If you’ve been investing for a while, you already know the importance of good stock research. And if you’re a new or intermediate investor, it’s one of the best tools you can have. A good stock research website or service can provide you with valuable insight on the companies you may want to invest in, as well as provide lists of potential companies to invest in.
While there are free newsletters, the best ones are paid services and range between $99 and $2,995 per year. Well worth it if it helps you get better returns on your investments.
To help you decide on the best stock research website for you, we’ve compiled this list of what we believe to be seven of the very best.
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What We Look For in Stock Research Websites
Since stock research will be critical to your success as an investor, you’ll need to evaluate services objectively. We use the following criteria in analyzing the services we’ve included on our list:
- Cost: We’re starting here because prices for stock research services can range from a few dollars per month to several hundred dollars. You want to make sure the amount you’re paying for the service is in line with the size of your portfolio.
- Market insight: Investing is about more than just the companies or funds you may be investing in. Since each company or fund is influenced by the general market or its particular industry sector, you’ll need a solid and regular perspective on what’s happening in that market.
- Investment tools: Tools like screeners and watch lists are invaluable, no matter your investment experience level. They’ll help you stay on top of your current investments, as well as begin homing in on new ones as they arise.
- Regular updates: When you use any investment resource, one of the most important features you’re paying for is information. News and information change quickly in the investment realm, and you’ll need to know what’s going on with your investments as it happens.
- Multiple plans: Some research services offer free plans, perfect for new and small investors. But as you become more advanced in your investing activities, you’ll likely want to trade up to a more comprehensive plan. The service that offers several plan levels will give you that opportunity. This is important because once you become comfortable with a service, even a free one, you will likely want to continue with the same organization to maintain continuity.
We believe the services listed below incorporate all the best features of the above criteria.
1. Morningstar Investor
Morningstar is one of the best-regarded financial news and information sources in the financial industry. They have been around since 1984 and even engage in asset management. They provide investment ratings and valuations and offer some of the most advanced investment screeners in the industry.
At the core, Morningstar uses a star rating system to give you a quick summary of what they think of various stocks and funds. They analyze them in greater detail but they’re known for that quick snapshot. The system is simple – one star is the lowest rating and five stars is the highest and reserved for the most recommended investments.
The free version will give you access to analyst reports, top investment picks, and limited access to tools. You also only get star ratings for funds but must upgrade to see them for individual companies.
But the top-of-the-line plan is Morningstar Investor. It comes with all the features and tools of the free version and adds all Morningstar analysis, screeners and access to the company’s article archive. You can also use the Portfolio Manager to track your individual investments, create watch lists, and evaluate your strategy.
As you poke around the Morningstar site, you will see blue locks around all the areas that require Morningstar Investor.
Morningstar Investor is normally $249 a year but you can get a discount if you use the Wallethacks Morningstar Investor Discount Promotion Code. (it’s integrated in every link on the site, so click through and you’ll get the discount code added in)
The subscription comes with a 7-day free trial to allow you to test drive the product to see if it will be the right choice for you.
For a limited time, Morningstar Investor is discounted by $50!
It comes with a 7-day free trial so you can lock in your savings, try the service, and cancel if you don’t think it’s for you.
Check out our full review of Morningstar Investor
Learn more about Morningstar Investor
2. Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha was founded in 2004 and is a well-respected source for investment professionals and amateurs alike. If you read a lot of financial news, there’s a good chance you read something published on Seeking Alpha by one of their numerous contributors.
What you may not know is that Seeking Alpha also has a Seeking Alpha Premium service that gives you an even greater level of financial information. Anyone who registers an account can get the Basic plan, which is free, and that lets you follow authors, receive newsletters, and even read and post your own blogs. You get limited access to Quant Ratings and review financial statements for the last five years. The Basic plan offers you a lot of what you expect – but the powerful tools come when you upgrade.
With Premium ($19.99 a month when paid annually), you get all the features of the Basic plan plus access to unlimited Stock Quant Ratings, ability to listen to earnings and conference call recordings, a powerful screening tool, and get alerts on upgrades and downgrades of stocks in your portfolio. There is a 14 day trial.
With Pro ($199.99 a month when paid annually), you get everything mentioned above, plus PRO content and newsletters, a short ideas portal, VIP service, plus an idea screener and filter. It’s pricey but again there is a 14 day trial for this and you can see if it’s a right fit for you.
Our full review of Seeking Alpha goes into greater detail.
