text: what is the best stock analysis tool available for beginning investors? i have been trying to learn how to evaluate stocks using etrade, etc but i am wondering if there is a better set of tools available for evaluating stock price, earnings, etc. my tools, in order of complexity:  benjamin graham's book "the intelligent investor" - this will tell you what to look for  your network of friends - the companies you do business with are the easiest for you to know.  do they have good products?  are employees happy?  the devil's in the details.  yahoo! finance - a vast amount of free, reasonably up-to-date information  company websites & annual report - watch out for the marketing pitch!  if you know what to look for, you can find it here.  smartmoney.com stock screener - good for separating wheat from chaff.  make the list of stocks you want to concentrate on smaller.  www.backtest.org - for those with a more quantitative bent (ie: you want a computer to tell you what to buy) then this is a good place to start to learn the craft.  bloomberg (pricy) - the industry standard for investor information, but it'll set you back the equivalent of a mortgage (~$1400.00/month)  marketqa (definitely not for beginners) - another expensive tool, but good for advanced quantitative analysis.  matlab - incredibly powerful tool for quantitative analysis.  short of writing your own software, this is as good as it gets.