Although you don’t need any special software to access much of the information available on the Internet, many investors find that specialized programs help them stay organized or do more detailed research and analysis.
The software available ranges from free downloads to packages costing several thousand dollars and other services that provide online information by subscription for prices ranging from $10 per month to several hundred dollars per month.
Here is a brief overview of some of the options available:
Free or Low-Cost Downloads
There are some nifty little utility programs that you may find hand available for free or almost free. These range from stock screeners to news alerts.Be very careful downloading anything from the Web that looks to good to be true. Many times, hackers bury all sorts of worms and other illicit programs in seemingly innocent program and gain access to your computer every time you go on line.
I never get a download from anywhere except CNET.com or ZDNet and then only packages they have rated well.
Personal Finance Packages
Personal finances packages are software products that get all of your financial data in one place including bank account, credit cards, and investment accounts.The two most popular are Quicken and Microsoft Money. Both products provide a wide variety of interfaces that let you spend hours controlling every aspect of your financial life, if that’s what you want.
They both will download information to popular tax preparation software so you can save time when you begin that process.
Both allow you to track your investments and let you go online to update your portfolio, although investing is just one part of their package. If you want all of your financial information in one spot, these programs are worth considering and both cost less than $100.
Sophisticated Software
The more sophisticated software performs complicated technical analysis tasks, such as charting and regression calculations. Most of this software comes with a subscription to an online service that provides updates to the information, so you are dealing with the most recent prices, etc.Much of this software assumes a level of knowledge on the investor’s part, so they are not what you might call “beginner” user friendly. If you are just learning technical analysis, these services will overwhelm you.
For the active or daily trader, there are real time quote services that offer, as the name says, real-time price quotes. The more closely the service resembles what actual brokers see, the more expensive it is. Unless you are literally trading every day, there is no need for these types of expensive services.
