Part I - Free & Paid Equity Research Resources

The almost comprehensive list

The best tools for stock research…all in one place. Customers, investors and friends often ask us about the best available tools and resources. We created this list to help make good software more “findable”. The list will be updated bi-annually.  Interim updates will be accessible on our blog: Free & Paid Equity Research Resources.

We’ve collected lists of tools in the following categories:

• Forensic research

• Market & financial analysis

• Full service

• Expert call aggregators  

• Insider trading & institutional ownership  

• SEC filing search & analysis  

• Research & news aggregators  

• Financial APIs   

• Quant platforms   

Do you know of an awesome tool that should be added to our list? Our Twitter DMs are open. Let us know!

Find your new favourite investing resource below Herb Greenberg’s picks.

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Herb Greenberg’s Top Picks:

Herb is a legend. You might know him from his time at CNBC, his work at Pacific Square Research or from the multiple frauds he’s uncovered. You can now find Herb at Empire Research where he writes a monthly newsletter.

We asked Herb about his favourite equity research tools on this list. Here they are his top picks:

• Sentieo: Herb uses Sentieo “aggressively” to compare / search filings, transcripts, etc.  It’s his main paid research tool and he’s on it constantly. “Easily the most valuable tool I have.” 

• Seeking Alpha premium: Herb likes Seeking Alpha for the quick data tools and bull/bear ideas as a “first level sweep” of other opinions if he is researching an idea.  He says that the secret is to read the comments under the analysis. 

• PACER: Herb uses PACER for legal analysis. “This is research 101, and is ridiculously cheap.”

• Yahoo! Finance: It’s a classic and a habit that’s hard to quit, especially for fast charts, according to Herb. 

• WhaleWisdom: Herb uses WhaleWisdom to figure out who’s coming into and out of positions in stocks of interest. “There’s a surprising amount here for free, which I shouldn’t say…because now they’ll start charging for it.”

• Kailash Concepts: According to Herb, Kailash has fantastic quant tools and innovative research. 

• New Constructs:  Herb loves the quant tools. He notes, “the free research is out-of-the box. I’ve trialed the paid service and would keep it in the mix if I could afford it.”

• Bedrock AI: “Bedrock AI is a brilliant screening tool to help QUICKLY sift through filings to help avoid or spot unpleasant surprises in longs while helping to jumpstart the process of finding shorts. It has rapidly become a valuable part of my toolbox.”

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Forensic resources

These free and paid tools help you find the shady stuff. Whether it’s outstanding litigation, previous regulatory enforcement or murky corporate relationships, these resources will help you figure out what’s really going on. 

Free/Freemium 

ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) - Offshore Leaks Database -  ICIJ runs a searchable public database of offshore leaks so you can check mentions in the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Bahamas Leaks, and more. 

Open Corporates - Corporate structure can be complex, and organization charts often aren’t public. The Open Corporates database is useful to ascertain ownership and corporate structure. 

Open Payments - Open Payments allows you to search for payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals. The site is hosted by the U.S. federal government.

Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker - The Violation Tracker brings together enforcement data obtained from more than 200 federal, state, and local regulatory agencies - with a company lookup and search tool. 

FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) - Broker Lookup - The broker lookup tool allows you to look up brokers by individual and by firm, so you can check if firms are registered to sell securities, offer investment advice, or both. You can also check on any regulatory actions and complaints. 

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) - Enforcement -  Access proceedings for ongoing cases, review FTC complaints, ongoing proceedings, and any decisions/orders.  

PACER (Public Access to Court Electronics Records) - Pacer provides free/low cost access to case information. Technically they charge $0.10 per page, but they’ll waive fees for anyone incurring less than $30 per quarter (300 pages). 

Stanford Law School - Securities Class Action Clearinghouse - This great tool allows you to track class action filings and settlements, and has a searchable filings database.

