Conduct Better Stock Research With Perplexity Finance’s Free Features

Open Comet and start a new tab. Click Finance.

That opens the Perplexity Finance dashboard. The recording framed it as the AI-era version of Yahoo Finance: market overview, top movers, stock charts, watchlists, news, earnings, and screeners, with Perplexity sitting beside the data.

Start with the dashboard instead of a blank chat. The top navigation gives you the main areas to click through: US Markets, Crypto, Earnings, Predictions, Screener, Politicians, Watchlist, Portfolio, and App Gallery.

On the market overview, use the page to answer the first basic questions:

• What is moving today?
• Which sectors are up or down?
• Are there earnings events worth checking?
• Are prediction markets or macro signals relevant?
• Which stocks deserve a second look?

You can also click Earnings to see an earnings calendar. This is useful when you want to know which companies are reporting, what quarter the call belongs to, and whether there are quick bullet summaries available before you open an individual stock page.

The dashboard is cleaner than a lot of finance sites because it is less cluttered with ads and SEO-style market noise. Use it as the surface for the research, then use Perplexity to explain what you are seeing.

Next, click Screener. This is one of the more useful free features because you can describe the kind of stock you are looking for in plain English.

For example:

Find energy stocks with low PE ratios that recently outperformed earnings expectations.

The transcript showed an important caveat here: strict screener prompts can fail or return an error. When that happens, loosen the filter and try again.

Use a broader version:

Find energy stocks with low PE ratios.

Perplexity can return a table with tickers and metrics, then you can click into a company from there.

Pro tip: Screeners are for finding candidates, not choosing winners. Use them to build a shortlist, then inspect each company before trusting the result.

Once you have a few names, ask Perplexity to explain why those companies appeared:

I used this stock screener and got these companies:

[TICKERS]

Explain:
- what they have in common
- why they might have appeared in this screen
- which one looks most different from the others
- what I should check before doing deeper research

Do not make a buy recommendation.

That keeps the workflow in research mode. You are asking Perplexity to organize the next questions, not make the decision for you.

Open one stock page from the screener or search for a ticker directly.

The chart is useful for orientation, but the transcript called out a real limitation: the chart can feel difficult to control, especially when zooming or switching display types. Do not over-invest in the chart if it slows you down. Move through the page and inspect the sections that explain the company.

On the stock page, click through the page tabs in order: Overview, Financials, Earnings, Holders, Predictions, Historical Data, and Analysis. Start with the at-a-glance numbers:

• Market cap
• PE ratio
• Recent price movement
• Notable timeline events
• Related stories
• Bull case and bear case

The timeline is useful because it can connect price moves to earnings, macro context, company statements, or other recent events. The related stories section is also useful because Perplexity tends to screen out some of the thin "stock is up today" articles and surface stories that are more tied to company operations.

Then open Financials. Perplexity turns company filings into cleaner tables across recent years or quarters. Use this to inspect revenue, EPS, margins, or other core metrics before you ask for interpretation.

Open Earnings next. This can show whether the company beat or missed revenue or EPS, along with highlights from the call transcript.

Pro tip: Be careful with earnings data, especially for smaller companies or non-US tickers. The transcript noted that some values can look strange because data is missing, denominated differently, or incomplete. Verify important figures before using them.

Some of the most useful research sections are easy to miss.

The Holders tab is one of the strongest examples. Click Holders, then choose Politicians to see politician trading disclosures for that stock.

This view is especially useful if you are researching sectors affected by government spending or regulation, such as defense, energy, aviation, or infrastructure. The same Holders page also lets you switch between Institutional, Insiders, and Politicians.

The key is to understand the limitation. Congressional disclosures often report ranges, not exact trade amounts. Perplexity does a good job showing those ranges, but you still need to treat them as directional information.

Also inspect Analysis. This can show analyst price targets, changes to targets, and the firms behind those calls. The transcript was careful here: analyst targets are not automatically useful, and some lists can be stale. The value is that Perplexity shows the target, the firm, and the context without turning it into a clickbait headline.

For a quick first pass, the highest-signal sections are:

• Recent price movement timeline.
• Related stories and latest developments.
• Bull case versus bear case.
• Earnings.
• Holders, especially politician trades when relevant.
• Analyst price targets.

That gives you enough context to ask better follow-up questions.

Do not start by asking:

Should I buy this stock?

That is the wrong job for this tool. Use Perplexity to understand what deserves attention, which sources support the explanation, and what you should inspect next.

Use this prompt:

I am researching [TICKER] as a beginner-friendly first pass.

Do not tell me whether to buy or sell it.

Help me understand:
- what the company does
- what has changed recently
- the main reasons investors are optimistic
- the main risks investors are worried about
- which numbers or events I should inspect next

Use current sources where possible and separate facts from interpretation.

For a current move, use:

Explain the stock move today in plain English.

What are the most likely drivers, and which sources support each one?

Perplexity will usually cite sources at the end of factual claims. Click them.

This is not optional for timely stock research. In the recording, Perplexity cited a source from April when the prompt asked about today's stock movement. Some sources were current, but some were stale. That is exactly why you need to inspect the citations before trusting the answer.

Use this follow-up when you want a cleaner next-step checklist:

What are the three biggest questions I should answer before I spend more time researching this company?

For each question, tell me:
- why it matters
- which section of Perplexity Finance I should inspect
- which source type I should verify outside Perplexity

The goal is not to get a trade recommendation. The goal is to leave with a focused research plan.

One frustrating behavior from the recording: asking a research question from the stock page can open a new chat thread and pull you away from the finance screen.

Comet's assistant is often better for this workflow because it can keep the dashboard open in the browser while answering in the side panel.

Use it for questions like:

Find me stocks benefiting from macro oil trends.

Or:

Use my browser to find SEC filings from [COMPANY].

When Comet asks for permission to use the browser, review what it is doing before approving. This is especially useful for SEC.gov and other government websites that are painful to search manually.

You can also use the assistant beyond public stocks. The same browser-control pattern works for government contracting research, local business research, company filings, and other public databases.

Pro tip: Keep expensive agentic research for tasks that justify it. The transcript noted that Perplexity Computer can burn credits quickly, so normal stock research is usually better handled in chat, Finance, or the Comet assistant first.

Perplexity Finance also lets you follow a stock. Click Follow on a stock page to add it to a watchlist.

The watchlist is useful because it rolls up notable price movement and relevant news across the companies you care about. It also creates comparison graphs, which can make it easier to see how your watched stocks are moving relative to each other.

There is a limitation here too. In the recording, asking Perplexity for the best-performing stock on the watchlist did not work cleanly. The dashboard understood the watchlist visually, but the AI answer did not seem to know the same list. Treat the watchlist as a dashboard feature first, then verify what the assistant can actually access.

You can also set price targets for a stock. Perplexity can notify you in the app, by email, or by text, depending on your setup. It can also accept follow-up instructions for what to do after a target is triggered.

If you want to connect actual portfolio data, Perplexity Finance supports brokerage and bank connections through Plaid. This can bring portfolio analysis into the same dashboard.

Only do this if you are comfortable with the permissions. Read the fine print, verify the connection flow, and use view-only access where possible.