Stock Market Guides Review
Stocks tend to trade in patterns, but not all stocks follow the same patterns.
For some, moving averages or range-based indicators work best. For others, chart patterns or candlestick setups tend to be more predictive.
As a trader, your goal is to find which strategy has historically worked best for a specific stock, then use that data to make better trading decisions going forward.
That's the edge Stock Market Guides gives traders.
In this review, I'll cover how Stock Market Guides works, how its technology was built, how profitable its trade alerts have been, and what you can expect as a customer.
Stock Market Guides review summary
- Overall rating:
- Description: Web-based software for finding trade setups with backtested edges
- Best for: Swing and options traders
- Cost: $29/month to $95/month
Stock Market Guides is a data-driven tool built to help traders find higher-probability trade setups.
Its software shows the historical performance of every setup it identifies, including win rate, average return, and past trade results.
You can use this data to avoid weak setups, filter out low-probability trades, and focus only on opportunities with a backtested edge.
Users can either receive trade alerts or access the scanner directly to find their own ideas.
It won't do all the work for you, and it isn't a guaranteed path to profits, but it can help you become a more consistently profitable trader.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
What is Stock Market Guides?
Stock Market Guides is an algorithmic trading software for swing and options traders. Both beginner and advanced traders are using it to improve their trading.
To build the software, the SMG team back-tested millions of trades to find which chart patterns, candlestick patterns, and indicator-based strategies brought the highest returns on certain stocks.
After determining which combinations (of stocks and strategies) led to the highest win percentages, they created a scanner to only look for those specific setups.
With Stock Market Guides, you can access the scanner and see these setups in real time. Here's what that looks like:
SMG is primarily web-based and best accessed on a computer. The user interface is simple, modern, and user-friendly.
This can be a great first step in your trading process — getting a full list of trade ideas that have outperformed historically. From there, you can look through each of the trades and decide which ones you want to take.
For traders who'd rather have all the work done for them, SMG also sends trade alerts.
Its trade alerts — which include stock picks, swing trades, and options picks — are the exact trades the SMG team is taking. Here's an example trade alert:
Trade alerts come by text or email.
Each trade alert comes with an entry and exit date, a profit target, and information on how that setup has performed historically.
Subscribing to these services will also give you access to the SMG team's daily commentary, video tutorials, and more.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
Services offered by Stock Market Guides
Stock Market Guides has services for three types of traders: Long-term investors, swing traders, and options traders.
Here's a look at its product stack:
Each product — Stock Investing, Swing Trading, Option Trading — comes with both the trade alerts and the scanner for that product.
Many newer traders prefer to use the trade alerts to get their trade ideas, while more advanced traders (who want more trade ideas to sort through themselves) tend to use the scanner.
The scanner comes with a number of filtering options — like chart pattern, trade setup, trade duration, win percentage, and annualized ROI — so you can narrow down the results to the types of trades you're most interested in.
Zooming back out, here are a few more details on each product, according to SMG:
| Stock Investing | Swing Trading | Option Trading | |
| Average trade length | 12–18 months | 3–7 days | 5–7 days |
| Backtested AAR* | 43.1% | 79.4% | 150.4% |
| Number of picks | Up to 2 per week | Up to 10 per week | Up to 10 per week |
| Trade alerts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
*AAR = average annual returns.
If you'd like access to multiple products' trade alerts or complete access to the scanner, you can purchase the Bundle, which combines all of the offerings.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
How much does Stock Market Guides cost?
As mentioned above, Stock Market Guides has four services, each with its own monthly and annual pricing.
Here's the breakdown:
| Stock Investing | Swing Trading | Option Trading | Bundle | |
| Monthly billing | $29/month | $49/month | $69/month | $95/month |
| Annual billing* | $197/year | $397/year | $575/year | $675/year |
*You can save ~30–40% by choosing to pay annually.
The Swing Trading and Option Trading are the most popular services.
Transparency commitment
One thing that requires special note is the SMG team's commitment to transparency.
The result of every trade, win or lose, is automatically posted to the website. Both gains and losses are automatically calculated.
Additionally, the SMG team is not just selling a system — they're using it themselves, taking trades right alongside their members and sharing daily commentary.
I've also found their team to be approachable, responsive, and genuinely invested in helping each member become a better trader.
Whether you have a question about a trade alert or using the scanner, or just have a general question about trading, they're there to help.
They also regularly produce new educational material on how to best use the service and how to improve your trading.
Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. We may receive compensation if you take action through it.
Are there any downsides?
Stock Market Guides can give you a backtested edge, but it does have limitations.
For starters, just because you have a backtested edge doesn't mean you'll win every trade.
SMG's system is based on the results of hundreds of thousands of backtests over many years of trading, so you'll need to plan on taking many of its trades to realize the benefits of its mathematical edge.
Plus, while the scanner can identify higher-probability setups, there will still be losses along the way. It's still up to you to manage risk, stick to your plan, and handle the emotional side of trading, which are often the most challenging parts of becoming a profitable trader.
Final verdict
Stock Market Guides was built to give active swing and options traders an edge in their trading by using historical statistics to find the highest-probability trade setups.
I've found it to be an excellent starting point for finding interesting trade ideas. Instead of scanning for setups myself, I can look at what trades the SMG scanner is seeing, what profit targets and stop loss points it recommends, and plot out the trades from there. It both saves me time and improves my win rate.
While it's not a guaranteed path to profits (and doesn't claim to be), it can give you an edge in the markets and help you become a more consistently profitable trader.
