The Useful Links Thread

[JohnnyCyclops]

To help beginnners, I believe having some useful url links might be useful. I'll add a second post in a moment with some of mine, but can I suggest a format:

url - the link itself - try to land on an obvious 'home' or starting point and not begin buried in the bowels of some site

Name - the name of the site, as it may not always be obvious from the url

Free/Freemium/Paid - the first and last quite obvious; 'freemium' to me means a site that has basic access for free but more advanced features need paying for. Also, even 'free' sites might still require (or work better) with a login, so please note that too.

Why - perhaps most important, why do you use the site


Do please try to keep the links to those a beginner might need (so possibly less likely to be derivatives/swaps/leveraged type stuff, and more about pensions, ISAs, equities, bonds, trackers, ETFs), and links to other sites that provide guidance to newbies.

[JohnnyCyclops]

https://www.google.co.uk/finance

Google Finance

Free, but better with a free login account

Why - I use Google as my main search engine. I have a Google login. There's a portfolio option to add stocks/ETFs/funds held (no need to add actual values if you don't want), or a watchlist of those you're interested in. The Finance home page defaults to show the FTSE100, 250, etc, and provides some news. Also displays global indices and foreign exchange rates.

It's the thing I default to each weekday morning when logging in. There are also useful/easy charts and slider bar to view an index/stock/fund's performance.

Downside is Google sometimes wrongly displays stuff and may not handle (in charts) things like splitting of shares. And I wouldn't rely on it for ratios like P/E or yield. But for prices, news, where the markets are at, it's a good basic start.

[Degsy67]

http://monevator.com/category/investing ... investing/

Monevator - Guide to Passive Investing in the UK

Free

Why - A great blog resource for investors at every stage of their investing education. The guide to passive investing is a good starting point for anyone who wants to begin to understand the basics of investing using collective funds such as ETFs. The content is well written as well as being humorous and light hearted however the topics covered have significant depth and substance. I don't have many investment related websites bookmarked but this is one I regularly turn to. The weekly blog articles and news posts with links are a must read over a Sunday morning coffee. Great section on comparing UK broker platforms too. The whole site is geared to UK investors which is great to see when so many other sites out there are focused on US investors. Despite the local nature of the outlook however, the site covers investing in global assets as opposed to focusing on domestic FTSE indexes etc. A great read and highly recommended!

[vrdiver]

http://www.digitallook.com/

Digitallook

Freemium (free for the most part, but a few extra tools if you subscribe). A free registration is useful to remember portfolios and screener settings.

Why - a quick share price look-up, portfolio(s) and alert manager (e.g. get an email whenever a company you are interested in issues an RNS with the word "dividend" included). It's also a good stock screener (look under research) for filtering shares that you want to do a bit more in-depth research on.

One annoying feature is that companies that pay out in foreign currency will have their history shown in GBP but forecasts in e.g. USD. Always double check the data before making a financial decision, as the database does have errors from time to time!

[vrdiver]

http://lemonfoolfinancialsoftware.weebly.com/

Lemon Fool Financial Resources

Free

Why - incredibly useful spreadsheet tools to manage fianacial records, (High Yield Portfolio Top-Up Spreadsheet, or HYPTUS) as well as guides on how to unitise portfolios (allows apple-with-apple comparisons against other portfolios and makes financial progress easier to appreciate). Software is updated by fellow lemons and any queries on usage can be asked here on the lemonfool site.

[kiloran]

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Index.aspx

Investegate

Free

Why....
Reports company announcements (RNS). Creating a simple free account also allows the receiving of emails for selected companies. Announcements can be restricted, so, for example, you only get emails for company results, notice of results, director deals, etc

--kiloran

[kiloran]

I forgot to mention that we have a list of useful links at http://lemonfoolfinancialsoftware.weebl ... sites.html

Maybe I should add a brief summary of each

--kiloran

[melonfool]

Before investing, it is important to ensure you either have no debts or at least only have 'good' debts that you are managing.

So, here is a debt guide, by our own Manzanilla (no income generation from this site), which is free to use:

https://debtcamel.co.uk/

Mel

[Raptor]

http://www.digitallook.com/

Digitallook

Freemium (free for the most part, but a few extra tools if you subscribe). A free registration is useful to remember portfolios and screener settings.

Why - a quick share price look-up, portfolio(s) and alert manager (e.g. get an email whenever a company you are interested in issues an RNS with the word "dividend" included). It's also a good stock screener (look under research) for filtering shares that you want to do a bit more in-depth research on.

One annoying feature is that companies that pay out in foreign currency will have their history shown in GBP but forecasts in e.g. USD. Always double check the data before making a financial decision, as the database does have errors from time to time!

Be aware though that the information on this site has become unreliable, with data not being updated for weeks and sometimes months. Lately the forecasts have gone from being update daily to weekly and now seem to be at least ever other week.

Raptor.

[Gostevie]

Moderator Message:
post text and link deleted as website t&c's forbid use either direct or indirect. Raptor.

[BarrenWuffett]

http://diyinvestoruk.blogspot.co.uk/p/basics.html

Free

A range of useful articles to assist the wannabe investor

[bulltraderpt]

A free trading course for beginners!

Not tried it, but a full course apparently.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-12/trading-living

[HillarySmith]

The above links are very useful indeed. Thanks!

[monabri]

Here's 2 links to reports on the pension status for the majority of FTSE100 and FTSE250 companies. Both links are "free".

FTSE100
https://www.jltemployeebenefits.com/~/m ... f?la=en-gb

FTSE250
https://www.jltemployeebenefits.com/~/m ... f?la=en-gb

The reports are useful in they state pension assets versus liabilities AND how much the annual dividends are.

[monabri]

This link is to the FCA website and concerns shorting activities for each company. If I had known about and looked at this website beforehand, I would have not bought certain shares (Carillion )

Both links are "free".

https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/short-se ... -positions

You have to have Excel (or similar) and download the "short positions daily update.xls" file for which there is a link on the RHS of the FCA webpage.

(Do not be put off by the note as to "last updated" which might seem out of date - the short positions daily update IS updated daily!)



Here's another useful link to shorting activities - you won't need Excel and it provides a historical graph of short levels on a stock.

https://shorttracker.co.uk/company/GB00B0H2K534/

This link is useful to check that the share you are just about to buy is not heavily shorted! (Danger Will Robinson! )

https://assets.rbl.ms/6639038/980x.jpg

[PinkDalek]

Here's 2 links to reports on the pension status for the majority of FTSE100 and FTSE250 companies. Both links are "free".

FTSE100
https://www.jltemployeebenefits.com/~/m ... f?la=en-gb

FTSE250
https://www.jltemployeebenefits.com/~/m ... f?la=en-gb

The reports are useful in they state pension assets versus liabilities AND how much the annual dividends are.

I think you've copied across already truncated links, causing them not to function.

The latest may be:

THE FTSE 100 AND THEIR PENSION DISCLOSURES
August 2017
https://www.jltemployeebenefits.com/~/m ... f?la=en-gb


THE FTSE 250 AND THEIR PENSION DISCLOSURES
03 April 2017
http://www.jlt.com/eb/our-insights/publ ... isclosures


By the way, putting words in colour makes reading difficult (especially on a smartphone/mobile) or even impossible for some. That's why I use bold or italics in preference.