Seeking Alpha Review
Seeking Alpha is a popular investing website.
The site used to be mostly free, but supported by ads. However, they added a paywall a couple of years ago and now the site's best features are only available with a "Premium" subscription.
I have been a user of Seeking Alpha and a Premium subscriber for over 5 years now, even before they went behind the paywall.
It has long been one of my favorite sites to do research on potential investments, as well as track my portfolio and find new ideas.
In this article, I share my experience with Seeking Alpha and explore whether it is worth the money.
Seeking Alpha review summary
- Overall rating:
- Service type: Stock research and analysis
- Best for: Long-term, fundamental investors
- Pricing:
$239/year$189/year + 7-day free trial with this link
Seeking Alpha is a stock research platform that provides financial data and tools along with thousands of articles per month that are written by investors and analysts.
The company's paid subscription service, Seeking Alpha Premium, provides subscribers with access to detailed research, stock news, stock market insights, portfolio monitoring, stock alerts, analysis from financial experts, fundamental data, and more.
You can use the platform directly through their website, and they also have a well-designed mobile app for both Apple and Android.
What is Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is a stock research platform with one objective: to help investors make better, more informed investing decisions.
The company was founded by former Morgan Stanley analyst David Jackson in 2004.
The original concept was to allow investors to write about and share their own stock research and to discuss the merits of potential investments. While this is still the core service Seeking Alpha provides, it now offers many more features.
In the last 20 years, Seeking Alpha has become one of the most popular investing websites in the world, providing research to more than 20 million monthly readers.
You can read a few articles per month for free, but you will quickly bump into a paywall for Seeking Alpha Premium.
Why I have been a Premium subscriber for over 5 years
For $189/year, I get access to 18,000+ vetted analysts who write more than 10,000 articles per month.
These contributors are experienced, opinionated, and see the world from a different perspective than me, making them perfect sources of information I might otherwise overlook or miss altogether.
These contributors have helped me:
- Find winners I would have never seen value in (like Visa)
- Sell stocks I would have held while the underlying business was cracking (like General Electric)
But enough about me. Let's talk about all the different features you get with a Premium subscription.
Seeking Alpha Premium features
There are a ton of features included in the Premium plan.
I've broken down most of the features into 5 categories below and will briefly cover the key aspects of each feature, focusing on the features I use the most or find the most valuable.
1. Investment research & analysis
Stock analysis
As mentioned above, there are currently 18,000+ contributors producing thousands of articles per month on Seeking Alpha. The majority of these articles are stock analysis.
You can find these articles on the homepage or by looking up a ticker:
Just to the right of the Analysis column you'll see the latest news headlines for the stock. On the far right, you'll see a summary of the stock's Ratings, Factor Grades, Quant Rating, and more.
One thing that stood out to me right away was the quality of these reports. Every single article was free of grammatical errors and really well thought out.
This is due to the extremely high editorial standards at Seeking Alpha — it's really hard to get an article published.
I've published several articles myself, and each one had to go through several revisions before it went live.
Article sidebars
When you click on an article, the sidebar will show you the analyst's rating history, some quick facts about the stock, the stock's ratings (contributor average, Wall Street analysts, and Quant), and more:
The sidebar is usually the first thing I look at when reading an article. I mainly focus on the author's rating history to gauge their historical sentiment about the stock in question, and then I'll look for any red flags in the Ratings section.
Quant Ratings & Factor Grades
Seeking Alpha's Quant Ratings is an algorithmic system which ranks stocks based on 5 “factors”: value, growth, profitability, EPS revisions, and momentum.
The system has performed quite well:
Personally, I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to investing solely based on quantitative research, so I don't make investment decisions based on these ratings.
Still, if the Quant Rating is "Strong Sell," I make sure I know why and that I'm willing to accept the risk.
The Quant Ratings are based on the 5 Factor Grades. Here's what it looks like for Apple right now:
As you can see, the system is signaling Apple's valuation is stretched right now based on its recent growth, which I tend to agree with.
