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Timing is everything, and missing a major development in the market or a stock can cost you dearly. To remain up-to-date on stock and financial news, consider these apps to make the most of your time.

If you uncover a trend not yet seen by the market, this could lead to capturing alpha and delivering yourself superior returns.

To keep yourself up-to-date with the stock market and financial news, as well as increase your chances for capturing alpha, consider downloading some of the best stock and financial news apps and software listed below.

Some even allow you to trade stocks based on information you read in the news.

Best Stock Market and Financial News Sites & Apps—Top Picks


Best Introductory Stock Newsletter
Best for Stock Research + Recommendations
4.7
4.8
$99 for 1st year; $199 renewal
7-day free trial. Premium (Black Friday Sale): $209/yr.* Pro: $2,400/yr.
Best Introductory Stock Newsletter
4.7
$99 for 1st year; $199 renewal
Best for Stock Research + Recommendations
4.8
7-day free trial. Premium (Black Friday Sale): $209/yr.* Pro: $2,400/yr.

Best Stock News Apps & Sites


Keep up-to-date with the latest market developments, including stories about stocks you care about.

These publications provide in-depth, insightful information about what’s happening in the world today and how markets might react going forward.

1. Motley Fool Stock Advisor: Best for Buy-and-Hold Investors


motley fool stock advisor signup reorg

  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: Discounted rate for the first year (shown below)

Motley Fool’s signature product, Stock Advisor, aims to provide investors with one thing: top picks for market-beating stocks from the site’s co-founders.

Stock Advisor is an online investment service that espouses my favorite, plain-vanilla trading style: buy-and-hold. Fool analysts provide recommendations for both “Steady Eddies” and potential high-flying stocks with sound fundamentals—an ideal combination of holdings if you want to generate strong performance without risking extremely high volatility.

Importantly, Stock Advisor doesn’t just give you a list of tickers and call it a day—it also provides investment rationales and research for each pick to help educate you before you buy.

And now, Stock Advisor membership provides access to Motley Fool GamePlan: a hub for retirement and financial planning content and tools to improve not just your portfolio, but your entire financial life. GamePlan outlines three portfolio strategies—Cautious, Moderate, and Aggressive—with picks for mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and stocks, including allocation recommendations. It also hosts a library of content about financial planning, including topics such as everyday finances, health and wellness, and estate planning. And it boasts tools including a variety of calculators, such as credit card interest and mortgage calculators.

How has Motley Fool Stock Advisor performed?

Stock Advisor stock picks have performed exceptionally well over the service’s 22-year existence. The service has made 190 stock recommendations that have historically delivered 100%+ returns.

Overall, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock subscription service has returned 740% through July 24, 2024, since its inception in February 2002. This number is calculated by averaging the return of all stock recommendations it has made over the past 22 years. Comparatively, the S&P 500 Index has returned 163% over that same time frame.

stock advisor vs sp500 jul 24 2024 small

What to expect from Motley Fool Stock Advisor

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service provides a lot of worthwhile resources to members:

  1. “Foundational Stocks”: 10 stocks that can serve as the foundation of your portfolio, whether you’re a new investor or experienced
  2. Two new stock picks each month
  3. Monthly analyst rankings of the service’s top 10 stocks based on their potential to beat the market over a five-year span
  4. A list of all the service’s active picks, “hold” recommendations, and closed positions
  5. Recommendations for stock and fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs) you can use to build a diversified portfolio core
  6. Access to the GamePlan financial planning hub
  7. Access to Fool IQ, which provides essential financial data and news summaries about all U.S.-listed publicly traded stocks
  8. Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop

The service charges a discounted rate for the first year and has a 30-day membership-fee-back period. Read more in our Motley Fool Stock Advisor review, or sign up for Stock Advisor today.

