Researching an investment often begins with being swamped with information. While there’s heaps of analysis and tools to help you find the best fit knowing how to use them, and where to find them, is a mission in and of itself.
Here, we’re going to run through a few of the tools AJ Bell has available to investors and how to get them working for you.
Investment screeners
Whether you plan to invest in stocks, funds, ETFs or investment trusts, you can use our screener tool to narrow down the search. Depending on what investment you’re searching for, you can click on the hyperlinks above to take you to the screening page.
Once you’ve arrived there, you can whittle down what you’d like to look at, the same way you would when buying a new blouse. For example, if you want to invest in a fund focussed on technology, you can click on the sector tab, tick technology and technology innovation, and then hit search to see the funds offered in that sector.
If you want to dig down deeper, you can go into the ‘advanced filters’ section, which holds topics like geographical region, income or accumulating, or the percentage of yield you are aiming for. There are quite a few filter options, and you don’t need to use them all. You can start with the ones you are familiar with, and if you’re concerned that you don’t know what a filter may be for, there’s often an explanation of the term when you click down on ‘any’.
Understanding reports
Once you click on a specific fund, you’ll see the price of a unit, next to the change in price for that day. For many investors, the first data to check for a fund will be its ongoing charge and the performance. The ongoing charge can be found near the top of the page. Typically, a fund that’s tracking an index would have a fund charge between about 0.1% and 0.5%. For actively managed funds, this might be a bit higher.
To check performance, you can either have a look at the graph on the page, under ‘Growth of 10k’, or you can look at the table under ‘Performance’. You can change the range of time for the performance by selecting different options at the top. Typically, looking at a longer time frame can give a better overall idea of how a fund operates. Under performance, you will also see a heading of ‘category’. This is a sector average, so it allows you to see if the fund is outperforming or underperforming compared to other similar funds. As nice as it is to see how an investment has done in the past, remember that this doesn’t guarantee its performance in the future.
This page will also have a link to the Key Investor Information Document (KIID) on it, which is created by the fund. Since these aren’t created by AJ Bell, but the individual fund providers, they will all look a little different. But these documents will let you read from the horse’s mouth what the objective and strategy of a fund is, the amount of risk it plans to take, and more.
If you’re investing in a share, you can see the current price, as well as its performance over time and the dividend yield. It will also give a short summary of the business, to help get an idea of what company you’d be investing in.
Choosing from favourite funds
Even with the help of the screener, you might be left with quite a few options. Here, our Favourite funds list could come into play. The Favourite funds list is a group of funds that has been curated by our investment team. It’s updated each month to remove any funds that the team feels should no longer be featured, such as after a change in manager or an extended period of poor performance, or to add funds that have created a strong track record.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that these funds will outperform others in the future, but some may find comfort in seeing a group that have impressed the experts. The funds listed on the Favourite funds list will also have their own AJ Bell report, which includes a description for how the fund invests, its performance history, fees, and information about what the fund invests in and where.
Figure out how much you can save
If you’re trying to determine whether you’re on track with your savings, using one of AJ Bell’s calculators might help. The ISA calculator can help you determine how much your ISA could be worth in a number of years depending on how much you invest and the expected growth. You can toggle the figures around to see what amount is reasonable for you to achieve the goal you want.
The pension calculator will also provide you with an estimate of how much you could retire with, based on the years to retirement, your annual salary, you and your employer’s contributions, and its current value. Below the calculator, you can click the ‘how we calculate this’ button to get a more in-depth view of how the figures are established. Further down, you’ll also see a few estimates of how much you made need in retirement. Remember, if you’re still relatively far out, these numbers could shift dramatically due to inflation. But it still provides a strong starting point.
Navigating your account
All of the tools above do not require you to log in to your account, but once you do, you’ll also be able to do some analysis of your own portfolio. You can watch the video below as a starting point to navigating your portal.
Within your portal, you will be able to look at the different accounts you hold individually, and their performance over time. You can do this by selecting the graph icon on each account, which will show you how the value has changed.
If you want to dive into the holdings of your accounts, this graph icon will take you to your ‘portfolio x-ray'. Here, you’ll be able to get a breakdown of the investments you hold, and how they work together. This includes elements like how your assets are spread across different countries, as well as sectors. For sectors, you’ll also be able to see if your investments are in areas that are considered more cyclical, sensitive, or defensive. Cyclical industries are more likely to go through periods of strong performance followed by lower performance, where sensitive can be more erratic. Defensive sectors refer to those that are typically low and slow growers.
You can also see a graph here that shows how your portfolio has performed relative to a benchmark. Remember, the biggest factor here is the long term, so if just the last quarter hasn’t been up to scratch with the benchmark, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to panic.
There’s quite a few other metrics in your x-ray as well, but you may not need (or want) to use all of them. Although having access to a lot of tools is nice, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that you are achieving your investment goals. As you explore different tools, remember to keep the big picture in mind.
Hannah Williford: Content Writer
Hannah joined AJ Bell in 2025 as an investment writer. She was previously a journalist at Portfolio Adviser Magazine, reporting on multi-asset, fixed income and equity funds, as well as macroeconomic impacts and regulatory changes...