💵 Seeking Alpha Premium Spring Sale – 25% Off
Seeking Alpha offers a 7-day free trial for Seeking Alpha Premium so you can see whether it’s right for you. If it is, the regular price is $239 for an entire year and now you can get 25% off – making it just $179 for the year.
If you don’t like it, you can always downgrade to the Basic plan and still use all the portfolios, screeners, and research you’ve done without paying the premium fee.
The trial is a great way to test-drive Seeking Alpha Premium.
👉 Get the Seeking Alpha Premium 7-Day Free Trial
(Offer expires April 3rd, 2024)
Learn more about Seeking Alpha
3. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a stock research service, but it’s also one of the industry’s most popular stock picking services. Founded by two brothers in 1993, it’s a newsletter service with more than 700,000 subscribers. They make direct stock recommendations and are documented to have a highly successful track record of doing so. If you subscribe to their service, you’ll receive new stock recommendations each month.
As a subscriber, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Best Buys Now feature, with weekly updates of what they believe to be the 10 best recommendations to buy now. For new investors, they offer their Starter Stocks list, including 10 stocks they recommend for beginners.
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor comes with a stock screener, performance tracking, video interviews with the Motley Fool team, and exclusive special reports on up-and-coming investments. You’ll have access to The Motley Fool community, including discussion boards and swapping investment strategies.
You can sign up for The Motley Fool Stock Advisor for $99 for the first year, which is half of the regular subscription price. It also includes a 30-day free trial so that you can test drive the service.
*Billed annually. Introductory price for the first year for new members only. First year bills at $99 and renews at $199.
*Billed annually. Introductory price for the first year for new members only. First year bills at $99 and renews at $199.
Check out our full review of The Motley Fool Stock Advisor
Learn more about The Motley Fool Stock Advisor
4. Zacks Investment Research
Zacks Investment Research is offered by one of the most respected financial news sources on Wall Street. The service has more than 800,000 subscribers.
Zacks uses a rating system to evaluate its recommendations, making the service incredibly user-friendly. There are five in all:
- Strong Buy
- Buy
- Hold
- Sell
- Strong Sell
Notice that the last two ratings are sell recommendations. This is important because while many services tell you when to buy, they’re not always clear when to sell. Zacks will help you at both ends of your investment transactions.
They also offer their Expected Surprise Prediction or ESP. It uses a weighted prediction of how likely a company will beat its consensus earnings estimate each quarter. Companies that routinely beat expectations have a history of outperforming the general market. This will give you a leg up on which companies are likely to have positive earnings surprises.
Zacks offers three subscription plans Premium, Investor Collection, and Ultimate.
Premium:
- Daily updates of the Zacks Rank
- Full access to the Zacks #1 Rank List
- Equity Research Reports
- Premium screeners
- Focus List portfolio of 50 longer-term stock
- Monthly subscription fee: $249 per year that starts with 30-day access for $1
Investor Collection:
- Everything in the Premium Plan
- A bundle of Zacks’ top subscription services for long-term investors, including Zacks Premium
- Real-time buy and sell signals
- The exclusive Stocks Under $10
- Strategy and access to all premium research tools and reports
- Monthly subscription fee: $59 per month (or $495 per year) that starts with 30-day access for $1
Ultimate:
- Everything in the Investor Collection
- Black Box Trader
- Healthcare, Blockchain, and Technology Innovations
- Inside Trader
- Zacks Top 10 stocks
- Short Sell List
- Stocks Under $10
- Value Investor
- Monthly subscription fee: $299 per month (or $2,995 per year) that starts with 30-day access for $1
Learn more about Zacks Investment Research
5. Benzinga Pro
Benzinga Pro is a premium stock research program offered by Benzinga, one of the most respected names in the investment community. It’s designed for active traders and provides plenty of tools to help you find investment opportunities. It does this by providing real-time investment news, helping you to identify both short-term trades and long-term investments.
Benzinga is one of the industry’s top investment news and information services and is read by 25 million people each month. Benzinga Pro offers three different plan levels, so you can choose the one that will work best for you.