Related: Best Brokerage Account Sign-Up Bonuses, Promotions and Deals

2. Motley Fool Epic: Best for Investors of All Stripes


motley fool epic signup reorg
Motley Fool
  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: Discounted price for the first year (shown below)

Motley Fool Epic … well, it’s actually not a stock-picking service. It’s four of them, as well as a few other powerful investing features, all wrapped into one.

Epic is a bundled selection of four popular Motley Fool stock recommendation products: Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor. Epic members can access all active recommendations; view Cautious, Moderate, and Aggressive strategies (including specific stock allocations), and will receive five new picks per month from across the four services. 

Here’s a closer look at all four services that make up Epic:

Stock Advisor

Stock Advisor is an online investment service that espouses my favorite, plain-vanilla trading style: buy-and-hold. Fool analysts provide recommendations for both “Steady Eddies” and potential high-flying stocks with sound fundamentals—an ideal combination of holdings if you want to generate strong performance without risking extremely high volatility. (Note: You can subscribe to Stock Advisor individually.)

Rule Breakers

Rule Breakers recommends stocks that have massive growth potential, whether they’re at the forefront of emerging industries or disrupting the status quo in long-established businesses. These businesses tend to be in the technology sector or are otherwise “technology-influenced,” and are often selected for their potential to disrupt other companies or entire industries.

Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems will introduce you to medium-to-large businesses selected by Fool CEO and co-founder Tom Gardner for their “all-in, visionary leadership teams.” More so than the other services, Hidden Gems is mindful of macroeconomic and market environments—and how they might dictate how aggressively you should invest.

Dividend Investor

Dividend Investor revolves around exactly what you’d expect: dividend stocks. Fool analysts target companies that deliver above-average yields and dividend growth. They also have a specific goal for recommendations to deliver a total return (price gains plus dividends) of 7% + the rate of inflation. The idea? “A 7% annual return doubles the value of an investment over 10 years. If inflation is included, that means an investor in our average recommendation should double his or her real purchasing power every 10 years.” All in all, then, Dividend Investor picks are expected to produce both competitive total returns and an income stream that should carry you through retirement.

Additional Epic Benefits

But Epic is more than just a pile of recommendation services. Among other features, an Epic membership also unlocks access to:

  • Fool IQ+: Fool IQ, which comes with Stock Advisor, provides essential financial data and news summaries about all U.S.-listed publicly traded stocks. With Epic, you get Fool IQ+, which includes all the features in Fool IQ, as well as a much wider variety of financial analysis data (earnings coverage, insider trading data, analyst opinions, and more) and advanced charting options.
  • GamePlan+: GamePlan is a hub for retirement and financial planning. It includes exchange-traded fund (ETF) rankings; portfolio strategies (including stock, ETF, and mutual fund picks) with allocation recommendations; content about a variety of financial topics such as taxes, estate planning, and everyday finances; and a variety of tools, such as credit card interest and mortgage calculators. GamePlan is available when you sign up with Stock Advisor. However, GamePlan+, which you get through Epic, delivers a wider array of articles and tools, as well as more in-depth coverage.
  • Epic Opportunities: A members-only podcast from Motley Fool.

You can learn more by reading our Epic review, or sign up today at Motley Fool.

 

3. Seeking Alpha Premium App: Best for User-Generated Content & Breaking Stock Market News


Seeking Alpha Premium Pro

  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: 7-day free trial, then $269/yr*.

Seeking Alpha is a financial news app that offers subscribers access to content for free or on a premium basis. The app serves as one of the financial industry’s top sources for stock news alerts, crowdsourced investment ideas and community message boards.

The service also provides in-depth research on a full range of publicly traded stocks and managed funds. If you subscribe to the service, you can elect to receive stock alerts throughout the day on companies and funds that you want to follow.

Sign up for Seeking Alpha, or check out our Seeking Alpha review to learn more.

Related: 7 Best Seeking Alpha Alternatives [Competitors’ Site to Use]

4. Robinhood


robinhood signup new2

The Robinhood app, in addition to helping you become more financially literate, is an exchange where you can buy and sell stocks, cryptocurrency, index funds and ETFs.

