Being a successful stock picker isnโt impossible, but it sure ainโt easy.
Professional stock picking and portfolio management are like many other professions: You donโt pick it up in a day. It takes years of education, practice, and experience to become competent at itโand even after all that, you still need to put in the time to keep your skills sharp.
Only a handful of people have the time, aptitude, and interest to become skilled and utterly independent stock pickers. But most of us simply donโtโwe either need a helping hand, or a lot more. And thatโs why many investors gravitate toward the likes of Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool.
Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool are two of the best-known investing resources youโll come across. They offer a wealth of information for freeโbut at their hearts are powerful paid subscription products that scores of investors rely on when building their portfolios.
And if youโre here spending a little time with me, that means youโre wondering which of the two services makes the most sense for you.
Today, Iโll pit The Motley Fool vs. Seeking Alpha. Iโll explain what each companyโs core services provide to investors, how much they cost, where they fall shortโand most importantly, who can get the most out of them. You see, all of the services Iโm about to discuss are rated extremely well in my book, but you wonโt maximize their value unless you pick the best fit for you.
Table of Contents
What Is Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is a crowdsourced platform for investors, by investors. Rather than just reading opinions from โsell-sideโ analysts, the Seeking Alpha website provides access to a variety of views from thousands of professional and amateur contributors alike. It also contains a wealth of other vital information for investors, including fundamental data, stock screeners, breaking news, corporate conference call transcripts, and more.
Seeking Alpha does have a free Basic tier that simply requires an email registration. With that, you get a few perksโthe ability to look up stock prices and Seeking Alpha charts, email alerts for stocks, Wall Street equity ratings, and even limited access to some of SAโs contributor content.
Iโve used the free side of Seeking Alpha several times, and if you have no money, itโs better than nothing. But to get the most of Seeking Alpha, you need to dive into one of its core paid plans: Seeking Alpha Premium and Seeking Alpha Pro.
- Seeking Alpha Premium is an economically priced plan that offers just about everything that intermediate and advanced investors could want, whether they prefer to do their own research or receive stock recommendations. If you navigate across our site, youโll see that Seeking Alpha Premium is among our top choices in several investing service categories.
- Seeking Alpha Pro is a costlier and higher-end product, primarily geared toward advanced investors, that includes everything within Premium, as well as exclusive content and trading ideas.
Letโs dive further into what you get with these two foundational Seeking Alpha plans:
What Comes With a Seeking Alpha Paid Plan?
Hereโs what you get from each of Seeking Alphaโs two core plans: Premium and Pro.
Seeking Alpha Premium
Seeking Alpha Premium naturally comes with all the features of the Basic plan, while unlocking all Premium content and adding in a host of other benefits.
With a subscription to Seeking Alpha Premium, you can expect the following:
- Unlimited access to Premium content
- Recordings and transcripts of earnings and other event conference calls
- Financial statements (with multiple views) going back up to 10 years
- Performance tracking
- Alerts about upgrades and downgrades on stocks in your portfolio
- Premium investing ideas
- And more
- Stock Quant Ratings
- Compare a stockโs value, growth, profitability, and more to its peers
- Seeking Alpha Author Ratings
- See what SA contributors think about potential stock picks
- Factor Scorecards for stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and ETFs
- Enjoy easy-to-understand grades (A+ through F) detailing value, profitability, growth, momentum, and EPS (earnings per share) revisions.
- Iโve worked with a number of data providers that only provide net income and EPS figures for REITs, and those figures donโt tell the whole profitability story for real estate stocks. But Seeking Alpha provides data and ratings for funds from operations (FFO) and adjusted funds from operations (AFFO), which are much more appropriate metrics.
- Exclusive stock and ETF Dividend Grades
- Dividend Growth Grade
- Dividend Safety Grade
- Dividend Yield Grade
- Dividend Consistency Grade
- Seeking Alpha author and article performance
- See which authors tend to make the most accurate predictions
- Ad-light experience
- Personalized alerts
- Synchronize with brokerage accounts (Basic members have to manually enter individual stocks to track)
- View holdings across several brokerages to track your total account value and gain useful insights
A Seeking Alpha Premium account has much deeper research capabilities than a Basic account. For instance, Basic members might be able to read the same article as a Premium memberโbut they might not be able to see how the author rated the stock, nor could they see how dependable the author really is. (Also, that same article will become unavailable after 10 days if youโre a Basic member, whereas Premium members can continue to view them.)
Moreover, if you want to use Seeking Alpha for stock recommendation purposes, you have to go with Seeking Alpha Premium, which includes ratings and grades.
