List of web sites or online forums for stock picking and security analysis
This is a great forum, mostly focused around mutual funds though: http://www.bogleheads.org/
"I have 3 favorite sites that I use. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/mcd/dividend-history - lists the entire history of dividends and what dates they were paid so you can predict when future dividends will be paid. http://www.dividend.com/dividend-stocks/services/restaurants/mcd-mcdonalds/ - this site lists key stats like dividend yield, and number of years dividend has increased.  If the next dividend is announced, it shows the number of days until the ex-dividend date, the next ex-div and payment date and amount. If you just want to research good dividend stocks to get into, I would highly recommend the site seekingalpha.com.  Spend some time reading the articles on that site under the dividends section.  Make sure you read the comments on each article to make sure the author is not way off base. Finally, my favorite tool for researching good dividend stocks is the CCC Lists produced by Seeking Alpha's David Fish.  It is a giant spreadsheet of stocks that have been increasing dividends every year for 5+, 10+, or 25+ years.  The link to that spreadsheet is here: http://dripinvesting.org/tools/tools.asp under ""U.S. Dividend Champions""." "I wrote Retirement Savings Ratio some time ago and 15% seemed the sweet spot. The 15% is 10% saved and 5% match, in my mind. The reason I link is to show a spreadsheet that shares my approach to the analysis.  You list a huge number of things to think about, all great. I'm near Duff's view although I shoot for 20X final  income so 4% of that is an 80% replacement. There's nothing magic about 80. If social security exists, it actually drops the required 80 from you to the 60 or so Duff lists, so we align.  The 'problems' with my sheet - no one gets exact 3% raises for 43 years, so one can go in and change that, maybe higher early on, then slow it down. Returns are 8% every year, so one must go to the sheet or their own plan and reassess how they are doing each year. Disclosure - we are now at 14X our income with a goal of 25 to replace 100%. So we need a cumulative 80% growth (as in S&P at 2500) or the years of deposits to get there. I am nearing 50.  Let me pick one of your questions - ""Your expenses go down at retirement, stay the same, or go up?"" - this is the $64K question. the 80% is an average guess. The general assumption is in this range. If we downsized right after the kid goes to college, we could retire on far less. So, to wrap up, online calculators and spreadsheets only go so far. Your questions are dead on. A planner should ask every one of these questions before assuming any ratio.  Edit - on re-read I am blown away by the list of questions you have here. It's great. And it shows how there's risk no matter what." "Yes when I place an order with my broker they send it out to the exchange. - For individual investors, what are some cons and pros of trading on    the exchanges directly versus indirectly via brokers? I may be mistaken(I highly doubt it), but from my understanding you cannot trade directly through an exchange as a retail investor. BATS allows membership but it is only for  Your firm must be a registered broker-dealer, registered with a Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) and connected with a clearing firm. No apple (aapl) is listed on the NASDAQ so trades go through the NASDAQ for aapl. Caterpillar Inc (CAT) is listed on the NYSE so trades go through the NYSE.  The exchange you trade on is dependent on the security, if it is listed on the NYSE then you trade on the NYSE. As a regular investor you will be going through a broker. When looking to purchase a security it is more important to know about the company and less important to know what exchange it is listed on. Since there are rules a company must comply with for it to be listed on certain exchanges, it does make a difference but that is more the case when speaking about a stock listed Over the Counter(OTC) or NYSE. It is not important when asking NYSE or NASDAQ? Selecting a broker is something that's dependent on your needs. You should ask your self, ""whats important to me?"", ""Do I want apps(IE: iPhone, android)?"" ""Do I need fancy trading tools?"". Generally all the brokers you listed will most likely do the trick for you. Some review sites: Brokerage Review  Online Broker Review 2012 Barron's 2012 Online Broker Review" To learn more about the market, read as much as possible. Read articles on Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, etc. Also, any time you just have the tv in the background, have it on CNBC. It's crazy what all you will pick up on even just in the background. Like someone else said, create a virtual portfolio and actively trade. You can also subscribe to sites like Investopedia and they will send you articles about analysis techniques and stocks/industries to watch.   If you want to learn some basic tools for corporate roles, then learn Excel, Tableau, and how to write SQL. "Strategy would be my top factor.  