When you're looking for the best site for free stock charts, its good to ask yourself: What do you really need out of your charts? Its easy to get sucked into a website because of its eye-catching design or friendly sales pitch, however the biggest question is if its really going to provide you with what you need to make your investing more profitable.
For myself, I've created a set of parameters that I apply whenever I evaluate a new stock service or subscription online, free or not.
Even though something may be free, it still can end up sucking up your time, which is in fact the most precious commodity you have.
First off, I always make sure that the site I'm looking for has free quotes in real time.
This is especially important when I'm following a stock based on news-related items.
If you're trading off of quotes that are delayed by up to 20 minutes on average or more, then you can get yourself in big trouble in this volatile market.
Secondly, I need to make sure that the software I am going to use has all of the tools and indicators I know I will need for successful trading.
I've been using on line charting services for over 12 years, and unfortunately I've wasted a lot of time on services (not even free ones at that!) that promised certain abilities that they were never able to follow through on.
Lastly, the free stock charts service I use better have the ability to save my charts and templates so that I can take notes and come back to my charts later without having to start all over again at square one.
This last one is critical.
There are services out there where you might be able to make a great one-off chart, but how will you know what you were thinking later when it comes time to take action on that stock if you can't save it?