The app also provides a news stream service within the app, pulling from multiple major financial news outlets.

A major selling point of the app is that it’s completely free to use. Robinhood has research tools such as market data, news, and analysis.

The information on Robinhood may not be as comprehensive as other apps, but it makes up for that by being very user-friendly and straightforward to use. It’s a useful app for beginners.

If you want an app that both educates you and allows you to trade on it, Robinhood is a great option.

If you want to see a larger universe of investment apps, you may want to explore the several apps like Robinhood available to investors.

Related: Top Day Trading Platforms

5. Trade Ideas: Best for Daily Trading Ideas & Proprietary Idea Filter Tools


trade ideas signup new 2024
Trade Ideas
  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: Trade of the Week Newsletter: Free; $1,068/yr. for Standard (paid annually); $2,136/yr. for Premium (paid annually); discounts available with a code found in the box below

Trade Ideas employs an artificial intelligence-powered assistant named Holly. This AI becomes your virtual research analyst who never sleeps and instead sifts through technicals, fundamentals, social media, earnings, and more to pick stocks as real-time trade recommendations.

Holly stays busy, too. She runs more than 1 million simulated trades each night and morning before the markets open with more than 60 proprietary algorithms to find you the highest-probability, most risk-appropriate opportunities to invest in stocks.

This stock scanning and analysis tool doesn’t stop there, though. You can also build your own scanners and screeners with over 500 data points and indicators to choose from. You can backtest your trading strategies, and also forward-test them in the real-time trade simulator. This allows you to learn, test, and optimize, without risking your own money.

The powerful service allows you to access real-time streaming trading ideas on simultaneous charts to learn how to trade into risk-reward balanced trades. In other words: You can invest and learn at the same time.

Where Trade Ideas excels

Where Trade Ideas excels is not only giving you the data and ideas you haven’t seen elsewhere, but also how to manage your money. The AI-powered smart risk levels on every chart are suitable for both long-term investors and active traders.

As the stock market evolves, TI’s software adjusts levels and the trading plan to match. The best part? You can learn how to do all of this without risking your principal through a real-time simulated trading environment.

After you’ve grown comfortable with the service and trading, you can choose to go live with the trade ideas and start investing real money by connecting directly through a brokerage like Interactive Brokers or E*Trade. (The full list of available brokers you can use through the service is available on Trade Ideas’ site.)

I’m a newsletter and alert aficionado, so I should point out a couple of Trade Ideas products. For one, it has a standalone alert service in the form of a weekly Swing Picks newsletter. This gives you five new trade ideas in your inbox from the company’s model portfolio every Monday. Trade Ideas’ Standard and Premium subscriptions include these stock picks. Trade Ideas also has a free Trade of the Week newsletter highlighting one stock pick TI has identified for members.

How does Trade Ideas find stock picks?

Trade Ideas finds its Strength Alerts by focusing on a unique approach that emphasizes relative strength. They start by identifying the most effective indicators and chart setups, based on their top-performing algorithms. They proceed by applying statistical analysis to assign weighted values to each indicator and chart setup, allowing for a quantitative evaluation of their significance. Advanced server technology allows TI to evaluate every stock in the market using these weights and then sort them based on which achieved the highest score. Their team of experts curates these findings to ensure subscribers receive only the most promising trade recommendations.

While Trade Ideas offers exceptional value, it’s important to note that there’s a considerable investment required. Note that you must sign up for Premium to receive full access to the Holly experience. However, you can enjoy a big discount by using the code mentioned below.

Consider starting your Trade Ideas subscription with no contract involved. Cancel anytime.

 

6. Finimize: Best for Daily Digests of Stock Market News


finimize community

  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: Daily Brief is Free; Premium costs $40 annually through link above

Finimize keeps its Daily Brief newsletter emails short (usually fewer than 500 words) and engaging.

