Trading in the stock markets is one of the most brilliant ways to diversify your investment portfolio and create wealth. However, identifying stocks with the best potential from hundreds of listed ones is not always easy. Besides, analyzing individual stocks, reading financial statements and earnings reports can be time-consuming. This is where stock picking services come in handy.
These tools help you find suitable stocks that align with your trading goals. They basically do the heavy-lifting for you, in turn, helping you minimize the risks that often come with trading in the, otherwise, highly volatile markets.
Unfortunately, the current market is splattered with many such services, with each platform promising to offer the best stock-picking service. This can give you a hard time in the selection process as some platforms promise what they can’t deliver. Luckily for you, our team has tested various stock-picking services and highly recommend the following seven.
What’s a Stock Picking Service?
Before we get started, let’s give you more insights into what a stock picking service is. Basically, this is a service that aims to help you choose viable stocks that match your trading strategies. It analyzes and compiles stock data sets and then suggests stocks worth investing in.
Motley Fool Stock Advisor
Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a subscription-based stock picking service that offers expert investment recommendations and market analysis aimed at helping individuals achieve long-term financial growth.
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a comprehensive investment research platform that provides in-depth market analysis, stock evaluations, and financial news, contributed by a diverse community of investors and industry experts.
Trade Ideas
Trade Ideas is a powerful stock market analysis and real-time trading platform that leverages artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms to provide traders with actionable insights and automated trading strategies.
Alpha Picks
Alpha Picks by Seeking Alpha is a premium investment service providing high-conviction stock recommendations and in-depth analysis to help investors make informed decisions.
Zacks Home Run Investor
Zacks is a well-regarded firm that provides comprehensive financial analysis, stock rankings, and investment tools designed to help investors make informed decisions and achieve superior returns.
Morningstar
Morningstar provides investment research, offering in-depth analysis, ratings, and tools to help investors make informed decisions across a wide range of financial products including mutual funds, stocks, and ETFs.
StockRover
StockRover is a robust investment research platform that offers comprehensive screening, in-depth stock analysis, and portfolio management tools to help investors make well-informed decisions.
Top 7 Best Stock Picking Services in 2024
This list details some of the best stock picking websites on the market today. In summary the top names in our selection are as follows:
1. Motley Fool Stock Advisor
Motley Fools Stock Advisor is a firm that provides investors with targeted and personalized financial advice. It has a long-term positive track record of over 30 years in delivering outperforming stock recommendations to users.
Since Stock Advisor is geared toward helping long-term investors, it recommends 2 winning stocks each month “to buy and hold.” Each pick covers a detailed overview of the stock company, why you should buy the stocks now, and the potential risks that come with it.
In addition, Stock Advisor has a continuous list of the best open stock recommendations you can purchase. The Best Buys Now weekly list has 10 best stock recommendations. For a stock to make it to the monthly picks, it should have featured in the weekly recommendations.
But if you are just starting stock trading and don’t know what to do, you can start with the starter pack. It comprises 10 stocks with high-performance potential and low volatility. Most of these stocks are widely known, have low volatility, and have a high long-term growth potential.
Other Stock Advisor features include video interviews, stock screeners, an interactive community, and periodic special reports. It’s pricing stands at $99 for the first years and $199 for subsequent years, although you can benefit from the occasional price discounts.
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2. Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a widely known financial information services provider. Many investors love Seeking Alpha because of its highly-efficient stock screener and ratings that provide insights into the performance of various stocks.
Stock picking is an easy task with the 3 Seeking Alpha stock ratings. Quant Ratings uses a systematic quantitative trading algorithm that only picks the Strong Buy stock recommendations depending on profitability, growth, and value. The Author Ratings are average ratings provided by Seeking Alpha Authors, while Wall Street ratings are multiple ratings collected from Wall Street financial experts.
There are two stock screeners; one is for top-rated stocks, while the other specializes in investment ideas. Additionally, you can create custom stock screeners using the given 100+ metrics.
Best of all, there’s no risking cash as you can use the free Seeking Alpha version upon signing up and subscribe later if need be. However, the free version has limited features. Alternatively, you can pay between $199 to $2400 yearly fees to unlock more features.
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3. Trade Ideas
Trade Ideas stands out in this list due to its integration of AI “Holly” to deliver timely and efficient stock recommendations. It also provides advanced data analytics and has more than 75 machine-learning algorithms. This unique blend of features gives you practical insights that you can incorporate into your trading strategies immediately.
After the close of the market, the robot advisor “Holly” reviews all activities that occurred during trading hours. It looks at different trade concepts, including long-term, short-term, fundamental, social, technical, volume, etc.
