We regularly and automatically ask members of all our subscription services for ratings and feedback. One of our Premium subscribers, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent in a long, glowing review. We asked him if he would be willing to tell us more about how he uses Premium and if published, we would offer him a free annual subscription. Here is what he wrote:
Seeking Alpha Premium: What makes it a winner?
Ground-up investment research continues to remain a daunting task despite wide availability of data and a massive proliferation in online analytical sources. The downside of this plurality in research sources is reflected in the frustratingly long time it takes to go through all the sources, vet the investment thesis (there are many pump and dump machines at work!) and form an independent opinion. As a regular investor who believes in researching well before committing my money, I often find myself getting drowned in the ocean of information which is often very light on actionable intelligence.
While looking for more information, I came across Seeking Alpha Premium. Given the plethora of information and its clutter-free layout, I was anyway a regular visitor on Seeking Alpha. So when I was prompted for a 14-day free trial, I immediately lapped up the offer. In the last couple of weeks, my stock investment research process has undergone a massive overhaul and I’m not complaining at all! I’m just getting to realize what all I was missing so far and now, I can’t imagine living without the premium access.
So what changed? Apparently, a lot and I’ll try to summarize some of the features which I’ve found difficult to get elsewhere; followed by the fundamental ways in which Seeking Alpha Premium plan has helped me.
Quant Ratings
I think this is easily the biggest factor which differentiates Seeking Alpha from other investment research platforms. Quant ratings also form the core of several features mentioned below. Quant ratings are composite arithmetic ratings based on five independent factors – Value, Growth, Profitability, Momentum and Revisions. Every stock is rated on these parameters from A+ to F and these grades are derived from a comparison of the stock’s relevant historical performance metrics to those of the other stocks in its sector. As one can imagine, quant ratings provide a robust framework to compare stocks in the same industry without having to manually compare on various parameters. Of course, if one wants to have a deeper look, he/she can refer to the factors making the overall quant rating. Most seasoned investors know that it is dangerous to simply look at individual performance parameters in isolation. Intuitively, investors have an understanding that it is the relative performance of a stock which decides if the stock is attractive or not. As such, it is great to have a ratings framework which takes into consideration the dynamic nature of stock markets.
Screener
Most investment research platforms have a screener to help with discovery of new stock investment ideas and so does Seeking Alpha but it has employed a very clever hack of adding an extra layer of predefined screens. This allows users to get top investment ideas by simply selecting a screen for top rated stocks by Seeking Alpha authors or Wall Street analysts. Similarly, investors can filter stocks based on parameters like sector, industry, market cap, dividend yield, growth and value among others. Needless to say, these screens are fully customizable and reusable to get the best results.
A notably powerful feature here is the ability to filter the output by quant factors. For example, I was looking for best value buys in the information technology sector and all I had to do was to run the predefined screen for value, select the industry and have my results! In this example, I further narrowed my search results by adding a filter to retain stocks which are rated Bullish or Very Bullish in quant ratings.
If someone has to make a quick choice without having to look at company specific financial figures, this screen is all one needs. Of course, there are options to further tweak the filters and I can also create my own screen, save the output in spreadsheet or PDF or share with my contacts through email.
Another favorite of mine is the Upgrades and Downgrades screen which essentially allows me to quickly find the latest changes in outlook among Seeking Alpha authors and sell side analysts. This screen also has an option to see the changes by quant ratings and that’s an awesome way to interpret the attractiveness of a stock not just on the basis of its own price action but also as a result of material business changes among its competitors in the same industry. What’s more, the screen works for REITs as well. There are other similarly quick options like Top Rated Stocks, Top Rated Dividend Stocks, Top REITs, Top Yield Monsters, Top Tech Stocks, Top Growth Stocks, Top Value Stocks, and Top Small Cap Stocks. These predefined screens significantly reduce the time required to arrive at a long list of investment options.
Stock Comparisons – Investment is all about finding the best value at a given price and thus, comparisons are inevitable. Even though there are quant ratings as mentioned above (and I find them very useful), there is nothing that beats the old world charm of comparing hardcore financial numbers of different companies side by side.
Seeking Alpha’s Compare tool takes care of this requirement. This is a pretty neat feature that allows comparison of up to six stocks across industries and sectors. Seeking Alpha has already prepared some commonly used comparisons such as FAANG, Retail and Bank stocks. This comparison is essentially a condensed view of valuation, growth, profitability, momentum, dividend, income, balance sheet and return parameters. And my favorite Quant Rating makes an appearance along with Authors Rating and Sell Side Rating!
Apart from the predefined comparisons, investors can create their own comparisons and save for later usage and export the results in a spreadsheet or PDF. Another great functionality here is that investors can draw these comparisons involving companies from different industries.
Most comparison tools on other websites require investors to input the companies to be compared. These could be direct or indirect competitors or simply market participants in the same industry. However, Seeking Alpha is a great help in this regard and just going to Peers tab while researching a company will give up to five direct and indirect competitors and the comparable financial figures for all the six companies. I absolutely like the idea simply because it saves me a great deal of time in doing the basic research of finding competitors. Even though this output is machine generated, it is far from being cast in stone. I sometimes manually include a more relevant peer for comparison.
