These products are useful for investment research, but can motivate retail investors to trade more frequently than they should. Single stock investments are exceptionally risky and almost always underperform diversified ETFs, and day trading is virtually guaranteed to lose money.
Seeking Alpha (Free)
Seeking Alpha ("SA") is a financial analysis and stock market research platform that offers a range of investment insights, including stock analysis, financial news, and other tools for investors. It is primarily known for aggregating content from a large community of investors, analysts, and financial writers who share their perspectives and analysis on various investment opportunities and market trends.
Analysis
Simply put, SA is a fantastic starting point for new ideas, or for educating yourself on individual sectors or companies. There is no shortage of equity research and trading platforms that offer basic earnings information, or technical indicators, or ratings scores on profitability/momentum, etc. But very few other services have actual, thoughtful analysis explaining what the company does, how it operates, what its major risks and opportunities are, etc.
A few examples:
- Birkenstock's Valuation Conundrum: Lofty Market Expectations Vs. Real Growth Hurdles
- Hillman Solutions: Buoyant In A Bad Housing Market
- Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company: At Bargain Levels Now With Multiple Upside Catalysts
The analysts themselves come from a broad background. Some are anonymous armchair quarterbacks, others are large firm CIOs and lifetime professionals. The SA platform makes it very simple to track and follow particular analysts, industries, or investment styles (e.g., value vs growth opportunities).
The platform makes transparency a priority. Each article links to other articles that the same author has written about the same security, as well as their historical performance. See below:
The size and scope of information and analysis on Seeking Alpha is simply unparalleled. It's the best place to start when trying to learn more about new industries, business models, or companies - and is particularly valuable for learning about smaller firms that receive less analyst press from major outlets.
Most articles are available after creating a free account, but there is a limit on the number of free articles that you can access per month.
Seeking Alpha Premium
Unlimited Analyst Research
Seeking Alpha's Premium subscription is a supercharged version of the basic package. The most obvious difference is the article restriction is removed, and you can access every article on the site. Whether or not this is "worth" the cost is up to every individual, but as mentioned above, Seeking Alpha just has unparalleled breadth of analyst coverage and is a worthy compliment (though, not nearly a substitute) to a more traditional financial media source like Bloomberg or The Wall Street Journal.
Additionally, SA Premium gives access to stock news (unbiased, factual updates separate from editorial analyst coverage), as well as detailed coverage of earnings calls, including call transcripts, associated decks and investor materials, call recordings, press releases, etc. While this is public information, it can be incredible burdensome to track down individually (again, especially for smaller firms with less coverage from typical outlets), and having it in a single place for all securities can be a game changer.
Stock Ratings, Details, & Charts
SA Premium members can also access detailed stock info and charting tools. These are generally pretty good and certainly good enough for most use cases, but definitely not better than dedicated providers in this space (e.g., Koyfin, Finviz).
What differentiates Seeking Alpha here is two things. First, they are able to integrate aggregated analyst ratings and sentiment data into the overall security overview, presented alongside Wall Street analyst ratings.
The second differentiating factor is the proprietary Seeking Alpha Quant rating, an algorithmic rating model they publish and update daily for nearly every listed stock. You can read more about the Quant model here). Each stock is scored individually on Valuation, Growth, Profitability, Momentum, and (earnings) Revisions, as well as an aggregated overall rating. Historical ratings are additionally shown over any time horizon.
Stock Screening
Seeking Alpha's stock screener capabilities are fine. They offer the same functionality you'll find at most brokerage or research platforms. You can screen stocks based on financial metrics (earnings, revenue growth, P/E, ROE, EPS, dividend yield, dividend growth, etc), market data (volume, market cap, etc), industry/sector, etc. The examples given in parentheticals there are extremely limited - there is a very robust set of screening tools available.
What sets Seeking Alpha apart are the same two items mentioned above - their Quant ratings and aggregate SA Analyst ratings. By incorporating the SA Analyst ratings into stock screening tools, you're able to capture aggregate qualitative data from SA's archive of analyst research and discussion.
Summary
Seeking Alpha Premium is a worthwhile subscription just for the unlimited articles. The breadth of topics and coverage on Seeking Alpha is just head and shoulders broader than any other single resource. Seeking Alpha is no Bloomberg, the authors of SA articles are not necessarily vetted, and while most are high quality, some are occasionally duds pushing self-serving content. This may increase over time as generative AI lowers the cost of creating such content, but today it doesn't appear to be a problem. The additional features above and beyond the articles, such as SA's Quant ratings and screening tools, make SA Premium quite easy to recommend.
You can sign up for a free 7-day trial using this link, as well as receive $50 off the regular subscription price.