4 Sources I use to stay updated with stock trends (Step by Step Process)

August 29, 2016 Sowmay 26

Information is everything & More you collect the information, more your Knowledge will grow.

Here, I want to make a point.

“More knowledge you have, more valuable will be your decisions. So in order to gain knowledge, you need to collect information”

From every aspect, in every field – To stand out of crowd, you need knowledge more than what others have.

Same thing applies to the stock market – If you want to outrun the market – better your understanding about the Stock & Industry, better will be your investment decisions and better will you results.

Warren Buffett spends about 80% of his day – every day – reading collecting pieces of information. Sometimes he didn’t even pull the trigger for months and even for years.

“Read 500 pages like this every day…That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
– Warren Buffett

Beating the market is not about Investing day & night. It is all about waiting and finding the great opportunity that best fits your understanding.

So just – Read. Read. Read.

In this post, I’ll show you – How I to stay updated with stock trends – which is subdivided as follows:

  • How to get stock ideas.
  • How to collect facts and figure of the stocks.
  • How to rectify the stock research.
  • How to stay updated with the stock for long.

Here’s what I would do to stay up-to-date with stock quotes

#1 – Twitter list

First, I need to get stock ideas to conduct a research. I use Twitter for this purpose. Get quick information under 140 characters.

Yes! Twitter is the best source to stay updated with the market. Some Investors even use the trend of tweets to predict the stock market.

My suggestion would be – not to use twitter as a whole instead only use twitter lists. This feature helps you to create a curated list of the publications/person from whom all the tweets will get collected in one place (aka list’s feed), which is totally different from your prime feed.

Here’s my list – stock-quotes

It includes many publications – @ReutersBiz, @ETMarkets, @markets, @NDTVProfit, @bsindia etc.

You can simply subscribe to the above list here or else you can create one – Just tap the list tab from your profile and click “create list”.

Just spare 15 minutes every day to read all the headline of the tweets and dig out whatever interests you.

I may happen that you will not get stock ideas every day and also, not every news will be meaningful to you but just read the headlines. It will at least give you an overview of the feeling – “What’s going on in market”

Featured Image of this post itself gives you a glimpse:

Img – My Twitter List (featured image)

My personal experience is that – Weekdays list’s feed has more relevant tweets as compared to weekends.

Why? This tweet may explain the point.

However, there are many other minor sources from where I can get ideas for stock quotes like:

  • Emails.

I frequently receive emails from many newbie Investors asking my views on some current trends. Sometimes even I’m not aware of the context they are talking about. If I found it interesting – I myself dig out the topic and revert back with a satisfactory response.

  • Quora.

It is a good knowledgeable place. Questions and Answers related to current trends keep pounding up in the Quora feeds.

Members of our Facebook Groups sometimes initiate discussions on current general trends which is also an alternative source to get insights from many investors.

Related: My Facebook Page.

  • Comments on Blog.

Sometimes I receive comments on articles on the blog asking for views on any current trends (you too leave back a comment on this post, I read & respond to each & every comment).

  • Online Forums.

This a place where investors discuss the stocks digitally by creating a community. I’m going to talk more about this later.

This android app is also an excellent mobile application to stay-up-date with general news trend. It was also featured as Best News App in Google’s List of Best Apps for 2015.

Let’s took an example of my recent research on Welspun, India.

My eyeball caught a Tweet some days ago:

This grown my curiosity and I started digging out the cotton row.

What I did next is……

#2 – Bloomberg Quint

I did a quick Google search to gather the facts and figure related to the row and consumed every tiny information available on internet.

I usually give more preference to news from Bloomberg more than any other channel. I had explored many sites, blog, websites, news, channels…. but they all are incomparable to Bloomberg. The reliability of the news that we can find on this site is awesome.

Bloomberg is the by far the fastest and reliable source for anything, even many other channels rely on Bloomberg. Have a peek:

A shot from Financial Express:

A shot from Business Standard:

A shot from Economic Times:

No more words to say.

Now I consumed every tiny little information available on the web but how will know the updates that will air in future. Practically, it’s not possible to, again and again, search on Google for if any new update gets aired on the web.

That is why I use………

#3 – Google Alerts

You don’t need to surf all around the web for any information again and again. Google will do this job.

Just set the alerts and Google will notify you if anything related to the topic aired on the internet. This is one of the excellent free service provided by Google.

How to set the alerts?

You can create your list of topic here – Google Alerts. Login with your Gmail account.