Since I’m not a fan of passive investing, I usually don’t look into ETFs. Nevertheless, I sometimes find myself in this department trying to compare ETFs and I can’t emphasize enough that the tool works perfectly with purpose-made parameters such as expense ratios, liquidity, and performance.
Financial statements dating back to 10 years
Premium subscribers can review 10 years of income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements for every stock. I also have an option to see the components like expenses as a percentage of revenue and once again, there are options to download this data. The use of mouse-over charts is an absolute delight to get a visual impression of the data. Despite tons of information, the user interface is clean, intuitive and super easy to use.
Earnings revisions and surprise – With this useful tool, I can see the historical trend of consensus EPS revisions on annual or quarterly basis. This is particularly helpful in getting a pulse on analysts’ views and recommendations on the stock.
There is another screen which depicts a given stock’s earnings performance against the sell-side consensus and it charts the magnitude of the variance from the consensus. Once again, a pretty cool feature to have. I’m a sucker for managements which under-promise and over-deliver and this tool helps me immensely in identifying such management.
These are just some of the cool features and functionalities I found missing in other platforms. This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are other useful features like following authors and their stock coverage, comparison of funds, and notable calls curated by Seeking Alpha editors. Thanks to these cool features, I can see that my investment research has changed in a profound way for the good. Here is a quick summary of how the platform is saving me time and augmenting my research.
No need to assemble insights from various sources
A wide range of data and insights on different websites and platforms effectively meant that I was spending a lot of my valuable time for merely collecting the data. I then needed to “assemble” these research pieces to arrive at tangible opinions and decisions. The other challenge with freely available online sources is to vet their authenticity. Since this was a horribly tedious and time consuming process, it had a direct bearing on the cost and quality of the outcome.
One of the biggest advantages non-professional investors can get in investment research is to have credible and verified information at one place. This is exactly where Seeking Alpha shines with its easily accessible data, meaningful comparisons, analytics and insightful articles, all at one place. Written by people who have investment management backgrounds in buy and sell side research and vetted by editors and fellow writers, these thoughtful articles come across as fresh breeze and are certainly a cut above the content found elsewhere on internet, primarily written with the intent of just filling space.
Available on the go, in the portfolio
It would have been quite disappointing if these features were just limited to their respective screens and didn’t make their way to investors’ watch lists and portfolios. Fortunately, Seeking Alpha has taken care of this aspect and there are several features including quant ratings, Seeking Alpha author ratings and sell-side analyst ratings right next to stocks in the portfolio. My favorite here is the further drill-down of quant ratings, namely Value, Growth, Profitability, Momentum, and EPS Revision. All of this data is available for download if one wishes, or can be simply kept in the portfolio which can be accessed anytime, from either desktop or mobile devices.
The plethora of choices and options I see in my lithium stocks watch list here is unmatched. And it is not just the relevant figures but latest news, analysis articles and transcripts are also available for users to check.
Large Community and unlimited access to articles and transcripts
Seeking Alpha claims to be the biggest online community of investors and analysts. Now, just imagine the collective amount of insights and opinions these users must be generating every day. One of the ways it helps investors is through the scrutiny of data and investment thesis posted by Seeking Alpha Authors and fellow investors. As such, this crowd-sourced research content is distilled and is particularly useful for intermediate to advanced investors like me!
After spending nearly 15 years privately investing my savings, I’ve come to realize there is always information asymmetry when dealing in stocks. The company selling its stock, the broker recommending it and the financial institutions pumping it, they all have way more information than even the most seasoned of small investors. The only way small investors can gain an upper hand in stock market is through extensive reading and patience. As such, I tend to follow an investment approach which is characterized by knowing as much as possible about the company management, corporate philosophy and the softer aspects which aren’t captured in the balance sheets and income statement. This requires going through old articles and it certainly is a blessing if I can find such articles at one place. There are over 1 million articles on Seeking Alpha and it certainly helps that these articles are written by qualified experts and investors and they follow strict editorial guidelines.
As part of my premium subscription, I get exactly that in the form of company related news plus all the opinion pieces which help me tremendously in forming an opinion of the company in question. As mentioned above, Seeking Alpha has a vibrant community of contributors and collaborators and that works to my advantage in research. Be it constructive criticism and feedback in comments or basic fact checking, I’ve experienced the tremendous advantages of this amazing platform. Personally, I also like the fact that every article has a small snippet in the sidebar which outlines the performance of the stock discussed as well as a benchmark index since the publication of the article. This helps in developing a sense of the writer’s understanding about the topic and more importantly, the stock in question.
Seeking Alpha Premium Pricing – A steal for the value offered
If you stayed with me so far and understood the amazing features and enhanced functionality of Seeking Alpha Premium, you might be thinking that this subscription is going to cost a fortune. This is not entirely surprising as many of these features are unheard of in other research platforms. However, Seeking Alpha has priced the subscription at just USD19.99 per month (billed annually). While the annual plan already ranks pretty high on “value for money” metric, there is also a monthly plan priced at USD29.99.
The amount of time I’ve saved while using Premium is quite impressive and I’ve been able to use that time for further research, net result being a vastly expanded range of stock ideas that I couldn’t have come up without this access. Simply put, this cost is just a fraction of the value offered.
Thank you to this subscriber for sharing what he likes and how he uses Premium. He has earned a free annual subscription to Premium!
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