The three plans are as follows, including the features offered by each, as well as the monthly subscription fee:
Basic:
- NASDAQ basic delayed quotes
- Watch list Alerts
- Details Tool with key stock alerts
- Movers
- News feed access
- Calendar suite
- Monthly subscription fee: $99, or $79 per month if you pay annually (after two-week free trial)
Essential:
- All the features of the Basic Plan
- NASDAQ Basic Real-time Quotes
- Audio Squawk
- Newsdesk Chat
- Sentiment Indicators
- Signals (there is an additional fee for options activity)
- Monthly subscription fee: $177, or $117 per month if you pay annually (after two-week free trial)
Annual Options Mentorship:
- Designed specifically for options traders
- Includes all the features of the Basic and Essential Plans
- Trading mentorship and education from leading trader, Nic Chahaine
- Access to the Options Inner Circle Chat Room, led by Nic Chahaine
- Six high-conviction options trades per month, including both entry and stock information, as well as fundamental and technical analysis
- Access to exclusive webinar sessions for ongoing options education
- Regular Market Overview to match Nic Chahaine’s Winning Trading Strategy
- Monthly subscription fee: $177, or $117 per month if you pay annually (after two-week free trial)
Check out our full review of Benzinga Pro
Benzinga is offering a big 25% off discount on their Benzinga Pro subscription.
It’s normally $49 a month but for a limited time they’re dropping it to just $37 a month.
6. Stock Rover
Stock Rover is on the more affordable end of the price range for comprehensive stock research services. And though they offer premium plans, their free version will be helpful to many investors.
It includes comprehensive information on more than 8,500 North American stocks and 4,000 ETFs, and 40,000 mutual funds. It also offers portfolio management, brokerage integration, a portfolio dashboard with detailed portfolio performance information, powerful and flexible charting capabilities, and much more.
And if that’s not enough, Stock Rover offers three premium plans:
Essentials:
- 8,500 North American stocks, 4,000 ETFs, and 40,000 funds
- More than 275+ financial metrics
- 5 years of detailed financial history
- Powerful investment comparison
- Customizable views and columns
- Flexible stock screening
- Comprehensive charting capabilities
- Portfolio management
- Brokerage integration
- Watch list tracking
- Daily analyst ratings and rankings
- Real-time text and email alerting
- The Stock Rover Investment Library
- Monthly subscription fee: $7.99 per month, or $79.99 for one year, or $139.99 for two years
Premium:
- All features of the Essentials Plan
- More than 375+ metrics
- 10 years of detailed financial history
- Data export
- Powerful stock and ETF screening
- Ranked screening
- Over 100 charts of financial metrics
- Multiple metrics charting
- Advanced alerting
- Detailed portfolio analytics
- Future dividend income projections
- Correlation analysis
- Trade planning and rebalancing tools
- Monthly subscription fee: $17.99 per month, or $179.99 for one year, or $319.99 for two years
Premium Plus:
- More than 700+ metrics, including custom metrics
- Equation screening
- Historical data screening
- Over 180 ETF screening metrics
- Stock ratings
- Stock fair value and margin of safety
- Current and historical stock scoring
- Investor warnings
- Ratio charts
- Much higher data limits
- Top priority email support
- Monthly subscription fee: $27.99 per month, or $279.99 for one year, or $479.99 for two years
Check out our full review of Stock Rover
7. Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo! Finance may be the go-to stock research service for new and intermediate investors. That’s not only because the service is offered free, but it’s also widely used by many millions of investors. They even include news and information from many of the other stock research services included on this list.
You can use the service free and get the benefit of real-time news and stock quotes, multiple linked brokers for portfolio tracking, interactive charts for performance monitoring, and unlimited custom portfolios and watch lists. It also offers numerous screeners, including equity, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETF), futures, and index screeners.
But if you’re looking for something more, they offer their premium Lite and Essential plans:
Lite:
- Real-time news and stock quotes
- Multiple linked brokers for portfolio tracking
- Interactive charts for performance monitoring
- Unlimited custom portfolios and watch lists
- Daily trade ideas based on your interests
- Fair value analysis for stocks
- Advanced portfolio performance analysis tools
- Community Insights
- Monthly educational webinars with Q&A
- Enhanced alerts
- Live chat support on desktop
- Monthly subscription fee: $25 per month, but $250 if you pay annually (includes a 14-day free trial)
Essential:
- All features of the Lite Plan
- Research reports from Morningstar and Argus
- Enhanced charting with auto pattern recognition
- Unique company data
- Market Digest newsletter
- Historical financials and statistics with CSV export
- Monthly subscription fee: $35 per month, but $350 if you pay annually (includes a 14-day free trial)
Learn more about Yahoo Finance
Final Thoughts on the Best Stock Research Websites
No matter what level you’re at as an investor – new, intermediate, or advanced – you should consider signing up for a stock research website service. They offer tools that can help your complete your analysis and research much faster than doing it on your own.
Any of the ones we’ve featured here will give you the information and tools to not only improve your investment performance but also make you a more confident investor.
And some have free trials so you can test them out risk-free to see if you like them.
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