The service breaks them up into three sections of

  1. “What’s going on?”
  2. “What does this mean?”
  3. “Why should I care?”

It uses a casual, humorous tone to summarize recent financial news and links to further reading material.

Finimize doesn’t directly tell you stocks to buy or avoid, but rather gives you information to make your own decisions.

Subscribers receive an email each weekday for free. If you like Finimize’s style, you may choose to sign up for their premium services, such as recorded audio of their content, meetups, and more detailed reporting.

Premium services normally cost $79.99 annually after a weeklong free trial. However, by using this link, you can receive 50% off your annual premium subscription.

 

7. Tokenist’s Five Minute Finance – Best for Quick Macro Trend Discussion


tokenist five minute finance

Five Minute Finance (5MF) is one of those newsletters that’s read by every type of investor out there.

Here’s the newsletter in summary:

  • It’s free
  • Published weekly, every Friday
  • Focuses on identifying the five most significant trends of the week—keeping investors up to speed on all things finance

If you want to stay in the know and have a general pulse on the bigger picture of financial markets, then Five Minute Finance is exactly what you’re looking for.

This newsletter focuses on explaining the macro trends and their impact on financial markets. It also pays close attention to the integration of finance and technology, including fintech, cryptocurrency, digital assets, DeFi, and NFTs.

But instead of just giving you headlines, there’s actual analysis involved as well—making the most significant events to impact financial markets understandable by all investors.

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

five minute finance example

In today’s macroeconomic environment—with the Federal Reserve battling inflation, various global supply chain disruptions, and the ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—Five Minute Finance is a no-brainer, especially for the price: free.

 

8. CNBC App: Best for Stock Market News and Personal Finance Topics


cnbc breaking business news app

NBC’s flagship financial news app provides users with market data, financial information, and international business news. You can access real-time stock quotes, look at interactive charts and even see stock futures information to get a sense for where the market may head.

This app lets you customize a watch list to track specific stocks that interest you.

If you choose, you can have breaking news updates pushed through even while the app is closed, so you never miss time-sensitive financial information.

As a bonus, you can watch full episodes of CNBC shows, such as “American Greed” and “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” to keep yourself financially motivated.

9. Webull: Go to Resource for Technical Aspects and Free Trading


Experience Webull Desktop 4.0

  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: $0 trades, $0 account minimums; Free stocks w/$100 deposit

Webull is the latest free stock trading app on the market which charges no commissions for trades.

The service provides a significant level of financial tools for conducting in-depth analysis but also comes paired with a news aggregator service for quickly following market developments.

Webull tracks thousands of stocks with real-time alerts you can manage in your in-app notification preferences. In addition to this news service, Webull also serves as one of the best stock research and analysis apps because it focuses on traders who utilize technical analysis.

This is why I list it as one of the best stock trading apps for beginners.

In fact, Webull not only offers commission-free trading, free news stories and an active investor community, it also offers a significant amount of technical research resources for individuals looking to invest in stocks, bonds, options and cryptocurrencies.

Further, it acts as a great stock tracking app with alerts, notifications and charting.

Further, Webull provides a free 3-month trial of NASDAQ TotalView Level 2 Advance quotes, which provides real-time views into the depth-of-market in a security.

This gives a sense of market depth and trading activity After 3 months, you can subscribe to the service for a monthly fee of $1.99/mo.

The app provides useful tools, access to financial news stories and any summary-level research activity published by Wall Street analysts. As a bonus for opening your account, if you deposit a minimum amount of money or more you can also earn free stocks.

 

10. Scanz (formerly EquityFeed Workstation)


scanz sign up

Scanz caters to traders and not investors. As a result, the service targets tickers and not companies. That means your goal is to find good trading opportunities each day and profit from them.

To do this, you need to scan thousands of tickers regularly and keep up-to-date with the latest stock market news.

