Is the stock market rigged? No, but rarely has it resembled a level playing field. For decades, casual retail investors had to dedicate hours to sifting through stock tips and SEC filings.
Meanwhile, the professionals accessed their Bloomberg terminals to get financial data quicker, faster, and more comprehensively than anyone else. The problem is Bloomberg terminal access costs $2,000 per person per month which equals $24,000 annually.
While Bloomberg terminals are the gold standard of investing, Atom Finance is helping to level the playing field by providing access to institutional investment data.
In our Atom Finance review, we talk about how this is the closest thing to a Bloomberg terminal you are likely to get for free.
But how do you get the most out of investing with Atom Finance?
Connect Your Portfolio
While not mandatory, we recommend linking up your portfolio with Atom Finance. Doing so allows you to better track the performance of your portfolio over time. When you connect your portfolio, Atom keeps tabs on your portfolio’s performance automatically.
If a major event involves anything in your portfolio, Atom Finance automatically brings it to your attention. It’s the simplest way of staying on top of things.
Will your portfolio be safe if you connect it to Atom Finance?
Yes, you are only connecting your brokerage account to the platform. You are not giving the platform permission to trade on your behalf. On the contrary, all trading activities will still be carried out via your usual brokerage.
Plus, Atom is committed to data security. They use the latest encryption methods to ensure your personal and financial data stays safe.
Carry Out In-Depth Stock Research
What makes Atom Finance stand out from the competition is the level of detail you can extract while searching for stocks.
All information is presented in an easy-to-read fashion while allowing for a fast comparison between other similar stocks.
Atom goes out of its way to label all the relevant information found within corporate SEC filings. You can even download any information you need for offline use. For inexperienced and time-constrained investors, this is a game-changer.
Create a Watch List for Stocks
Not every stock is an immediate purchase. For those stocks with the potential for future growth, you can add them to your Atom watch list.
Your watch list acts much like your portfolio. You’ll receive the following information all in one place:
- Performance over time
- Major economic events for all watched stocks
- Price alerts
- Industry-specific news
Atom’s watch list is one of the platform’s most powerful features. With it, you can keep your finger on the pulse of specific market sectors.
Home in with Document X-Ray
The Document X-Ray feature allows you to go further than finding certain documents. This feature is essentially an advanced search function that will scan within documents for certain search terms.
For example, if you wanted to search for “iPhone sales” when looking at Apple, Atom would return all SEC filings mentioning this term.
This makes research much faster as you no longer have to go on a wild goose chase to get the information you need.
If you don’t have the time to spend hours on research, this is the Atom Finance feature for you.
Compare and Contrast Stocks
Should you invest in Apple or Android? What about AT&T or Verizon? Choosing between similar stocks is a big issue for investors.
Atom makes it simple to compare directly using the most essential metrics like:
- Market cap
- Revenue
- Revenue growth
- EBITDA
- Debt
This information empowers investors to directly compare two companies in a matter of moments.
The only downside we found with this tool is they’ve yet to allow comparisons based on dividend yields, so you will need to perform this comparison manually.
Monitor Analyst Consensus
Another cool feature all investors should be using when looking up a stock is the analyst consensus field.
These analysts are from a variety of different companies and Atom is fully transparent about where each piece of analysis comes from.
Should you put much confidence in the opinions of analysts?
At Modest Money, we don’t believe in blindly believing some talking head. However, it can still be useful to get a basic idea of current market sentiment towards a stock.
The Bottom Line
Our review on Atom Finance concluded that this is the best free alternative to a Bloomberg terminal on the market today.
What makes it such a valuable free resource is not just that you have a wealth of information at your disposal but that it’s so easy to find the data you need to make a decision.
If you want to create an Atom Finance account, you can get institutional investment data for free by following this link.