Online Broker Review

Updated Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Research Tools Grade: B

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Overview:

Just2Trade's research tools cover most standard features such as quotes pages, watch lists and asset specific pages. Market news and commentary are particularly robust while the screeners and alerts are not of the highest quality. The technical events screener, portfolio analysis and options volatility tools are interesting features. Finding particular tools can sometimes be problematic because of cumbersome menus. Even with the drawbacks, Just2Trade has a nice selection of research tools to aid all types of investors.

Details:

The Just2Trade research tools are spread out across three different major sections: Markets, Research and Tools. Within each section are many menus, sub menus and tabs and because of a lack of consistent design, it is sometimes difficult to find specific features. Nevertheless, there is a lot to cover so let's step through the various menus one at a time...

Market News and Commentary
News articles are provided by MarketMinute.com, Business Wire, Marketwire, PRWeb and a host of other organizations. News videos are provided by the Associated Press and Reuters. The videos lose a lot of their appeal because of the lengthy ads preceding each story. Market commentary is provided by "gurus" Jim Cramer, Pete Najarian, Ken Fisher, Bill Gross and Dave Ramsey.

Currencies
The Currencies page contains a currency converter, a list of major currencies priced in US dollars and forex related news articles provided by DailyFX Currency News.

International
The International page features a list of global stock markets and an associated map (click on images for larger views):

Treasury & Bonds
The Treasury & Bonds page shows price and yield data for US Treasury Bonds and accompanying charts.

General Market Research
The separate stock, ETF and mutual fund research sections include lists of most active securities, biggest gainers / losers and most popular securities for each category. There is also a sectors page which shows market performance results broken down by category.

Quotes
At the top of quote pages are basic stock price information such as bid / ask / last, 52 week high / low, yield and P/E ratio. Further down are separate tabs labeled overview, detailed quote, historical prices, research and community. The overview tab contains a chart, company related news articles, and a brief company profile. The detailed quote tab shows additional company metrics including fundamental and profitability measurements. The historical prices tab allows users to view and download market data. Simply select a date range to view and then click on the download button to save the results as an Microsoft Excel file. One unfortunate limitation is that data can only be viewed / downloaded with a maximum range of one year. The research tab contains quarterly, annual and other company required filings. The community tab features market sentiment related data provided by Wikinvest, PredictWallStreet and MediaSentiment.

Watch Lists
Watch lists are user configurable lists of stocks. Multiple lists can be created and retrieved quickly via a drop down menu. Clicking on the info column brings up the quote page for that stock while the action column contains buttons to trade and delete items. Here is a watch list that we created featuring some popular telecom companies:

Basic Options Calculator
The Basic Options Calculator tool calculates option prices, Greeks and implied volatility based on user input. Users start by selecting an options contract and either modify the other input parameters or let these fields be calculated automatically. Here are the results that we generated after selecting a specific contract for Verizon (VZ):

Options Volatility Index
The Options Volatility Index tool shows a breakdown of historical volatility and implied volatility for both stocks and indices. Price and volatility charts are also available. Here is the Options Volatility Index screen for the S&P 500:

Alerts
Alerts are configuration rules that will generate emails when specific criteria are met. Alerts can be configured to trigger when a stock or index price hits a price level or when certain technical formations are activated. Alerts will only be sent on a daily basis a few hours after the market close, making them far less useful than alerts at other brokers that can trigger at any point throughout the day.

Stock Screener
Just2Trade offers separate stock, ETF and mutual fund screeners. The stock screener features 14 screening criteria, which is rather limited compared to screening tools offered at other brokers. Also, each screening criteria is not as customizable as we would like. These factors limit the usefulness of the stock screener.

Technical Event Screener
The Technical Event Screener offers a way to filter stocks against technical conditions. There are ten preset screening criteria or users can select their own customized screen based on price, volume, exchange, industry and a selection of technical indicators. The technical indicators are the real appeal of this tool, with indicators such as trend reversal, double bottom and upside breakout. Results can be shown as a list, charts or a combination of the two. Here are the results that we generated after screening for stocks with technical patterns that are categorized as a reversal of prior trend:

Daily Technical Events
The Daily Technical Events section features an overview of recent technical events that have triggered in the broad stock market. Events are selectable by one of three categories.

Portfolio Analysis
The Portfolio Analysis tool is a very unique offering. Users start by entering a theoretical list of holdings and cash amounts for each holding. Based on this input, reports are generated that display a breakdown by asset allocation, global region, sector, investment style and more. Here is a report that we generated:

Just2Trade Research Tools