The service offers long or short stock tracking options for price-based, volume-based or news-based trades. You can subscribe to the Steaming News module only if this is all you need. You can also add on the Pro Scanner module or bundle them.

If you choose to subscribe to the bundled service in addition to the stock news module, the most acclaimed feature of Scanz (formerly EquityFeed Workstation) is the “FilterBuilder.”

With this tool, you can filter and pick stocks based on your desired criteria, including value, growth, momentum or even penny stocks.

Scanz is a powerful stock trading software platform and acts as one of the best stock news options on this list. Consider starting a free trial to see how effective the service can be for capturing alpha in your portfolio.

 

11. Yahoo! Finance


yahoo finance app store

  • Available: Play Store, iOS
  • Price: Free; contains ads and in-app purchases

With Yahoo! Finance, you create your own portfolio, follow stocks you’re interested in, and set up personalized alerts. Your research abilities within the app are extensive. There are current news stories telling you the most exciting investing insights.

The app has interactive charts and a useful set of analytical tools. You can also view ESG ratings, historical financials, and top holders of companies. There is both a free and premium version. The Google Finance app is similar, but has far fewer users than Yahoo! Finance.

12. MarketWatch App


marketwatch app

  • Available: Play Store, iOS
  • Price: Free; contains ads and in-app purchases

The MarketWatch app, like the website, provides in-depth analytical information. Some of the apps’ top features include:

  • Interactive Top Stories bar that allows you to customize your drop-down menu of other news channels
  • News about the stock market, business, and finance
  • Market data center with stocks, commodities, and rates updated in real-time
  • Ability to track stock market data over various date ranges and regions
  • Option to follow stock picks and read related stories to stay current on your investments

When possible, many people still prefer the website because it is even more comprehensive, but the app is useful when a desktop isn’t an option or you want to check a stock quickly. With an account, you can sync your watchlists between the website and your app.

13. Morningstar


morningstar investor signup 1

  • Available: Sign up here
  • Price: Free 7-day trial. Then $34.95/mo., or $199/yr. (53% savings vs. monthly) when you sign up through our link.*

Morningstar Investor is a rich platform of investment research tools designed for the buy-and-hold crowd, and it plugs investors into one of the world’s foremost sources for mutual fund and ETF data and analysis.

Morningstar’s analysts provide rich commentary about (and updates on) stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. Also, Morningstar’s “News” tab puts you in touch with subscription-free access to earnings results, analyst upgrades/downgrades, and more from news outlets including MarketWatch, Benzinga, and Briefing.com.

Morningstar’s ratings are among the service’s most revered features. The original Star Rating—which measures a fund’s risk-adjusted past returns—has been around since 1985 and helped steer countless investors toward cheaper, better-constructed mutual funds and ETFs. But Morningstar doesn’t just look to the past. Its forward-looking Medalist Ratings use traits such as a fund’s parent organization, the managers responsible for making decisions, and fund strategies to determine a fund’s ability to outperform over the long term. You must be a Morningstar Investor subscriber to access Medalist Ratings.

Morningstar also provides a wealth of information and comparable data points about mutual funds and ETFs—fees, risk, portfolio composition, performance, distributions, and more. Morningstar experts also provide detailed explanations and analysis of many of the funds the site covers.

Stock owners shouldn’t feel left out—Morningstar also provides everything you need for stock research, including equity data, corporate financials, analysis, and even Star Ratings of publicly traded companies.

With Morningstar Investor, you can also:

  • Seamlessly and securely link your external accounts to get a holistic view of your assets from one simple dashboard
  • Use Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray®, which evaluates what you hold from numerous angles—asset allocation, stock sector, valuation, fees, and more—and can identify any overlaps between accounts that might impact just how diversified you are (or aren’t!)
  • Set up stock and fund watchlists
  • Screen for securities that match your investing goals using a variety of performance and valuation metrics
  • Follow Morningstar authors so you can check out their latest articles, videos, and podcasts as soon as they’re posted

Not sure if Morningstar Investor is right for you? Try it out with a free seven-day trial. You can check out the current deal, as well as discounted rates for students and teachers, in our details box below.

