The Ultimate Stock Trader's Toolkit (Part II in Comments)

PART I:

Hey y'all!

Most of you guys know me but if not my name is Chris aka @ckz8780 on Twitter and I'm a full time trader and run Greenbar Trading, my company, which is focused on stock market education. In the past I've posted my stock picks here in /r/stockmarket and lots of people have made money off them and I've always gotten tons of great feedback so I wanted to do something to give back to the Reddit community for being so welcoming and letting me blabber about my picks, myself and my services on here so I could grow both my trading and my business. Without Reddit I wouldn't be where I am. Now, I constantly get PMs and questions about what tools I use and the truth is there are literally hundreds of tools that you can use but having a good solid list of websites and tools is essential to doing accurate market research, picking the right stocks and then actually being able to trade them. So I am going to go through my list of hundreds of bookmarks and tools that I have here on this computer and share all the best ones I know and what I use them for. I won't add to this list unless it is a tool I use regularly because I only want to recommend stuff I have used personally and found to be successful, but definitely feel free to post your own favorites in the replies to make this list even bigger. I'm going to personally stay away from all the standard stuff like The Intelligent Investor, Investopedia, etc. Those are great but this is stuff I actually use practically every single day. If you want to learn how to trade from scratch then send me a PM and I can point you in the right direction. Ok, in no particular order of preference, here we go!

TRADING SOFTWARE/BROKERS:

• Suretrader: My main broker. Great shorts and no pattern day trading rule.


• Tradestation: Another broker I use heavily. Amazing software but retail so you have to maintain $25k to day trade. One of the most powerful scanners in the business using EasyLanguage.


• Thinkorswim: TD Ameritrade's "Professional" software. It's a bit buggy and slow and they sell your order flow so executions suck for day trading, but the charting is pretty nice and they have a decent scanner. Also it's one of the only platforms I really like for paper trading, though Tradestation is also really nice for that.


• Scottrade Elite: Scottrade's "professional" software. Not bad if you're doing more advanced swing trading. Fills and executions are surprisingly good for a retail broker. Also they will bundle TradeIdeas (an awesome intraday scanner) for like $10/month.


• FreeStockCharts: The best free charting software out there. If you are not advanced enough to be using the trading software above but the charts on Google Finance and Yahoo Finance aren't good enough for you, this is your answer.


• TradingView: Another good (and free!) chart site if you don't have pro trading software.

SCANNERS/SCREENERS:

• StockFetcher: The best bang for the buck hands down when it comes to scanning. Very powerful and easy to code. I use it literally every single day and it's cheaper than Netflix!


• Finviz Screener: Great for screening stocks with all kinds of characteristics from descriptive to fundamental to technical. Screens can be saved


• StockMarketWatch Screener: Nice scan I run each morning to find the stocks that are gapping up/down the most. These will be the ones in play for that day. Combining this with Finviz I can throw all the gappers into Finviz and check the news on them quickly and easily.


• Google Finance Screener: Similar to Finviz's screener but allows you to screen on some different stuff like float which Finviz doesn't allow.


• StockCharts Predefined Scans: Great list of predefined scans for generating trading ideas.

USEFUL WEBSITES:

• StreetInsider Earnings Insider: Great for quickly determining if a company met, beat or missed earnings, what their consensus was, and what their guidance was. Also provides next expected EPS date.


• Zacks Earnings: Just type the ticker into the quote box in the upper right and look under the "key earnings data" section to find the next earnings date. I've found Zacks' dates to be the most accurate over many years of trading.


• ETF Replay: Great summary of ETF performance for gauging sector performance and finding strength when all seems weak, weakness when all seems strong.


• Finviz ETF Maps: Same as above.


• Bespoke ETF Cheat Sheets: Looking for an ETF that relates to what you're trading? Check out these cheat sheets for ideas.


• Yahoo Finance Sector List: List of all sectors for generating ideas on what to trade.


