stands.

In this article, we are going to look at the free stock market research tools on Financhill and explain how you can use each one as part of your own investment strategy.

Free Independent Stock Ratings

The first free tool you will see when you use Financhill is the Stock Score – check out Apple’s Stock Score on Financhill below.

This proprietary rating is not really any different that the ratings that you are going see analyst firms and investment houses give stocks, except for the fact that it isn’t going to cost you a dime and it isn’t biased.

Arguably, it’s better. Because unlike analyst ratings that are determined by real people, and therefore subject to human bias and potentially even conflicts of interest, these stock ratings are 100% created by computer algorithms.

Just like the scores other paid sites use, the Financhill Stock Score incorporates all sorts of data. It brings in company fundamentals and balances them against technical analysis.

The Stock Score also incorporates economic and sentiment data, then recalculates daily so that users always see the most up-to-date sentiment surrounding a company’s share price.

The real exception here is that Financhill gives you this tool for free for a time period, so you don’t have to worry about Wall Street analysts having conflicts of interest (spoiler alert: many of them do).

Financhill is different. It is completely independent. The stock score you see is based entirely on that company’s numbers (including historical, fundamental, and technical) and the economy –­ nothing else. No business paid to be promoted by a good stock score.

Furthermore, the Stock Score page does more than spit out a score. It shows you the share price for the company over time as well as important options you won’t get elsewhere for free. You can see the company’s share price as a line graph, scatter plot, or candlestick diagram.

You can also look at the stock in terms of daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly performance. Plus, you can use overlays or look at different indicators in the same chart as the share price. It does the work for you.

Best Stock Market Seasonality Tool

Of course, share price only means so much. Many companies experience fluctuations in their sales performance depending on the season. For example, some retail businesses tend to do well around the holidays and post massive 4Q revenue only to fall off in 1Q.

While you might know that seasonality is an issue inherently, it can be difficult to figure out just how much fluctuation makes sense for that particular stock – and that stinks.

Without that data, you are working blind. The only information you really have left is whether or not the company met its own forecasts or topped analyst predictions for that quarter – that is the same info everyone else gets and it really tells you more about the management of the company than its actual seasonality.

Don’t worry. Financhill has you covered with stock market seasonality – here it is for the S&P 500. Check it out for yourself.

Financhill uses a company’s historical performance to forecast where the stock may trend in the future.

To make comparison easy, Financhill’s Seasonality tool shows you the most recent share price of the stock as well as its historical price for up to 52 weeks, so you always stay as informed as possible.

Best Stock Market Valuation Tool

Financhill also helps you understand company fundamentals better. Take a look at Apple’s fundamentals using Financhill’s free tool here.

The first thing you are going to see is a bar chart with green vertical bars and a wavy pink line. The line is the company’s share price over time.

You can see how the company has performed historically as well as where Financhill thinks the share price is headed.

This information is set against analyst estimates about the company’s earnings per share. This way, you can see how the two numbers relate to one another, both historically and into the future.

A helpful statement underneath the chart (after logging in) tells you what current analyst estimates are for the next two quarters and the next two years.

The Financhill Valuation tool defaults to these settings, but you do have the option to change them. Instead of looking at earnings, you could look at revenue instead and see how that impacts the company’s share price.

You also have the option to look at the data in annual terms instead of quarterly. You will need each methodology to develop a truly informed about the stock’s fundamentals.

Free Stock Valuation Tool

Figuring out stock value is a challenge under normal circumstances too. While you can access the financial statements for any publicly traded company, you would have to seek out that information.

Scouring SEC filings or company websites to gather all that data together takes time – but then you have to know what to do with it too.

Are you going to spend hours poring over balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements to calculate discounted cash flow? Are you going to analyze changes in stockholder equity? Do you know what that means or why it matters?

Guess what? You don’t have to. Financhill has a free Valuation tool. (Look at Apple’s Financhill Valuation here)

It analyzes every financial statement of companies in the NASDAQ, NYSE, Russell 2000, S&P 500, and Dow Jones Industrial Average then performs discounted cash flow analysis for you – and here is where it gets really cool.

Instead of spitting out a value for the company as a whole, this Valuation tool is smart. It gives you a Fair Value Estimate of the company’s share price so you can see it in relative terms to the current price of the stock, then it lets you know how different the valuation is from the existing price in a percentage.

These numbers are red when the value of the stock is lower than its current share price and green when the valuation is higher than the existing stock.

Then, the fun continues.

Incredibly, Financhill shows you how the valuation could be different. It shows 11 models from finbox and 41 targets from Wall Street as well as the range the share price has moved over the past 52 weeks. You can see the spread and make an informed decision about what you think the value of the company really is.

Economic Research Tools

Understanding company data is important but share prices and sales do not happen in a vacuum. Even a well-run firm is going to be impacted by the way the economy is performing – and so is the market as a whole.

At any given time, the stock market is either overvalued or undervalued. The famous investor Warren Buffett developed his own indicator to demonstrate this. Most people know it as the Warren Buffett Indicator.

Here is how this measure works, in Buffett’s own words:

The indicator is calculated “the market value of all publicly traded securities as a percentage of the country’s business–that is, as a percentage of GNP. The ratio has certain limitations in telling you what you need to know. Still, it is probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment. If the percentage relationship falls to the 70% or 80% area, buying stocks is likely to work very well for you. If the ratio approaches 200%–as it did in 1999 and a part of 2000–you are playing with fire.”

Financhill gets this wisdom and it thinks you should benefit from the measure as well, so it gives you the Buffett indicator as Total Market Cap over GDP so you can see where the market truly stands. See it for yourself here.

Financhill also wants to help you understand the economy from other angles, so it provides those figures as well. Just click on the name of the economic indicator to learn more.

You can choose to look at the Cape Index or the movement in the Price to Earnings Ratio of the S&P 500. Other options include S&P Earnings, S&P Growth, and S&P Earnings Yield.

Using Free Stock Market Research Tools

Free stock market research tools like the ones provided by Financhill have a place in every investor’s strategy. These tools help you better understand how the economy is moving and how the stock market is performing without you needing to interpret or calculate any data on your own.

At the same time, Financhill’s free tools help you see how a company is doing and gives you a prediction about where its share price will go. While there is no guarantee in investing – there is always risk (yes, even with Apple stock) – being able to see visual interpretations of how a company is doing can only help you make a more informed decision about whether you should open a position in a company as well as when you should sell or hold.

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The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Financhill has a disclosure policy. This post may contain affiliate links or links from our sponsors.