It is no exaggeration to say that all you need to do fundamental analysis is access to company reports and a good financial newspaper. Likewise all you need to do technical analysis is a chart of the stock price and volume. The rest is purely up to how well people are able to follow that amount of data and dig up other news on the stocks that determines how you will do as an investor or trader.

This hasn't stopped dozens of newsletters springing up giving advice for a subscription fee (sometimes a really big one!). If you ask in aus.invest what newsletters they recommend, you will get a few names, but also probably be told that they are a waste of money and you would do better learning to analyse stocks yourself rather than leeching off some guru offering paid advice.

A newsletter is really for those people who are too lazy to do their own research, but interested enough in their own financial matters to do their own buying and selling, rather than go through a managed fund. The quality of newsletters varies widely, from solid educational advice through to good old fashioned hot tip spouting, opulence flaunting, personality cult marketing, late night TV infomercial gurus. It is hard to get a clear idea as to which newsletters are any good at first, so if you really absolutely refuse to do your own research you can ask aus.invest for advice.

Good newsletters will probably be mentioned by one or two regulars. Mediocre newsletters probably won't be mentioned much at all, and the really bad ones will be immediately given the highest praise by several anonymous posters with free webmail accounts and all sharing the same signature file, followed by a barrage of well deserved scorn and derision by the rest. I think the group is a pretty good barometer for this sort of thing.

There are some good websites that will make things very easy for you though, these are free of charge sites, but nonetheless excellent, and used by many aus.invest readers. You will not find stock recommendations on them, just data, for you to analyse yourself with all those techniques you learned while studying every stock investment book you could find for as long as it takes until you understand it.

Some useful sights to obtain data are the Yahoo finance site and Float.com.au.  Fundamental data for specific companies can be obtained at those company's websites and data from Aspect Huntley (now owned by Morningstar) is available for free (though not in its most comprehensive form) via most online stock brokers, like Commsec and Etrade.

There are also a number of commercial sites who provide data for a price.  While most people are able to manage quite happily with free data, commercial providers may offer more comprehensive data in a more timely fashion, with fewer errors and greater access to historical or live information.  Whether you need these depends on what type of investor you are.