December 23, 2024

Free Research Toolkits for Professional Investors

photo of edwin dorsey with software tools as background and the word invest

I’ve spent years collecting and testing the best free resources for professional investors. From uncovering government records to tracking social sentiment, these tools have become essential for thorough market research.

Complete List of A+ Free Resources

  1. Google Advanced Search — Use Google’s advanced search filters to find unique information. For example, filter by time for older results or search for: [Company name] filetype:pdf site:.gov to bring up interesting government records related to the company.
  2. SEC Full-Text Search — Search through 20 years of SEC filings for specific terms, people, or entities.
  3. PCAOB Auditor Search — Find the auditor and specific audit partner for any company, as well as their track record. Use the search bar in the top right and click auditor search.
  4. Wayback Machine — A non-profit that regularly archives millions of the most visited sites. Use it to see how a site or specific webpage changes over time.
  5. Webpage Archive — An alternative to the Wayback Machine that makes it incredibly easy to archive digital webpages. It often has several archives of media articles the week of publication, making it easy to track any changes over time.
  6. Perplexity AI — Powerful AI agent that can often provide answers when Google fails.
  7. Diffchecker — Compare any two bodies of text for potential differences (e.g., compare a company’s 2023 and 2024 risk factor disclosures).
  8. IBorrowDesk — Website with stock borrow rates and short availability.
  9. SocialBlade — Follow the social media growth of a company or individual. Two other strong alternatives include HypeAuditor and ViewStats (YouTube only).
  10. Glassdoor — Go reverse chronological and read through all reviews, pay extra attention to complaints about toxic work environment, sales culture, leadership, turnover, and fraud allegations. Also, look to see if reviews are evenly spaced or clustered around a day or week (a sign the reviews may be manipulated).
  11. BBB — A non-profit consumer review and business accreditation site. Will often issue public alerts for particularly problematic businesses.
  12. SiteJabber — Wide collection of consumer reviews for online businesses.
  13. TrustPilot — Another good consumer review site.
  14. ReverseWHOIS — Shows you all websites registered to a particular company/email. For example, here is a list of ~12,000 public web domains owned by Apple.
  15. PACER — Find lawsuits against any company or individual.
  16. Court Listener — Search millions of legal decisions by case name, topic, or company.
  17. Hacker News — Search through the Y Combinator message boards for any company or topic to see what Silicon Valley thinks.
  18. 10x EBITDA — A compilation of many hedge fund activist presentations.
  19. X/Twitter — Amazing platform for equity research. Search by ticker and limit the search to “people you follow” to find high-quality tweets.
  20. SEC comment letters — On EDGAR, search for a company then “CORRESP” or “UPLOAD” in the document type search to find SEC comment letters, which are a type of informal correspondence between the SEC and public companies that bring up unique issues.
  21. Google Alerts — Set Google email alerts for news related to a specific company.
  22. Google Trends — Long-term trends in search volume for certain terms on Google.
  23. Reddit — Often will have surprisingly good content from industry experts or former employees.
  24. TikTok — Great place to search for consumer sentiment on any brand/company.
  25. LinkedIn — See employees, their former workplaces, and how they know each other (e.g., red flags: CFO went to the University of Phoenix or bank loan officers previously worked for banks that failed).
  26. Value Investors Club — Public platform to share stock write-ups.
  27. ImportYeti — Search 70 million U.S. customs sea shipment records instantly.
  28. “The Sketchy Companies Paying YouTubers to Promote Their Stock” — Outstanding investigation exposing the anatomy of stock promotion schemes on YouTube.
  29. “The Makings of a Multibagger” — Amazing Alta Fox Capital case study on 104 multi-bagger stocks.

Useful Databases

  1. CFPB Consumer Complaint Database — Searchable database of millions of consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  2. SEC FOIA Logs — SEC’s monthly disclosures about FOIA requests the SEC receives. Learn more about the value of SEC FOIA logs here and here.
  3. Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions FDD database — Find nearly any Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) for franchisors that do business in Wisconsin.
  4. Open Payments Data — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services database to search payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians for speaking fees, consulting fees, and meal reimbursements,
  5. CMS Drug Spending — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services database to provide greater transparency on spending for drugs in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
  6. Open Corporates — Quickly find the executives, board members, or state registration for private businesses. Go to the Department of State filing search for more information on any entity.
  7. Federal Procurement Data System — Searchable database of U.S. government purchase orders. Great for researching military/government contractors.
    NYC Health Restaurant Inspection Scores — Easily search for health inspection scores by restaurant chain.
  8. U.S Energy Information Administration — Independent statistics and analysis about U.S. energy.
  9. Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) Database — MAUDE is a searchable database of medical device reports of adverse events involving medical devices over the last ten years.
  10. ClinicalTrials— Searchable database of clinical research studies. Website maintained by the National Institutes of Health.

List of Short Activists

Below are all the short report authors summarized in The Bear Cave newsletter this year:

Emerging Managers Worth Watching

Newsletters for Idea Generation

Below are X lists for each group of accounts and you can find even more info on The Bear Cave newsletter site.

  1. Short activists
  2. Emerging managers

X Accounts For Idea Generation

Most Underfollowed

Must Follows

  1. Underfollowed accounts
  2. Must follow accounts

And apologies in advance to the many great accounts I missed!