It's all how you a RULE #1 investor looks at it. If you use the tools I use, you'll spend about $400 a year for the data. With $10,000 you'll track about 5 stocks but invest in only one at a time. Two max. Probably about 6 in and 6 out trades. About $100 in commissions. Total costs of about $500 a year. Thats 5% right off the top. That means you have to make 5% to break even. That's a pretty significant overhead. That's too much. That's one way to look at it.
But you have to choose how to spend your time. If you use free data your time factor for investing properly goes way up. Maybe on the order of this: instead of spending half an hour a week, you could easily spend 5 hours a week. 5 hours a week at 2 bucks an hour is $10 times 50 weeks: $500. So one way of looking at the cost of data is this: Is it worth $2 an hour to save the time and spend it doing something else? Heck, a part time job at $20 an hour pays your research costs in only 25 hours a year. So you do something else to earn the cost of the data and do not include it in your costs of investing until your portfolio can handle the load by itself.
Another way to see this is that good tools could make a 5% a year difference. Look at it like that and you don't need to get a part time job. Pro tools pay for themselves compared to not doing this and watching your 401(k) go nowhere.
Here's the point, gang. You find a way. All of the above ways are valid. I've done them all. You can, too.
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