Create a Gmail account and create a curated list of topic for which you want to get news in Google alerts. Set you preferential info like:

  • Time (I receive an email notification at 7, morning).
  • Region (from all over the web)
  • Language (of course, English)
  • Sources etc.

You’re all done.

You should refer this article. Somewhere in the middle, I explained the process to set Google alerts directly from Google search engines.

But remember, you need to be disciplined. Whenever you find any company that interest you, set an alert.

Don’t worry, everything will get clearer with the example.

Like in case of Welspun, I added the keyword – “Welspun India” in my existing list:

And here is the email I received today:

All the efforts till now, are just done to collect the facts and figures about the case but now I need to analyze the case based on the facts & figures I collected.

Okay, let’s assume that I analyze the stock based on the facts and figures I collected.

……but what if my research is biased? What if, it is flawed? So I need to cross check my research with others for 2 reasons:

  • To get notified about any facts & figures, I was not aware of.
  • To rectify the errors in the research.

So to fulfill this purpose, I’ll visit a forum where…..

#4 – Valuepickr

This is an awesome Value Investing Forum.

For them who don’t know the meaning of FORUM – This is how Google defines it:

It is a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

It can even be physical and digital. However, here we are talking about a digital forum.

This is how Valuepickr looks like:

I’ll also write a long guide (somewhere in future) on how to efficiently use Valuepickr forum to get most of it. Until then just get connected to the community and start exploring great things.

Read the discussions on stocks, give your opinions (only if valuable) and based on that form your investment decisions.

For now, let us continue the example of Welspun India.

Then I did a quick search on Valuepickr and my luck! there was already a thread discussion on Welspun India:

Without wasting a minute, I read it all up and politely posted a long post with all of my thinking (actually, posted the part where I think, I may be wrong).

Here it is.

Here is the link to the post – http://bit.ly/2bJViFK

Many people criticize the point and many rectified the mistakes in my research. Overall, I got a good insight and also, which helped me to form a better Investment decision.

Now I just subscribed to the thread (to receive email updates for whenever anybody publishes a new post in the thread).

Just change the setting from the thread notifications to “Watching” from the left-hand bottom corner, as shown in the following image:

Here’s the link to the thread (in case you’re interested) – Welspun India.

Side note – Example of Welspun India is just to show you how to dig out the stocks. It doesn’t meant that the stock is good to buy or good to sell.

Let me clear out one thing.

If any of you have question which somewhat looks like this – “Why there is need to stay up-to-date with stock trends, news, quotes etc?” then here’s the explanation:

To find an insanely awesome stock, you need to understand the company background, economy, industry, sector, business operations, supply chain etc many components which are not encrypted in annual reports, balance sheet, cashflow statements, ratios etc.

So even if you’re a long time value investors, you need to stay up-to-date with current trends to understand the market. And I already said earlier – better the understanding better will be your investment decisions.

In simple words, financial statements only show you past performance of the company but to understand future prospects of the stock, you should have a strong understand of the business operation and how it will cope up with the economy in future.

That is why you need to understand the current trend to perfectly predict the company’s future.

There is no hard and fast rule. It is dynamic. Number crunching, common sense, and insights into the future of the company and its business are the most important. You need to understand how a company will be able to generate wealth for you in next 2-10 years’ time. Everybody has to develop that insight themselves.

However, fully ignoring the financial metrics is not what I mean here. Keep a balance between past, present & future parameters.

Consider reading this article for understanding The best and worst metrics to track in order to grow your stock portfolio.

Conclusion

This is how I stay updated with a stock and get benefitted from a perfect investment decision. By following this process, I benefitted in the many ways like:

  • I understood about the company operation.
  • I got a quick insight of the sector (like about textile industry in the above case).
  • I set the Google alerts to stay updated in future.
  • I participated in the discussion (Valuepickr) where my errors get rectified.
  • I will keep receiving the email updates of the forum discussion (in short, now I can track this company for a long period by doing nothing).

These are some direct benefits. There are many indirect benefits like now I don’t need to waste time for analyzing any related stock in the same sector as I had my base sector already cleared from this research etc.

Overall I got enough information about the company, so whatever decision I make, that will be rational and solely depend on my own analysis without giving a shit to any other broker’s call or advisor’s advice.

Build your own strategy. It’s an integral part of Investing. You can’t become rich by relying on others advice. You should do your own research to stay up-to-date with the general trends, stocks, sectors, industries etc and accordingly form a sound investment decision.

Try this process and share your experience with me. However, you might already be using your own process different from the one above. So if this is the case, spare a couple of minutes to share your technique in the comments below.