5 Best Investing Platforms

Choosing a right investing platform is important for every investor, amateur or seasoned. An investing platform is much more than a platform where you buy or sell stocks. An ideal investing platform should let you do research on your favorite stocks, manage your portfolios easily, offer exceptional customer service and provide a user-friendly interface.

A quick Google search today will yield an extremely long list of investing platforms that would make the most experienced traders overwhelmed. Therefore, in this article, our goal is to provide you with a short list of 5 absolute best investing platforms that are voted by the finance community here at Princeton University. We believe our picks here are extremely versatile and can be a good fit for a wide range of investors.

1. ValueInvesting.io

ValueInvesting.io takes the number one position on this list as one of the most powerful investing platforms out there. Their product offerings are extremely impressive, ranging from stock screener, watchlist, charting capabilities to global ETF + Mutual Funds data, institutional portfolios (Warren Buffett, Cathie Wood,...) and earnings calendar. However, their flagship product, the DCF and Intrinsic valuation service, is what makes the company famous. Their valuations have been historically super accurate but they are not a black-box model by any mean. All model assumptions are visible to users, allowing them to fully understand the models and to fine-tune them if needed.

With just $14.99/month, you can't find a better deal than ValueInvesting.io's subscription. The company has been constantly adding new features (Solvency analysis, DCF calculator, Short Interest API, etc...) and stock coverage to make stock investing better and more efficient to its users. Many of our students told us that ValueInvesting.io has made value investing cool again for them, which is a quite impressive achievement in today's environment.

2. AlphaResearch

If you believe data is king and there is alpha hidden in the company's SEC reports and news, then definitely check out AlphaResearch. It is an AI-powered search engine for finance where you can search literally any topic about any publicly traded company. For example, say you are interested in learning more about Apple's plan for its VR headset. You simply need to enter "Vision Pro" as the keyword, "AAPL" as the ticker and the platform will show you the exact paragraphs in Apple's form 10k, 10q, news articles, etc... that mentioned such product. This feature cuts down the research time tremendously, and lets investors have a more comprehensive view into the topics. AlphaResearch also allows user to view sentiment analysis, take note, highlight key ideas and share their findings with other peers.

According to our last conversation with their customer service, the company is in the process of integrating with stock brokers like Robinhood and Fidelity to let users make trades directly in its platform. At that point, AlphaResearch has potentials to rival the likes of Bloomberg and Alphasense, both of which are expensive Enterprise solutions. We highly recommend the platform for any serious investors who would like to use insights from big data and AI to beat the market.

3. Fidelity

Fidelity needs absolutely no introduction. As one of the biggest financial firms in the world, Fidelity has more than $4.5 trillion in assets under management. It would be easier to list financial services Fidelity doesn't provide than the ones it does, since Fidelity involves in brokerage, retirement, funds (ETFs, mutual funds) and much more. Fidelity is extremely well-known in the industry for its low fee strategy. You can trade stocks, ETFs and options with $0 commission on its platform, a feat that probably only Robinhood can match. Fidelity also has no-expense-ratio funds which let small investors diversify their portfolio into broad indices like S&P500 or Russell3000.

Overall, if you are looking for a well-rounded investing platform, it is hard to go wrong with Fidelity. Personally I use Fidelity to buy and hold VOO and could not be happier with the experience.

4. Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab is probably the 2nd biggest name in this list, only behind Fidelity. Having been in business for over half a century, Charles Schwab is a one-stop-shop platform for various types of investors. You can open an account and start trading with Charles Schwab with as little as $1, making investing so much more accessible to the mass. From feedbacks of our students who use Charles Schwab, the website particularly stands out for its offerings of international stocks. From one unified platform, investors get access to real-time price of listed stocks in more than 30 markets globally and can even make trades completely online

It is also worth mentioning that Charles Schwab has significant physical presence across U.S. with more than 300 branches nationwide. We believe this extensive network not only serves Charles Schwab's wealth management divisions but also helps the company win customers who prefer the in-person customer service.

5. tastytrade

Formerly known as tastyworks, tastytrade is hands down the best investing platform for options traders. Options have been the company's main focus since its very first day 12 years ago, with its content and functionalities super options-focused. One of its most beloved features is the commission cap, meaning you can literally spend $1 million to buy stock options and you wouldn't pay more than $10 per leg. That is an amazing offering, especially for big traders. For smaller retail traders who may not have much experience with the market yet, tastytrade allows them to copy trades from established gurus directly within the platform.

One disadvantage of tastytrade is the lack of more tradition equity research resources like fundamental data, technical indicators, consensus estimates, etc... We understand that this type of information is of secondary importance for options traders but having them could help the companies attract more equity investors as well.

Final remark

That concludes our top 5 best investing platforms. Check them out and let us know whether you think they meet your investing needs.