There are tons of sites available for stock traders and investors alike, but most sites come with a hefty price tag. This list is of the top 5 best investment websites available to you for free:

Yahoo Finance

Yahoo Finance is an outstanding resource for all information across the stock market. Right from their homepage you have access to stocks quotes, news, personal finance articles, mortgage rates, currency rates, and more. They have come a long a long way when it comes to improving their stock quotes as well with now new free charting which trumps the old setup, and also now streaming stock quotes. The charting is extremely similar to Google Finance, but more on Google later.

What makes Yahoo Finance number one as an investment tool is not the quotes or charting though, but the investment research available to you. I can get a wide variety of information on any publicly traded company including but not limited to: the latest headlines, key statistics (fundamental information), SEC filings, competitors, analyst opinions, reports, and estimates, insider rosters and transactions, income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, heck even company events. I have colleagues that literally make hundreds of thousands of dollars just off using yahoo finance as a free investment tool, its their one stop ticket to investment success and wealth.

Investopedia.com

When it comes to free stock education, investopedia.com has established themselves as the #1 player. They have thousands of articles on investing and the stock market, and their website brings in some million+ visitors a month. They were bought out by Forbes and now are simply, A Forbes Media Company and their quality still remains heavily in tact.

What I love about investopedia and sits them second highest on this list is their ability to have an explanation for literally anything Wall Street, money, or investing related. Beyond the articles, they have tutorials you can take that help you grasp key concepts, exam prep information if you are looking to get licensed, and most well known on the site is their free stock simulator which lets you trade stocks like you do real life. You can practice all the different stock order types and run a portfolio that tracks the everyday stock market.

StockCharts.com

Stockcharts.com is a fantastic resource for attaining stock charts on any given stock, which makes conducting technical analysis pretty darn easy. Stockcharts.com has another advantage which has helped this spread like wildfire, their charts can easily be displayed on other sites, blogs, etc. so you can use their charts for yourself and readers. Their charts allow you to display a wide variety of indicators: MACD. RSI. Stochastics, Moving Averages. Volume. and more on both a weekly and daily view.

All of the charts displayed here on this blog and sister blog stockchartstogo.com are all from stockcharts.com. They are rated the best technical analysis website for the readers choice awards of the magazine Technical Analysis & Stock Commodities. They were also Forbes best of the web in August 2003.

MarketWatch.com

What else can I say about marketwatch.com other than the site is simply amazing? Brought to us from Dow Jones, marketwatch.com is a huge resource of market news, commentary, and opinion. Right from their homepage you will be lead into a wide variety of stories that are big in todays Wall Street news. Used by all the major sites such as Yahoo Finance and Google Finance, marketwatch.com is highly reputable. What I also enjoy about marketwatch are their articles on personal finance along with their tools & research for conducting analysis on the stock market.

The bottom line on marketwatch.com is that they are a major player in their niche, and a huge resource for anything stock market or finance related. The site is very easy to navigate and can easily become on your top sites to utilize on a day to day basis for stock market related topics.

Google Finance

Google Finance comes in fifth on my list here only because it hasnt been around long enough yet to make itself a real player as a top free investment site. Furthermore, Google Finance is still only in Beta and is constantly testing out new features. They are very related to Yahoo Finance in that they will display the latest news articles from outside sites, give you detailed stock quotes, and even stock charts. But, what Google Finance lacks right now is personal commentary and articles from its own writers, alongside a better research center for fundamental analysis on specific securities.

Overall Google Finance is a player in the free resources list, but still has some growing to do as a Beta development site. I personally use Google Finance almost daily though as it is a great way for me to access news related articles on publicly traded companies.