Dividend Grades
Similar to its Factor Grades, Seeking Alpha has a grading system for dividends based on 4 criteria: safety, growth, yield, and consistency.
It, too, has outperformed its benchmarks:
Like Factor Grades, I personally don't use this to make buy decisions, but it does help me find potential areas of weakness and identify risks I otherwise wouldn't see.
Financial data
To complete the Seeking Alpha offering, the site also provides 10 years of financial statements, earnings and dividend information, more details on its Factor components, options chains, and a charting feature:
As a long-term investor (and one who sometimes charts for entry points), Seeking Alpha has everything I need to complete my research.
2. Portfolio monitoring
Brokerage syncing
With a Premium subscription, you can connect your brokerage accounts and easily monitor all of your holdings through the platform:
I primarily subscribe to Seeking Alpha for the investment research, not the portfolio tracking, but it's nice to easily check the Factor Grades of all of my positions and see my portfolio's overall "Health Score" all from one view.
Personalized alerts
You can receive alerts on your positions and subscribe to digests of the latest reports written about your holdings.
You can also set notifications for specific stocks you want to keep an eye on, and stay abreast of the latest news and upgrades/downgrades.
News dashboard
Seeking Alpha also provides you with a custom news dashboard which shows the latest research reports and news headlines related to every position in your portfolio:
This is a nice bonus to have as it allows you to easily stay on top of what's happening to the companies your portfolio.
Earnings calendar
I'm not sure why, but I have a hard time staying on top of when my companies are going to report earnings.
Fortunately, Seeking Alpha's Earnings tab will show each of my stocks' next earnings report date and EPS and revenue estimates:
I find myself using this tab a lot during earnings season.
Valuation checks
Again, I'm not a huge fan of relying too heavily on quantitative systems, but I do find them to be a useful tool for finding red flags. The Health Score is no different:
I'm not overly concerned with only owning "Strong Buy" stocks, but it is convenient to see what factor poses the biggest risk to my portfolio.
Right now, it's valuation:
This doesn't surprise me since I'm willing to pay premium prices for exceptional businesses and tend to hold even when valuations get stretched.
3. Stock ideas
Trending analysis & news
If you want to see what research reports and news articles people are reading right now, head to the homepage:
This is one of my favorite places to find which stocks are being talked about the most and may be added to my watchlist.
Stock screener
If you're looking for new investment ideas, Seeking Alpha has a robust stock screener which allows you to filter by any criteria provided on the platform.
It also has a number of pre-built screeners, including its top stocks by Quant Rating and Top Rated Stocks (based on Quant, SA Authors, and Wall Street analysts):
4. Alpha Picks
Alpha Picks is an investing newsletter that provides two stock picks each month. The stocks are generated from its screener, Quant Rating system, and other analysis.
While it's a fairly new service, the early results have been great — as of January 2024, it's outperforming the S&P by a factor of 2.5x, which is why it ranks second on our list of the best investing newsletters.
Alpha Picks is not included in Seeking Alpha Premium, and costs $499/year (though you can get an introductory offer of $449 through this link).
You can read more about the service, including my results from investing in its stock picks, in my Alpha Picks Review.
5. Other features
Content & education
Seeking Alpha hosts 8 investing podcasts which cover everything from daily market news to specific trading strategies.
You can also subscribe to up to 15 newsletters covering different themes or investment ideas, completely free.
It also offers educational resources, like the Investing Strategy section, which can help you create a better portfolio.
Marketplace
Finally, Seeking Alpha's most popular contributors have the option to host their own investing newsletters.
These are paid subscriptions that are not included in your Premium subscription, but you will get access to portfolios and investment ideas you won't find anywhere else.
Is Seeking Alpha Worth it?
I believe long-term investing is complicated and nuanced.
In my opinion, the best way to protect capital and generate above average returns is by reading a wide variety of reports from investors with different perspectives, and making decisions based on all the information available.
That's why I've been a paying user of Seeking Alpha Premium since 2018, for over 5 years.
For $189 per year, I get access to thousands of analysts sharing their research and tools that I use every day to help me invest.
To me, it is definitely worth the money.
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