Seeking Alpha Pro
Seeking Alpha Pro doesnโt just give you moreโit also helps you sort through the best of whatโs already there. So it includes not only Seeking Alpha Premium features, but also:
- Exclusive access to Top Ideas
- Top Ideas are โhigh-convictionโ theses by some of Seeking Alphaโs top in-house experts
- 4-6 hand-picked investing ideas delivered daily
- Exclusive email alerts, newsletters, and interviews
- Seeking Alpha Pro Idea screener to save you time
- Search by industry, theme, company size, investment style, country, and more
- Top-shelf customer service
- Exclusive access to short-selling ideas
- Ad-free experience
Seeking Alpha Pro is a powerful subscription productโone ideal for active, high-net-worth (HNW) investors. If youโre a more casual investor, Seeking Alpha Premium is likely the better fit for you. Thatโs especially evident when it comes to the cost.
How Much Do Seeking Alpha’s Paid Plans Cost?
As mentioned before, Seeking Alpha has a free Basic plan that gives you limited access to their resourcesโall you need to do is register with an email address.
For Seeking Alpha Premium and Pro alike, you get a 7-day free trial, and youโll receive a reminder email a few days before the free trial is set to end. After that, annual pricing looks like this:
- Seeking Alpha Premium: $269 per year for your first year, $299 per year thereafter
- Seeking Alpha Pro: $2,400 per year
Again, most investors can get more than enough bang out of their buck with Seeking Alpha Premium. However, if youโre looking to put more time in the markets and become a more active investor, consider a Seeking Alpha Pro account.
- Seeking Alpha Premium and Pro help you find profitable investing ideas, improve your portfolio, research stocks better and faster as well as track the news to find investing opportunities.
- Receive up to 15 investing newsletters filled with stock research and analysis, commentary and recommendations.
- Get access to the world's largest investing community.
- Use Seeking Alpha Premium's Seeking Alpha Stock Ratings to find stocks likely to outperform and make you money.
- Seeking Alpha Premium's proprietary quant records have an impressive track record leading to massive market outperformance.
- Summer 20% discount on Premium: New subscribers through our link receive a $60 discount off the price of Seeking Alpha Premium in their first year.
- Summer 20% discount on Pro: New subscribers through our link receive a $480 discount off the price of Seeking Alpha Pro in their first year.
- Active community of engaged investors and analysts
- Stock screeners, quantitative tools for stock analysis
- Strong track record of market outperformance on stock ratings
- Minimal mutual fund coverage
Related: Seeking Alpha Premium + Pro Review
What Is The Motley Fool?
The Motley Fool has helped millions of investors outperform the stock market with a variety of investment recommendation services.
The Motley Fool has a long and sterling history within the investment recommendations community. It started out as an investment newsletter in 1993, and a year later, the founders brokered an online content deal with AOL, where The Foolโs content lived until moving to its own site in 1997.
The company has since gained acclaim through Fool.com, its Motley Fool stock picking services (which include Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor and Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers), and even its CAPS Communityโa popular message board where people go to share investment ideas.
What Is Motley Fool Stock Advisor?
Motley Fool Stock Advisor, started in 2002, is the companyโs flagship stock picking service. It does the grunt work of researching stocks for you. The serviceโs advisors usually lean on well-known, not-too-volatile companies that they believe can beat the stock market. Each pick has a long term bent, with an expected holding period of at least five years.
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service provides monthly stock picks from two investing teams: Team Everlasting and Team Rule Breakers. Per Motley Fool, Team Everlasting looks for:
- โHigh-quality companies that have the sustained potential to keep growing and beat the overall market over extremely long periodsโ
- โFounder-led companiesโ
- โCompanies employing a strong corporate cultureโ
- โBusinesses that have built a strong enough bond with their customers that they command substantial pricing power and have identifiable proprietary advantagesโ
- โCash-rich, low-debt companiesโ
And Team Rule Breakers looks for:
- โFirst-mover companies in emerging, but important industries that have become the top dogs in their nichesโ
- โCompanies with sustainable competitive advantagesโ
- โSizable past increases in share pricesโ
- โCompanies with good management teamsโ
- โBusinesses with strong consumer appeal that have built up brand awarenessโ
- โStocks that are grossly overvalued according to mainstream financial media sourcesโ
What Comes With a Motley Fool Stock Advisor Subscription?
The Motley Foolโs Stock Advisor service offers much more than stock picksโit also provides community and investment resources. The whole package includes:
- โStarter Stocksโ recommendations to serve as a foundation to your portfolio for new and experienced investors
- Two new stock picks each month
- 10 โBest Buys Nowโ chosen from over 300 stocks the service watches
- Investing resources, including the stock picking serviceโs library of stock recommendations
- Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop
How Much Does Motley Fool Stock Advisor Cost?
The Stock Advisor stock picking service offers discounted introductory rates to new users. That discount has varied over time, but typically, itโs substantially lower than what current members paid when they renewed their membership.
Currently, Stock Advisorโs discounted new-member rate is $99 per year. That shifts to $199 annually after the first year.
