These are free tools that I use while I'm in my first few months of trading (at a dayjob) and not ready to commit to spending hundreds a month on scanners and other tools that I will for sure spend $ on once I have increased my winning % and account.

 

Trading platform: Robinhood. It sucks compared to any other platform as far as charts (there are none), but trades are free so I can maintain my small account without forking out commissions. Software (app) glitches. It was displaying error messages when I was actually live in a trade which was very scary. It's only done this once, but shit, 1 bad trade can send your ass back to square 1. I will look to get into a different platform soon.

Pre-Market: thestockmarketwatch.com. You can click on Pre-market or after-hours and see which stocks are gapping up. The volume isn't always accurate and there is some delay, but overall if you're looking for which stocks are gapping up, this is pretty nice for a free service. Its the best free site for identifying which stocks are gapping up. Benzinga.com. The markets>premarket- tab has articles every morning that list stocks that are gapping up and gapping down. The snip for each ticker will tell at the time of the article the % gain and if there was action the day before, or if there is news fueling the momentum.

Stock Scanner/Info: #1- finviz.com. Lots of filters. You can save preset filters for quick scans. I use price (<10), volume (varies throughout day but always >200k), relative volume (>1.5), performance (>5-10%). I also have a preset for new highs (lowest filter is 20W). If anyone knows of a free HOD scanner that would be awesome. Another scan I do is % gain from open (to see stocks that may not have had a huge jump from yesterday's close but ones that are headed in the right direction. This is where you'd find stocks that didn't necessarily gap up, but that were showing a steady uptrend. Some stocks gap up, then actually dip below its opening price (downtrend) but will still show as a % gainer on the day. I want to buy stocks that are uptrending, not ones that might be overbought. Finviz also shows a snip of the daily chart when you hover over the ticker which is nice. It also sometimes has news that Yahoo finance doesn't have. Or things like upgrades are right there too when you click on the ticker. Float, etc.

Stock Scanner/Info: #2. Yahoo finance. I like the markets> daily gainers list. This shows you the % gain, volume, average volume, last price, etc. Some things that you can see which finviz doesn't show you in the snapshot is the range for the day and the current price relative to that. This is sometimes nice to identify a stock that might be breaking out in the afternoon after the midmorning lull. If the price is close to the HOD, it might be worth going to a chart and looking at the price action and volume to see if there's potential for a new HOD and obviously to capitalize on that move. Yahoo finance also is great for balance sheet/income statement info if you're into fundamentals. I also use YF to cross reference the float between finviz and yahoo F. I for some reason trust YF more than finviz. So yeah i usually look at YF for float, volume, average volume, the daily and 52W range and the price relative to that, and for news.

Charts: freestockcharts.com. This is a really nice free charting tool that actually streams real-time data. It might be a couple seconds off sometimes, but its pretty accurate. There are plenty of technical analysis tools that you can use. I use VWAP, EMA's, volume, and MACD mostly. I also sometimes like to look at stochastics and +/-DI, just to confirm a trend, but I've come to realize (like most pro's say actually) that volume and price action are the most important things to understand when it comes to knowing what is actually going on. You don't want to get analysis paralysis. Although I still look at MACD to gauge the overall trend.

These are the free tools that I use, please share if there are some that you use that might be helpful.