 

14. The Wall Street Journal App


wall street journal app

  • Available: Play Store, iOS
  • Price: $32.99/mo; contains ads and in-app purchases

Investing expert and billionaire Warren Buffet reads six newspapers each day, one of which is The Wall Street Journal. This newspaper has long been known as one of the most reputable sources for financial information.

Through the app, you can customize news and notifications to focus on the topics most relevant to you.

You receive real-time updates and can access news from an Apple watch. Some articles and information are free on the app, but for full access, you need to pay monthly.

15. Stocktwits


  • Available: Play Store, iOS
  • Price: Free, contains ads and in-app purchases

Stocktwits is basically Twitter, but people only talk about investing. In a Twitter-style feed, you can find what’s happening in the market and stocks from the platform’s over two million community members.

Some traders post useful charts and videos with technical analysis.

Stocktwits keeps you social with smart investors and everything is free. The feed doesn’t update as often as actual Twitter and sometimes requires you to refresh rather than automatically updating.

Still, it’s a great way to interact with other people who invest and share tips with each other.

16. Barron’s – Investing Insights


  • Available: Play Store, iOS
  • Price: Introductory offer of $1/week for first 52 weeks; contains ads and in-app purchases

Barron’s has been a trusted source for financial information since 1921 and downloading the app makes that information more easily accessible to you.

You can view all of their investment articles from Wall Street experts and you can save or download the articles to read later. The most iconic of these articles is the Saturday print edition.

You can also read the Asia Editions to get a global view of the stock market. Stock quotes are in real-time and interactive charts give you valuable insights.

New subscribers to Barron’s pay $14.99 per month for unlimited access to both the app and website.

17. E*Trade


etrade sign up

  • Available: Click “Open Account” below
  • Price: $0 trades

E*Trade is another app that will educate you about the stock market through news stories and educational resources as well as let you trade stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, or options within the app.

E*Trade comes with free access to Bloomberg TV, Thomson Reuters, and TipRanks research. Meanwhile, you’ll have ample tools at your disposal, including stock, mutual fund, bond, and ETF screeners; trade optimizers; backtesters; and more.

Read our review to learn more, or visit E*Trade and sign up by clicking “Open Account” below.

 

Best Stock Market and Financial News Apps


You need to find a way to keep abreast of market trends or you’re taking shots in the dark. Investor Peter Lynch once said, “If you don’t study any companies, you have the same success buying stocks as you do in a poker game if you bet without looking at your cards.”

Therefore, you need to educate yourself both on stocks and market activity.

Thankfully, many financial news apps don’t charge a fee because they offer in-app purchases and ads, offsetting the cost to you. Some charge a subscription fee but provide in-depth news and analysis to compensate for this expense.

About the Author

Riley Adams is the Founder and CEO of Young and the Invested. He is a licensed CPA who worked at Google as a Senior Financial Analyst overseeing advertising incentive programs for the company’s largest advertising partners and agencies. Previously, he worked as a utility regulatory strategy analyst at Entergy Corporation for six years in New Orleans.

His work has appeared in major publications like Kiplinger, MarketWatch, MSN, TurboTax, Nasdaq, Yahoo! Finance, The Globe and Mail, and CNBC’s Acorns. Riley currently holds areas of expertise in investing, taxes, real estate, cryptocurrencies and personal finance where he has been cited as an authoritative source in outlets like CNBC, Time, NBC News, APM’s Marketplace, HuffPost, Business Insider, Slate, NerdWallet, Investopedia, The Balance and Fast Company.

Riley holds a Masters of Science in Applied Economics and Demography from Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Finance from Centenary College of Louisiana.