Also worth noting: All annual Motley Fool Stock Advisor subscriptions come with a full membership-fee-back guarantee.
- Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a stock service that provides recommendations for both "steady Eddie" and high-flying stocks, as well as a few ETFs for investors who want diversified holdings, too.
- Just getting started? Stock Advisor provides 10 "Foundational Stocks" you can use to anchor your portfolio.
- You're not alone! Stock Advisor membership also gives you access to a community of investors who also want to outperform the market and love talking shop.
- Limited-Time Offer: Get your first year with Stock Advisor for $99 (vs. $199 usual value) with code "FOOLISH"โa 50% discount for new members!
- Discounted introductory price
- Strong outperformance compared to the S&P 500
- High overall average return for stock picks
- High renewal price
- Not every stock is a winner
Related: Motley Fool Review: Is Stock Advisor Worth It? [Our Take]
Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.
What Is Motley Fool Rule Breakers?
Remember โTeam Rule Breakersโ mentioned above? Well, Motley Fool Rule Breakers only draws from that teamโs recommendations, preferring stocks that have massive growth potential. In some cases, these companies are at the forefront of emerging industriesโin others, theyโre disrupting the status quo in long-established industries.
This stock subscription service doesnโt fixate on whatโs currently popular, but instead always looks for the next big stock ahead. That means these Motley Fool picks have the potential to be nauseatingly volatile โฆ but also the potential to rocket higher exponentially.
For example, Rule Breakers delivered several stock picks that tapped the power of e-commerce long before many other outlets did. Nowadays, Rule Breakersโ emerging industries of focus include the likes of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
What Comes With a Motley Fool Rule Breakers Subscription?
Like with Stock Advisor, a Motley Fool Rule Breakers subscription does include stock picksโbut also other important resources. All told, you can expect:
- A list of Starter Stocksโincluding their โessential Rule Breakersโโto begin your investing journey
- Top-10 rankings of timely buys from the entire Rule Breakers portfolio
- Two new stock picks each month
- Investing resources, including the stock picking serviceโs library of stock recommendations
- Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop
How Much Does Motley Fool Rule Breakers Cost?
Similarly to Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers offers a discounted introductory rate to new users.
Currently, you can subscribe to Rule Breakers for $99 for the first year. After that, youโll renew at the regular $299 annual rate.
And all annual Rule Breakers subscriptions come with a 30-day full membership-fee-back guarantee.
- Motley Fool Rule Breakers, which is now an exclusive part of Motley Fool Epic, puts investors in the heart of innovation, focusing on growth recommendations centered around emerging industries.
- The Motley Fool has discontinued the standalone Rule Breakers service. Now, you can access Rule Breakers as part of Motley Fool's Epic subscription, which also includes Stock Advisor, Hidden Gems, Dividend Investor.
- Through Epic, you will also enjoy access to the Fool IQ+ research and data platform, the GamePlan+ financial planning platform, and the Epic Opportunities podcast.
- Limited-Time Offer: Get your first year with the Epic for $299 (vs. $499 usual value)โa 40% discount for new members!โby clicking our link and using the EPICSALE coupon code.*
- Discounted introductory price
- Strong outperformance compared to the S&P 500
- High overall average return for stock picks
- Diversified array of recommendations for investors targeting growth, income, or both
- Additional value from GamePlan+ financial planning content and tools
- High-growth stocks carry volatility
- High renewal price
- Not every stock has positive returns
Related: Motley Fool Rule Breakers Review [Picking Growth Stocks]
How Have Seeking Alpha’s Stock Picks Performed?
Seeking Alphaโs Premium and Pro services lean much more toward research than stock recommendations. However, Strong Buy picks from its quant ratingsโwhich factor in value, growth, momentum, profitability, and EPS revisionsโhave greatly outperformed the market over time.
According to Seeking Alpha, $10,000 invested in Top Quant Rating stocks at the start of 2010 would have grown to $222,058 by early Januaryโroughly five times better than the $45,181 sum that wouldโve resulted from the S&P 500โs performance.
All told, that comes to an average annualized return of more than 25%!
How Have The Motley Fool Stock Advisor Stock Ideas Performed?
According to Motley Fool, 175 Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock recommendations have historically delivered 100%-plus returns. And since inception in February 2002, the service has returned 671% through April 8, 2024, when you calculate the average return of all its stock recommendations over the past 22 years.
Comparatively, the S&P 500 only had a 152% return during that same timeframe.
Examples of Stock Advisor recommendations include Disney (DIS, +6,123%), Amazon (AMZN, +23,539%), and Netflix (+30,073%). (All returns are from their original recommendation through April 8, 2024.)
How Have The Motley Fool Rule Breakers Stock Recommendations Performed?
Rule Breakers, since the productโs inception in 2004, has delivered a 245% return through Dec. 7, 2023, more than doubling the S&P 500โs performance since thenโand beating many leading money managers on Wall Street. And impressively, 141 of their recommendations have gone on to at least double in value.
