I heard from a couple of actors this week who took my advice and picked up a copy of Derek Foster’s book “The Lazy Investor”. Not only did they say they enjoyed the book, but they liked the feeling of being productive and learning something new while sitting around on set for 12 hours a day.

I have read a lot of financial books, but the reason I like Derek’s book so much is because it gave you homework. I have read many books that say, “spend less, save more, diversify, pay off your credit cards, bla bla bla…”, but once I finished the book, I didn’t have anything I could do right there, right then to take action and make more money!

Today, I’m giving you homework!

In How to pick a winner we talked about how to narrow down a list of companies that you might want to start investing in. But once we had narrowed that list down to 8 companies, in 4 different industries, we were still left with the task of picking the best company in each sector.

Today I am going to tell you how to set up a free online tool that I use every day to not only research companies, but track in real-time the value of the investments you already own.

The Globe and Mail’s financial website, Globe Investor, has a free tool called “My Watchlist”. Once you set it up and input the stocks you are interested in, you will be able to tell at a glance how a company is performing compared to a similar company in the same industry.

Watch these 3 videos. Set up your “Watchlist” and next time we will talk about what data to look at and what it means.

Video 1: Watchlist tips for new investors

Video 2: How to add securities to your Watchlist

Video 3: How to customize your Watchlist