While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of different schools of analysis that may be worth passing along: Fundamental Analysis:Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and management. When analyzing a stock, futures contract, or currency using fundamental analysis there are two basic approaches one can use; bottom up analysis and top down analysis. The term is used to distinguish such analysis from other types of investment analysis, such as quantitative analysis and technical analysis. Technical Analysis:In finance, technical analysis is a security analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable. There are tools like ""Stock Screeners"" that will let you filter based on various criteria to use each analysis in a mix.  There are various strategies one could use.  Wikipedia under Stock Speculator lists: ""Several different types of stock trading strategies or approaches exist including day trading, trend following, market making, scalping (trading), momentum trading, trading the news, and arbitrage.""  Thus, I'd advise research what approach are you wanting to use as the ""Make it up as we go along losing real money all the way"" wouldn't be my suggested approach. There is something to be said for there being numerous columnists and newsletter peddlers if you want other ideas but I would suggest having a strategy before putting one's toe in the water." "Considering the fact that you are so unaware of how to find such data, I find it very very hard to believe that you actually need it. ""All trade and finance data for as much tickers and markets as possible."" Wtf does that even mean. You could be referencing thousands of different types of data for any given ""ticker"" with a statement so vague. What are you looking for?" Since you seem determined to consider this, I'd like to break down for you why I believe it is an incredibly risky proposition: 1) In general, picking individual stocks is risky. Individual stocks are by their nature not diversified assets, and a single company-wide calamity (a la Volkswagen emissions, etc.) can create huge distress to your investments. The way to mitigate this risk is of course to diversify (invest in other types of assets, such as other stocks, index funds, bonds, etc.). However, you must accept that this first step does have risks.  2) Picking stocks on the basis of financial information (called 'fundamental analysis') requires a very large amount of research and time dedication. It is one of the two main schools of thought in equity investing (as opposed to 'technical analysis', which pulls information directly from stock markets, such as price volatility). This is something that professional investors do for a living - and that means that they have an edge you do not have, unless you dedicate similar resources to this task. That information imbalance between you and professional traders creates additional risk where you make determinations 'against the grain'.  3) Any specific piece of public information (and this is public information, regardless of how esoteric it is) may be considered to be already 'factored into' public stock prices. I am a believer in market efficiency first and foremost. That means I believe that anything publically known related to a corporation ['OPEC just lowered their oil production! Exxon will be able to increase their prices!'] has already been considered by the professional traders currently buying and selling in the market. For your 'new' information to be valuable, it would need to have the ability to forecast earnings in a way not already considered by others. 4) I doubt you will be able to find the true nature of the commercial impact of a particular event, simply by knowing ship locations. So what if you know Alcoa is shipping Aluminium to Cuba - is this one of 5 shipments already known to the public? Is this replacement supplies that are covering a loss due to damaged goods previously sent? Is the boat only 1/3 full? Where this information gets valuable, is when it gets to the level of corporate espionage. Yes, if you had ship manifests showing tons of aluminum being sold, and if this was a massive 'secret' shipment about to be announced at the next shareholders' meeting, you could (illegally) profit from that information. 5) The more massive the company, the less important any single transaction is. That means the super freighters you may see transporting raw commodities could have dozens of such ships out at any given time, not to mention news of new mine openings and closures, price changes, volume reports, etc. etc. So the most valuable information would be smaller companies, where a single shipment might cover a month of revenue - but such a small company is (a) less likely to be public [meaning you couldn't buy shares in the company and profit off of the information]; and (b) less likely to be found by you in the giant sea of ship information. In summary, while you may have found some information that provides insight into a company's operations, you have not shown that this information is significant and also unknown to the market. Not to mention the risks associated with picking individual stocks in the first place. In this case, it is my opinion that you are taking on additional risk not adequately compensated by additional reward. The motley fool is one of the best places.  Other good communities are Yahoo Finance, Seeking Alpha, and Investors Place. I also recently created a chat room connected to this site to discuss stocks/funds/etc. with other money.stackexchange users.  http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/263/investing