What research do you do before investing?

First Time Investing 🐣
1

Morning all,

Obviously everyone is encouraged to do their own research before investing in a stock, and rightfully so. But for my own education, what research do you actually carry out?

Currently, I’m:

  • Using tools like Simply Wall.St
  • Searching Google for recent news stories directly related to the business to get a clear understanding of recent events
  • Visiting the company’s investor relations page (if they have one)

If feels like I could do more though. So, it would be good to understand how I could improve my research or just get a better understanding of the insights everyone else generates before putting their money into a stock or fund.

So any thoughts or learnings would be really appreciated.

Thanks a lot in advance!

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Good idea for a thread - following as I feel I have a lot to learn about research.

I do the same as you at the moment. Mostly I am looking to find the companies debts and assets and revenue to check they have a healthy balance, discover what the company “do” and what competition they have, and if they are the leaders in the field or not if I am investing for growth prospects. If I am investing for dividend purposes I’ll also use tools such as dividendmax & justetf to check dividend history & growth.

Like you said, I too feel theres more I could do, and want to learn.

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Practically no research done. I am investing 100% of my funds in Vanguard ETFs, like VEVE, VAGP and VFEM.

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4

This might help:

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I find myself using:

Morningstar
Simplysafedividends
Yahoo.finance
Plus following a couple of former analysts on youtube for any new ideas

7

I look at how cool the ticker symbol is and how pretty the logo is.

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9

Someone’s been reading the Intelligent Investor

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Serious response: I think the platform that you use is largely irrelevant, what metrics do you look at? I look at historic growth and current ratios, usually PE ratio as a starting point. Then I think about do I understand the company and the market.

What metrics do you look at, if any? I am still learning all the different ways to analyse a stock.

12

Well when I started I bought the cheapest shares available on Freetrade to have a go at buying shares, that turned out to be Greatland Gold and Eurasia, which have subsequently generated some amazing returns - over doubling, tripling and even 10x initial investments!

From here I have no idea what to do but I feel it can only go one way…

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How do you you actually pick the stocks to research though?. Like 70 stocks added recently, I wouldn’t have heard of most and impossible to research all. So how do you decide which ones to start researching.

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Apart from what others mentioned, i find checking the company’s competitors rather prudent.

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