PCAOB (Public Company Account Oversight Board) - Auditor search - The PCAOB is responsible for ‘auditing the auditors’. Their search tool allows you to search by company, audit firm, and audit partner. 

*Note that Bedrock AI provides audit partner relationship mapping and Risk Scoring using the PCAOB database

FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) - If you’ve hit a wall in your research, you can request non-public information from relevant government agencies. Unless an exemption applies, they’re required to provide information. This isn’t always fast, but can be powerful. Here is an example of how someone used an FOIA request to see the status of a whistleblower allegation against Tesla. 

SPAC Research (SPAC Alpha) - This is a great tool for keeping track of SPACs and SPAC mergers. We’re aware that including this tool in the “forensic” list is controversial. 

Paid

Bedrock AI  - Bedrock extracts qualitative content from securities filings that is predictive of forensic risks like fraud and earnings management. Bedrock serves analysis in real-time through a web application. 

InsiderScore - InsiderScore provides insider trading, institutional ownership and stock buyback information and other data/analytics services. 

Probes Reporter - Probes provides alerts on undisclosed SEC probes and analysis of disclosed investigations. They make 2,500 FOIA requests and hundreds of appeals each year so that you don’t have to. 

Full service research tools

The following tools provide access to both financial and market data as well as SEC filings and news. 

Free and freemium

EDGAR - Company-reported financial and transactional data is reported to the SEC through the Electronic Data through the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system (“EDGAR”). You can find full financials, XBRL metadata, insider transaction information, prospectuses and more. EDGAR also provides full-text search. EDGAR is free but not trivial to scrape. Refer to the Financial APIs section for programmatic resources. 

Docoh - We love Docoh. Docoh has financial data, SEC filing search, earnings transcripts, market news, stock alerts and charting. It’s all free and has a great user interface. 

TIKR - TIKR provides financial tools like a stock screener, financial statements analysis, stock valuation metrics, ratios, charts, news, and filings.

Koyfin - Koyfin is similar to TIKR in many ways. It provides market data, filings, news, charting etc. 

FINVIZ - FINVIZ includes financial news, market heat maps, comparative charts, and sector performance tools.

TradingView - TradingView is a stock charting tool with other features including alerts, heat maps, and trading simulations. It also has a stock screener.

Tiingo - Tiingo offers free screening and portfolio monitoring. Tiingo is best known for their API.

Paid

Bloomberg - The Bloomberg terminal provides financial and market data, news feeds, messaging, and trade execution services. 

S&P Capital IQ - S&P Capital IQ provides more or less everything Bloomberg does without the execution services or messaging. CapIQ has more private company data and often better fundamentals data quality. 

FactSet - FactSet consolidates data on global markets, public and private companies, and equity and fixed-income portfolios. FactSet has limited Canadian coverage. 

Eikon - Refinitiv Eikon provides news and data services via an “open-technology” platform. Eikon has exclusive access to Reuters news. 

AlphaSense - AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform focused on smart search. AlphaSense facilitates search of filings, transcripts, news and equity research. 

Market & financial analysis

iBorrowDesk - iBorrow Desk is a tool for monitoring borrow rates and availability using Interactive Broker's freely available data.

Short Squeeze -  ShortSqueeze provides short interest data and related services.

YAHOO Finance - Yahoo Finance is a classic. It provides free real-time and historical stock quotes and charting, news etc.

ROIC - ROIC provides 30 years of financial data and news feed on 7,000 companies. ROIC is free. 

Most tools under “Full service research tools” also have market and financial data. 

Stay tuned for lists of insider trading tools, research aggregators, financial APIs, and more coming soon!

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Bedrock AI is a web-based equity research platform. Our software extracts red flags from SEC filings that are predictive of downside risk. 

Explore real-time analysis of annual and quarterly statements, 8-Ks, prospectuses, SEC comment letters and more for over 7,000 tickers. Analysis is served without human intervention.

Request a trial here. Connect with us on Twitter. Learn about forensic investment research at www.bedrock-ai.com/learn