• Yahoo Finance Industry Browser: List of all industries for generating ideas on what to trade


• Yahoo Finance InPlay: I check this often in the morning to quickly scan news headlines that will move stocks.


• Is The Stock Market Open?: Well, is it?


• Chartgame!: Time lapse trading game. Great for practicing your identification of technical analysis patterns for swing trading without having to wait for months to collect a good amount of data from your trades.


• The Ultimate Swing Trading Guide: Great beginners' guide for learning to swing trade. Read this from beginning to end, in order. It can be done in a weekend.


• Hoovers IPO Central: Everything you could ever want to know about IPOs.


• ShortSqueeze: Great for quickly checking how much of a company is currently held short...can help identify short squeezes that really rip.


• Tradervue: Great trade tracking and statistics website for tracking your performance. It's free for up to 100 trades per month. Useful if you're trying to develop a trading system and need data on what works/what doesn't.


• My Trades: Over 2,200 of my shared trades with notes on why I took them, where I bought/sold, where my stop was, etc. I update this occasionally but usually do it in blocks every few months now.


• Finviz Economic Calendar: Good for being prepared for upcoming economic news like GDP data, FOMC minutes, etc.

CRUCIAL READING/BLOGS/ETC:

• Forensic Investing Red Flags: Good resource for finding holes in a company's fundamentals and red flags in financial statements/reporting.


• Best time of day for trading: Cool article on the best time of day to place certain trades and how the market reacts to changes in time.


• The Trillionaire Next Door: Hilarious book about day trading. Should be on every full time trader's desk to keep the stress of trading at bay.


• The Logical Trader: Great book about Mark Fisher's trading style and how he keeps trading simple. Simple is good.


• Trading From Your Gut: Awesome book about properly using your right brain/left brain to trade more accurately and more confidently.


• Anything by Brett Steenbarger: Great author of many trading books. I found Daily Trading Coach and Enhancing Trader Performance to be really useful and practical.


• Anything by Mark Douglas: Another great author that provides practical stuff you can actually use rather than just useless theory. I like Trading in the Zone and The Disciplined Trader the best.


• Anything by Marcel Link: Great author of books designed to help you improve your performance through strategy development.


• Darvas Trader: Great blog with tons of awesome articles. I read it regularly.


• Your Daily Watchlist: Keith Kern's (@stt2318) website. He provides lots of nice charts both on Twitter and on this site. Many are free. Good for generating ideas.


• The Trader's Podcast: Amazing podcast with tons of short 10-30 minute episodes on everything you could ever imagine about trading.


• Greenbar Trading Blog: My blog. I haven't updated it in a while but there are a lot of good articles in the archive about things I've learned and my journey to becoming a pro trader.


• OpenTrader Blog: Awesome blog with lots of eye-opening articles on all things related to trading.


• Alpha Wolf Capital: Great blog by a great full time trader named Tim Weintraut out of Vegas. I traded with him for a week recently and was blown away by his knowledge. He has been trading for over 20 years and is a great guy. I contacted him via Twitter out of nowhere and he had never even met me and allowed me to come stay in his house and trade with him for a week and hang w/ his family!


• Trade on the Fly: Another great trader I met recently and traded with for a week in Montana. Michele is a swing trader and posts tons of great charts. She moderates the swing trading room in Nate Michaud's (@investorslive) chat room.


• Bulls on Wall Street: Nice blog run by a good buddy of mine, Kunal Desai. He is kinda a wacko but he's a pretty good trader and his blog has lots of free info and education on it. Really funny guy too!


• 10 Traits of Successful Traders: Good article on what it takes to become a full time trader. Kunal pumps a lot of his students in this article including me and for him it's more of a marketing tool to sell his bootcamp but I still think it's great for people to read to see what it takes and learn some of the characteristics of the traders he's worked with who really took off and became extremely profitable.

SEE COMMENTS FOR PART II

Submitted November 02, 2014 at 12:44AM by greenbartrading http://ift.tt/1rLNONC