Next, Holly analyzes Trade Ideas filters to ascertain which to modify so as to improve the results. After all this work, Holly only suggests strategies with a 2:1 profit factor and success rate of 60% and above.
The OddsMaker window helps you to analyze the performance of entry/exit signals in recent history. What’s more, you can customize many of the backtesting features to align with your trading strategy. The alerts window displays and streams events in real-time as per the filters you selected earlier. Visualization of all analyzed data is made easy by the efficient charting system.
The best part is that you can link your brokerage account to Trade Ideas and enable Holly AI to auto-trade for you. Lastly, Trade Ideas has different monthly subscription plans ranging from $89 to $ 178.
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4. Alpha Picks
Alpha Picks by Seeking Alpha is a premium stock picking service tailored for investors seeking high-conviction recommendations backed by comprehensive analysis. Leveraging the power of Seeking Alpha's vast network of analysts and financial experts, Alpha Picks delivers carefully curated stock selections aimed at outperforming the market.
Each recommendation is accompanied by in-depth research reports that include detailed financials, growth projections, and risk assessments, ensuring investors have the insights needed to make informed decisions. Subscribers receive regular updates and alerts, keeping them well-informed about any significant developments or shifting market conditions affecting their holdings.
Alpha Picks stands out not just for its robust research and actionable picks, but also for its commitment to transparency and accountability, providing performance tracking and the rationale behind each selection.
This makes Alpha Picks a valuable tool for anyone serious about enhancing their investment strategy with reliable, data-driven stock picks.
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5. Zacks Home Run Investor
Zacks Home Run Investor is a product of Zacks Investment Research that specializes in providing investment research services to individuals. It’s a subscription-based service that identifies stocks of small or medium-capital companies with high growth potential.
The platform uses Zacks ranking system, a quantitative model that ranks stocks from #1 to # 5. The #1 stocks are ones with more growth potential and could outperform others in the next 1 to 3 months. Moreover, for a stock to make it to the Home Ground Investor portfolio, it should have a growth potential of 50%, 100%, 200% or more.
A subscription of $149 annually to Zacks Home Ground Investor gives you the advantage of enjoying the Zacks Investor package. Additionally, you’ll access the current portfolio, which usually has around 25 to 30 stocks; their holding period, rate of return, and so on. Finally, you get Zacks’ suggestion of the 7 best stocks and 2 to 4 trades in a given month.
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6. Morningstar
Morningstar is not just a stock picking service but an all-round world-renowned financial services company. It provides comprehensive information on a number of assets, including bonds, ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds.
Unlike other stock-picking services in this list that recommend the best stocks, Morningstar doesn’t do this. Instead, it lists thousands of stocks and gives them a “Morningstar Rating.” The overall rating is calculated depending on the past performance and volatility of stocks for over 3, 5, or 10 years in comparison with their current performance.
These ratings are updated on a monthly basis to help keep you abreast of all the latest trends. A stock with a 4 or 5-star rating means it’s undervalued, while a 3-star rating its fairly valued. Lastly, 1 and 2-star ratings mean the stock is highly valued or overvalued.
Apart from the analyst ratings, Morningstar also offers stock screening with an emphasis on financial strength, income, and growth. Finally, it has a $34.95 monthly subscription plan, which comes with a free 7-day trial.
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7. StockRover
StockRover is a fantastic analysis and screening platform focusing on mutual funds, ETFs, and stocks. It’s probably ranked as one of the best stock services as it offers myriad tools, including research reports, custom alerts, customizable screeners, and ratings. This helps you to quickly settle on the stocks with high-profit potential.
StockRover investment screeners help you find stocks that meet certain criteria. As a beginner investor, you can start with the 140 inbuilt screeners. As you advance, you can customize the screeners using up to 500 indicators to get more personalized results.
Unlike the other stock picking services that send you monthly reports, StockRover delivers the opposite, whereby you can request reports whenever you like. These reports include a company’s ratings, financial analysis, investment warnings, dividend data, etc.
Advanced charting tools like fundamentals, technical, and valuation are great for building efficient trading strategies. Another thing you will love about StockRover is its subscription plans; the prices vary from $7.99 to $27.99 per month, which are quite affordable. Furthermore, a 14-day trial period allows new users to try the platform before subscribing.
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Conclusion
The current diversity in stock picking services gives you more options to choose from than ever before. These services are vital for investors with limited time or lack experience in conducting market research.
However, before settling on a particular stock picking service, you want to be sure to analyze its cost implications, and the availability of a free versions, this way you get to test-drive the system and determine if it really is the right match for you.