Best note-taking for investors
The best note-taking apps for investors
The best note-taking app for investors depends on how connected you want your notes to be. For flexible databases and dashboards, Notion is the strongest generic tool, with a capable free tier. For local-first Markdown notes you own forever, with back-links and a graph view, Obsidian is free without limits. Both are excellent at notes and blind to markets: no tickers, no filings, no transcripts. Purpose-built consumer apps have mostly disappeared (Fey closed to sign-ups after joining Wealthsimple), so the connected option today is a research workspace. Brief Equity builds notes into the research itself: capture passages from transcripts and filings with back-links to the source, organize a library with briefs and a board, and see notes linked to tickers, watchlists, and funds in a knowledge graph.
By The Brief Equity Team · Published
The best pick for each use-case
Flexible databases, templates, and dashboards
Best pick: Notion
Databases with views and dependencies on a capable free tier, plus paid plans from $10/member/mo billed yearly (as of July 2026). You can build a research tracker any shape you like. The trade-off: Notion knows nothing about markets, so tickers, prices, and filings are all manual.
Local-first notes you own, with linking and a graph
Best pick: Obsidian
Free without limits, stores plain Markdown files on your machine, and its back-links, graph view, and thousands of plugins are ideal for a personal research vault. Sync is a paid add-on. Like Notion, it has no financial data awareness; everything market-related is DIY.
Notes connected to the research itself
Best pick: Brief Equity
Notes are part of the workspace: select a passage in a transcript or press release and capture it into a note with a citation and back-link, organize books, chapters, and briefs in a library and board, and see notes linked to tickers, watchlists, and funds in the knowledge graph.
Quick annotations inside a data terminal
Best pick: Koyfin
Koyfin lets you attach light notes to portfolio positions, which covers quick per-holding reminders inside a data platform. It is annotation rather than research writing: no long-form documents, library, or capture from source material.
At a glance: who wins each capability
| Capability | Best pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier for serious personal use | Obsidian | The core app is free without limits and needs no account; Notion's free plan is close behind for individuals. |
| Owning your files locally | Obsidian | Plain Markdown on disk beats every cloud tool for portability and longevity. |
| Structured databases and team collaboration | Notion | Databases, templates, guests, and team plans are its home turf. |
| Capture from filings and transcripts with back-links | Brief Equity | Select text in the source, save to a note, and keep a link back to the exact spot. Generic tools rely on copy-paste. |
| Notes linked to tickers, watchlists, and funds | Brief Equity | The knowledge graph connects notes to the market objects they discuss; generic tools need manual tagging. |
| Working fully offline | Obsidian | Local files mean no connection needed; cloud workspaces degrade offline. |
Every price and competitor detail here is checked against its source before we publish. Read our editorial policy for how we research and correct these pages.
Who Brief Equity is for
It is for you if…
- Investors who write down their thesis and want the notes near the research.
- Readers of transcripts and filings who capture quotes and figures as they go.
- Anyone maintaining a long-lived research library per company.
Look elsewhere if…
- Investors who never take notes; a tracker or data site serves them better.
- Teams needing a shared wiki with permissions; Notion is built for that.
- Markdown purists who want every file local and scriptable; Obsidian wins there.
Generic tools vs. connected notes
Notion and Obsidian are outstanding note tools, and plenty of investors run their research in them. The setup works until the notes need to know about the market: linking a paragraph to the filing it came from, seeing every note that touches a ticker, or keeping a quote anchored to its transcript. In a generic tool, all of that is manual convention and copy-paste.
A research workspace flips the direction: instead of bringing market context into a notes app, the notes sit where the reading happens. The question to ask is how much of your note-taking starts from a primary source. If the answer is most of it, the connected route saves the most friction.
The purpose-built field thinned out
Dedicated consumer apps for investing notes have mostly not survived. Fey, the best-known recent attempt, closed to new sign-ups after joining Wealthsimple. What remains is light annotation inside data platforms, like Koyfin's per-position notes, and research workspaces where notes are one part of a larger workflow.
That is worth knowing before you commit: choosing a purpose-built notes app in this category means betting on a thin field. The safer bets are a generic tool you control (Obsidian especially, since the files are yours) or a workspace whose notes feature is core to the product.
How Brief Equity treats notes
Notes in Brief Equity are built around capture. Reading a transcript or press release, you select a passage and save it into a book page as a callout with the source cited and back-linked, so every claim in your thesis can be traced to where it came from. Books, chapters, and pages organize the writing; briefs and a board track the pipeline of ideas.
The knowledge graph then connects the writing to everything else: which notes touch which tickers, which watchlists and funds relate to them. Your notes stop being a silo and become a layer over the research.
If you go the Notion or Obsidian route
Both work well with discipline: one page per company, a template for theses, manual links to filings. Obsidian's graph view even gives you a knowledge graph of your own making. The ceiling is the market side: prices, tickers, filings, and transcripts stay outside the vault, and keeping references current is on you.
Plenty of investors happily pay that cost for the control. If you would rather the connections come built in, that is the job a research workspace does.
Keep reading
Related in Brief Equity
Best equity research workspace
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Write your thesis next to the data
A notebook for every stock. Capture passages and financials from the source into linked notes, organized as a library, briefs, and a board.
ExploreKnowledge graph
See how it all connects
Your watchlists, tickers, briefs, notes, and the funds you follow, rendered as one force-directed graph.
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One feed for everything you track
One filterable stream of news, press releases, transcripts, filings, insider trades, and analyst ratings for every ticker you track.
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Brief Equity: a Koyfin alternative for focused equity research
A Koyfin alternative for equity-only investors. A research workspace with a feed, notes, a knowledge graph, your own models, and 13F ownership, rather than a multi-asset data terminal.
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How to take investment notes that stay tied to their evidence: a notebook per stock, passages and figures captured from the source with a back-link to where they came from.
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Is there a Notion or Obsidian for stock research?
Notion and Obsidian are flexible but general-purpose. What a purpose-built version adds: a notebook per stock and a graph that links notes to tickers, watchlists, and funds.
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How to organize your equity research
How to keep equity research in one connected place: a notebook per stock, briefs for themes, a board by stage, and a graph that links your notes, tickers, and funds.
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the best note-taking app for investors?
- For flexible databases, Notion. For local-first Markdown with linking and a graph, Obsidian. For notes connected to filings, transcripts, and tickers with capture and back-links, Brief Equity. The right pick depends on whether your notes belong beside the research or in a general-purpose tool.
- Is Notion good for stock research?
- Yes, as a flexible container: databases and templates make a fine research tracker, and the free tier is capable. It has no market awareness, so tickers, prices, filings, and transcripts are manual. It shines for structure and collaboration rather than connected research.
- Is Obsidian good for investors?
- If you value ownership and linking, very. Notes are plain Markdown files on your machine, back-links and the graph view map your thinking, and the core app is free without limits. Everything financial is DIY, and syncing across devices is a paid add-on.
- What happened to Fey?
- Fey, a well-known purpose-built research and notes app, joined Wealthsimple and closed to new sign-ups, with its technology absorbed into that platform. It is a useful signal about how thin the dedicated investing-notes category has become.
- Does Brief Equity replace Notion or Obsidian?
- For investing research, it can: capture from sources, a library with briefs and a board, and a knowledge graph over tickers and watchlists. For everything else you take notes on, a general-purpose tool remains the right home; some investors run both.
Brief Equity is built by investors, for investors. We weigh these tools the way we would for our own portfolios, with the trade-offs spelled out and the segments we lose left in. For research, not investment advice; market data is delayed. Competitor details reflect public information at the time of writing and can change. Verify current pricing and features on each provider’s site.