Online Broker Review

Updated Monday, January 26, 2009

Research Tools Grade: C

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Overview:

SogoTrade features a decent variety of research tools of which most are decidedly underwhelming. Market and stock specific news is available but minimal. There are no company specific research reports but the company metrics, financial statements and SEC filing pages are quite well done. The stock screener is not very flexible and there is no events calendar. Rounding out the features is an IPO center section for all of your IPO needs. The SogoTrade research offerings run in the middle of the online broker pack.

Details:

The SogoTrade market overview page (click on images for larger views):

This page features market commentary by MarketWatch.com. While there are no individual stock research reports, each stock does contain a page showing a variety of company metrics, another page with a series of financial statements and yet another containing SEC filings. These pages are quite handy - well done SogoTrade. Here we see the quarterly income statement for General Electric (GE):

An education page introduces investors to basic financial information such as what is stock, how stock markets work, what the different types of orders are available. Obviously this area is geared towards absolute novice investors:

SogoTrade features a stock screener with 70 different screening criteria. Criteria flexibility is an issue though. For example, for P/E ratios, instead of being able to set a specific range of say 5 to 12, users are limited to selecting by increments of five. Here we see a custom screening comprised of dividend yield, profit margin, long term debt, P/E ratio and Price/Book ratio returning 39 results. Notice the criteria restrictions:

I did not find an events calendar, which is a tool found at many other online brokers. There is an IPO center, however, which shows IPO related news, research and filings. Here you can see a list of upcoming IPOs (yes, it looks like there are actually a few in the pipeline):

SogoTrade Research Tools