Examples of Rule Breakers picks that have taken off include Shopify (SHOP, +3,317%), MercadoLibre (MELI, +10,517%), and Tesla (TSLA, +11,273%). (All returns are from their original recommendation through Dec. 7, 2023.)
And one note about the data for all of these subscription products: Past performance doesnโt guarantee future gains. While Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha both have laudable track records, relying on these or any other stock advisory services ultimately involves some level of risk.
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Is Seeking Alpha Worth the Money?
A Seeking Alpha Premium subscription is absolutely worth the money as long as you have even a modest nest egg to invest.
What do I mean? Well, letโs say you have just $500 to invest. If Seeking Alpha costs $167 a year* ($239 a year thereafter), nearly half your investment funds are going to what Iโd call โresearch and managementโ costs. Thatโs simply too high as a percentage.
But if youโre at least dealing with a few thousand dollarsโand especially if you already have more or plan to contribute more in the futureโSeeking Alpha offers a compelling value proposition, on multiple fronts.
Thatโs because Seeking Alpha Premium makes it simple to find, evaluate, and monitor stocks in your portfolioโit can do virtually everything except execute trades, which youโll need a stock app to do. It also has a leg up on many other data platforms in that it includes more REIT-specific data, and you can even evaluate ETF fundamentals through the platform.
But if youโd prefer to just lean on stock recommendations, you can always just screen for Seeking Alphaโs Strong Buy quant picks and rely on them instead. Itโs not quite the same as a traditional stock picking serviceโwhere one advisor or advisor team explains in narrative form why theyโre recommending certain stocksโbut Seeking Alphaโs picks still have an admirable track record.
I think intermediate and advanced traders can get the most out of Seeking Alphaโs Premium tools. While Seeking Alphaโs Pro benefits are alluring, most everyday investors canโt foot that billโitโs only worth it if you have tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest with and want to take a very active role in your portfolio management.
Is The Motley Fool Legitimate?
In a word: Yes. The Motley Fool is a legitimate business, and both Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers are successful, long-running investment services boasting scores of satisfied subscribers.
In fact, I can tell you a little about Stock Advisor firsthand.
In grad school, I turned roughly $10,000 worth of contributions into $25,000 by investing in stocks either recommended by Stock Advisor, or that I learned about through the Motley Fool’s CAPS Community discussion boardโone of the benefits of subscribing to one of the Foolโs services.
I followed the stocks regularly, and I always looked forward to reading the stock analysis for each recommendation. The Foolโs analysts laid out a compelling buy caseโand clearly, the market agreed.
Simply subscribing to The Motley Fool kept me more interested in the financial markets more broadly. Even that aspect helped turn me into a more educated, informed investor.
Just note that The Motley Foolโs Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers services are fundamentally different from what youโre getting with Seeking Alpha Premium + Pro. Which brings us to our conclusion โฆ
Which Service Should You Consider for Picking Investments in the Stock Market?
Seeking Alpha and The Motley Fool are both highly respected, trustworthy stock subscription services. And they both offer an abundance of resources to help you choose the best individual stocks to invest in.
Fortunately, theyโre also fundamentally different productsโmaking a decision pitting The Motley Fool vs. Seeking Alpha a lot easier than youโd think.
Seeking Alpha Premium and Pro are more geared toward discovering stock ideas on your own and conducting your own due diligence through robust stock research and analysis. While you can use its rankings and grades like recommendations, thereโs no single analyst or analyst team providing the theses for these stocksโyouโre provided with quantitative grades, and you can read research about these stocks from the Seeking Alpha contributor community. That research, by the way, can include not just bull cases, but bear cases, too, which can be a valuable perspective to have when youโre trying to figure out what kind of risks youโre taking on.
The Motley Foolโs Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, on the other hand, are recommendation-focused. You are paying primarily for stock picks, which include detailed analyses of the companies that are mentioned. While you do have access to some outside commentaryโvia The Motley Foolโs CAPS Communityโitโs not quite as extensive as the Seeking Alpha network. And most importantly, youโre not buying tools that can help you discover opportunities or conduct research on stocks outside of the Foolโs recommendations.
In a nutshell, Seeking Alpha is a better fit for more self-starting intermediate and advanced investors who want to explore the investment universe and find their own opportunities. The Motley Fool, on the other hand, is better for beginning to intermediate investors who simply want to learn about stocks with market-beating potential so they can put them to use in their own portfolios.
Seeking Alpha offers a true 7-day free trial, whereas you have to pay for The Motley Fool up front but get a 30-day membership-fee-back window to request a refund. Still, both offer a way to sample what each service has to offer before fully committing your money.
Whichever side you choose, though, rest well knowing youโre receiving an honest-to-goodness value.
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