Breaking news can have a big impact on the markets. Politics, corporate announcements, and financial events frequently cause individual stocks or even the S&P 500 as a whole to jump up or down. So, it’s essential that traders stay on top of market news each day.
There are dozens of stock news platforms available to help. We’ve tested out the most popular news platforms to bring traders the four best stock news apps available today:
- Best for Market News – CNBC
- Best for Free Stock Ideas – Motley Fool
- Best for Opinion Pieces – Seeking Alpha
- Best for Press Releases – Yahoo Finance
Best Stock News Apps
We’ll take a closer look at the top four stock news apps and explain what makes them stand out.
Best for Market News – CNBC
CNBC is perhaps the biggest name in market news, and it’s also one of the best. Older traders probably know CNBC’s television station, but the CNBC website and mobile app bring so much more to the table.
Traders and investors get everything from breaking market news and in-depth corporate journalism to op-eds about the market’s direction and analysis of current trends. The huge wealth of news on CNBC can be a slight drawback for traders who just want the biggest headlines of the day. However, CNBC has quick links to trending topics to help clarify what’s going on and breaking headlines that investors need to know about right away are always displayed prominently.
For investors who prefer to listen to stock news in the background, CNBC offers a livestream of its TV programming and unlimited free access to the Squawk Box pre-market news show. CNBC also offers more than a dozen different podcasts, which you can access through the CNBC app or any podcast app.
The most unbelievable thing about CNBC is that almost everything on the platform is free to access. There is a Pro news subscription that offers access to more market analysis pieces and articles for $29.99 per month. However, we think Seeking Alpha offers a better value for opinion pieces.
Key Features
- Breaking market news, analysis, and more
- Livestream CNBC television shows
- Dozens of market analysis podcasts
- Most news content is completely free
Best for Free Stock Ideas – Motley Fool
If you’re interested in using a stock news app to find new companies to add to your portfolio, check out The Motley Fool. While The Motley Fool is best known for its paid Stock Advisor stock picking service, the platform also puts out daily stock analysis articles for free.
What’s great about these articles is that they’re often written by the same analysts who are behind Stock Advisor picks. In some cases, they’re even about Stock Advisor picks – although the articles don’t usually say that, since it would give away the platform’s premium picks.
Unlike other stock analysis content, these articles are generally pretty reader-friendly. The Motley Fool focuses more on big-picture elements like what products and services a company is rolling out, how revenue and profits are changing, and whether the future looks bright or bumpy for a stock. Many articles offer a clear verdict on whether a stock represents a good buy at current prices.
One thing to keep in mind before you lean too heavily on these articles is that they’re short and often only present one side of the argument for or against a company. You wouldn’t expect a full research report for free, and that’s not what you’re getting. If you approach these articles as a jumping-off point for further research, they’re a terrific free resource for investors. If you are looking for more in-depth research reports from The Motley Fool, you may consider one of the company’s premium stock picking services like Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers.
Key Features
- Free analysis about stocks that are making news
- Written by professional stock analysts
- Very easy to read and interpret
- May suggest companies you’ve overlooked
Best for Opinion Pieces – Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is one of the best places to go if you want to read both the bull and bear cases for a single company. For any single stock, you can find dozens of opinion pieces from analysts with completely different perspectives. You won’t get a clear-cut answer about whether you should buy a stock, but you’ll also be fully informed when making an investment decision.
Seeking Alpha brings together a very wide range of contributors, including market insiders, professional analysts, finance bloggers, and others. All of them are free to write up pieces about the companies they want to follow, which is how the platform ends up with so many different takes on the same stock.
The other neat result of this approach is that each piece looks at a stock in a completely different way. One analyst might be focused on a company’s moat and the future of that moat. Another might dive into a detailed analysis of a company’s last earnings report. Yet another might present a series of financial models and discuss what those mean for future earnings.
Be forewarned that some articles on Seeking Alpha are financial gobbledygook that only professional analysts are likely to understand. However, the majority of contributors write for the average, informed investor. Even if you don’t understand everything that an article says, the takeaway is usually pretty clear.
Seeking Alpha Premium costs $239 per year, but it’s discounted to $49 for the first year.
Key Features
- Op-ed pieces written by analysts, insiders, finance bloggers, and others
- Dozens of different opinion articles about the same stock
- Covers fundamental and technical analysis, financial modeling, and more
- Only $49 for the first year
Best for Press Releases – Yahoo Finance
You might be surprised at how much you can learn by reading corporate press releases. These releases are often the basis for headlines on CNBC and other stock news apps. Investors can get a leg up on the market and beat the trading rush that follows a big headline by going straight to the source.
Yahoo Finance is the best place to go to find these releases. The platform rounds up press releases from the two major PR platforms, PRNewswire and GlobeNewswire. You can pull feeds showing all new releases from these platforms or navigate to any stock page on Yahoo Finance to find a company-specific feed of press releases.
On top of that, Yahoo Finance aggregates market news from across the web. It’s easy to stay on top of headlines from news platforms like Benzinga, MarketWatch, Zacks, Investor Place, and more. Yahoo Is provides access to all of these news articles for free, although they typically appear a few minutes or more behind the initial release.
All of the news on Yahoo Finance is free to access. The platform does offer a premium service called Yahoo Finance Plus for $20.83 per month, but this mainly offers portfolio management tools rather than additional news content.
Key Features:
- Press releases from PRNewswire and GlobeNewswire
- Aggregates market news from multiple sources
- In-depth stock pages with company-specific news feeds
- News content is completely free
What to Look for in a Stock News App?
There’s no perfect stock news app for every purpose. Some stock news apps are optimized to break headlines as quickly as possible. Other apps are designed to bring together market news from multiple sources, so you never miss a story. Some apps focus on opinion and analysis articles and could be considered stock research platforms as much as news apps.
With that in mind, it’s important to think about what you need out of a stock news app. Day traders are more likely to want a service that can break news stories first so they can get ahead of headline-driven trading action. Active investors may be better served by an aggregator that helps them stay on top of market events and identify new companies to trade.
Stock News Apps Pricing
Prices for stock news apps can vary widely. Many platforms provide market news coverage for free, including CNBC and Yahoo Finance. The quality of free news is not necessarily lower than paid news – we think CNBC offers outstanding articles, for example – but headlines often trail the market by a few minutes. Trading news services that focus on breaking headlines can cost $150 per month or more.
Original news and analysis content usually comes with a price, but not always. The Motley Fool offers its analysis for free, for example, and there’s a lot of free analysis available on CNBC. At just $49 for the first year, Seeking Alpha is also very affordably priced.
FAQ: Best Stock News Apps
What is the best source for stock news?
There are many trusted financial news outlets, including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. Other sites that write original market news content include MarketWatch, Investor Place, and TheStreet.com.
Where do traders get their stock news?
Day traders typically use breaking news services like Benzinga Pro, TradetheNews, or Newsquawk. However, many traders also keep an eye on platforms like CNBC that cover economic and political events that can impact the market.
