How to find the best stocks to buy this month (without guessing)

Key details

• Your Goal: To find this month's top-performing stocks with confidence.
• The Problem: "Hot stock" lists are unreliable and picking stocks can feel like guesswork.
• The Solution: This guide teaches a repeatable process to find and assess high-potential stocks using powerful, free tools already built into your Questrade account.
• What You'll Learn:
  • How to use Questrade's all-in-one discovery engine (TipRanks, Seeking Alpha, and real-time data) to spot opportunities.
  • A simple framework for analyzing a stock's potential using both technical charts and fundamental data.
  • The real, mathematical reason why trading commissions at big banks can silently undermine your growth—and how to stop it.

Stop chasing "Hot Tips." Start building a system.

So often, the search for “the best stocks to buy now” feels like a treadmill. You see a headline, you catch a name in a frantic news report, and you start running. But you’re not moving forward; you’re just getting tired.

That kind of investing is built on hope, on guesswork. It’s reactive—and that’s the easiest thing for a trader to be.

But the worthwhile thing to be is strategic. Your real power, the kind that can truly elevate your portfolio, doesn’t come from a lucky guess. It comes from the quiet confidence of a proven process.

This article gives you that process. It's a system designed to shift your focus from chasing someone else's idea of a "hot stock" to building your own, from reacting to the market to anticipating its movements. This is your guide to finding opportunity, understanding the story behind a stock, and taking decisive action.

Your all-in-one discovery engine

You could spend your day scanning headlines, scrolling Reddit and social media, hoping a good trade idea emerges. Or, you can bring the opportunities directly to you inside the Questrade Edge trading platform.

These tools make that possible. Think of it as a three-step workflow, moving you from a broad idea to a specific, well-understood opportunity.

Step 1: Uncover High-Upside Ideas with TipRanks

This is your starting point for data-driven discovery. TipRanks scans the market and does the heavy lifting for you. Inside the Questrade platform, focus on two key features:

• Trending Stocks: See which stocks have been researched the most by other investors right here on the platform. It’s a powerful, real-time look at what’s capturing Main Street’s attention, not just Bay Street’s.
• The SmartScore: This is where data becomes insight. The SmartScore distills 8 different factors—from analyst ratings and news sentiment to insider trading activity—into a single, easy-to-understand score from 1 to 10. It’s a powerful first filter to identify stocks that have strong fundamentals and positive market sentiment.

Step 2: Understand the story with Seeking Alpha

A high score is a great start, but the next question is always, "why?" Why is this stock trending? What's the narrative driving the numbers?

The integrated Seeking Alpha newsfeed is where you find your answer. With a single click from a stock's page, you’ll see a stream of the latest news and analysis. Is the stock gaining momentum because of a blockbuster earnings report? A new product launch? An industry-wide shift? Context is what turns a stock ticker into an investment thesis.

Step 3: Act with precision using Real-Time Market Data

Once you have your idea and understand the story, it’s time to act. This is where speed and accuracy are everything. Most free online trading data is delayed by 15 or 20 minutes.

Using delayed data is like trying to navigate a destination using landmarks from a 15-minute-old photograph. With Questrade's free, real-time data for all customers, you see the market *as it is*, right now. It means the price you see is the price you can get. It's the difference between chasing the market and being a part of it.

Ready to power up your own discovery engine? Open a Questrade account to get the tools to find your next trade.

From idea to investment: Your 2-Point Inspection

Now that you've used the discovery engine to find a promising stock, it's time for a quick but crucial analysis. We’ll cover the two core pillars of research: the chart's story and the company's story.

The Chart's Story (Technical Analysis)

A stock's chart tells the story of its momentum. You don’t need to be a master technician to get a sense of its direction, though. For a deeper dive, you can explore this introduction to Technical Analysis, but start with the basics:

• The Trend: Is the stock in an upward trend (a series of higher highs and higher lows)? A downward trend? Or is it moving sideways? This gives you a general sense of its current path.
• Support and Resistance: Think of these as invisible floors and ceilings. Support is a price level where a stock has historically stopped falling, while resistance is a level where it has struggled to break through.

The Company's Story (Fundamental Analysis)

If the chart is the momentum, the fundamentals are the engine fuelling that pace. A company's fundamentals tell you about its financial health and value. You can learn more with this introduction to Fundamental Analysis. You can find this data right in the platform's quote details section. Look for key metrics like:

• Revenue and Earnings: Is the company growing its sales and profits?
• Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio: This helps you understand how the stock is valued relative to its earnings.

The unseen drag: How bank trading fees erode your momentum

Imagine you’re building a skyscraper. Every single beam and rivet must be perfect to ensure it soars. Now, what if every time you added a new floor, someone shaved a small piece off the foundation?

That’s what trading commissions do. They silently erode the very base of your portfolio's potential—and your chance at reaching your goals.

Let's make it real. Say you make 10 stock trades a month. At a major Canadian bank charging a typical $9.95 per trade, that's $99.50 a month, or nearly $1,200 a year, that vanishes from your account. It's money that is gone before your investments even have a chance to grow.

With Questrade, buying stocks is commission-free, so that $1,200 stays invested, working for you. Over 10 years, that isn't just $12,000 you've saved—it's thousands more in potential growth you've captured because your foundation is stronger.

Make every trade more valuable. See how much more of your money you can put to work with commission-free stock buying.

You have the system. Now, the next move is yours.

The search for the "best" stocks is over, because you now have something far more valuable: a system to find them.

You have a process to uncover ideas with data, understand their stories, and act with precision. You have a framework to analyze them. And you have a foundation built on keeping more of your own money.

The feeling of a truly great trade isn't the thrill of a lucky guess—it’s the confidence of knowing you did the work. The next move is yours.