Seeking Alpha, the world’s largest investment community platform, provides investors with excellent financial informational content on stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and cryptocurrencies. The company has been at the forefront of alternative financial services since 2004 when it was founded by Wall Street analyst David Jackson.
Seeking Alpha focuses on facilitating its subscribers’ wealth building and portfolio growth through providing extensive research on stocks and other assets. Seeking Alpha also empowers investors to make more informed investment decisions with a high-quality blend of fundamental analysis tools, market data, reliable news and crowdsourced debate.
In addition to a free Basic service, the company currently offers 2 paid subscription products: Seeking Alpha Premium that caters to most investors and Seeking Alpha Pro that is aimed at high net worth individuals and investment professionals. The company also provides access to its Seeking Alpha Marketplace that lets you choose from more than 150 paid investment services.
- World’s largest crowdsourced investment community
- In-depth financial market research
- Opinion and informational articles by highly experienced professionals
- Crowdsourced debate lets you interact directly with other traders or investors
- Focuses mostly on U.S. and Canadian stocks
Seeking Alpha Ratings at a Glance
Seeking Alpha provides crowdsourced content and research for financial markets and the investment community. Even though Seeking Alpha provides subscription and information options to fit investors and traders at all levels, experienced market operators tend to benefit the most from the company’s services.
Seeking Alpha’s website features articles and blog posts by some of the best money and portfolio managers in the business and provides an extensive list of research categories with many subcategories so you can refine your searches.
The company offers a free subscription option as well as Premium and Pro subscription options that involve paying a monthly fee. To get started, you can sign up for Seeking Alpha’s free Basic service or a free 14-day trial Premium subscription to gauge the services it provides. Premium and Pro subscribers can access unlimited analysis, the latest breaking financial news and more than 1 million investing ideas from a variety of sources. Greater detail on each subscription option appears below:
- Seeking Alpha Basic: The free Basic option includes advertisements. This option lets you follow and get new articles from different authors, receive up to 15 newsletters via email and read and post to the Seeking Alpha blog. Research options for the Basic service include limited access to Seeking Alpha’s Quant Ratings and underlying metrics, 5 years of financial statements, a stock comparison page and the ability to sync your stock broker portfolio with Seeking Alpha.
Portfolio management options in the Basic service include a portfolio manager for stocks and ETFs, a financial calendar, personalized news and articles, email alerts on stocks and in-depth analysis of earnings reports and transcripts. The Premium option gives you access to all of these features plus access to Premium investing ideas, conference and earnings call recordings and Seeking Alpha’s Top Rated Stocks rating screener.
- Seeking Alpha Premium: In the Premium and Pro services, you get all of the features listed above plus limited advertising on the Premium service and no ads on the Pro option. At the Premium level, you can read, post and track comments as well as view Seeking Alpha authors’ rating histories, key data and an article sidebar with stock charts. You can also get rating, dividend and earnings forecasts and find the best dividend stocks through Seeking Alpha’s Dividend Grades page.
Other Premium services include access to all Quant Ratings and underlying metrics and financial statements on companies going back 10 years. You can also perform side-by-side stock comparisons, sync Seeking Alpha to your stock broker portfolio, view 3 types of ratings for each stock in your portfolio, and get alerts on upgrades and downgrades to elements of your portfolio.
- Seeking Alpha PRO: The PRO option includes all of the features of the Basic and Premium services plus exclusive newsletters and interviews, access to Seeking Alpha’s Top Ideas, all short ideas in 1 place, and a PRO screener with investing ideas. You also get a VIP editorial concierge that rapidly guides you through the company’s platform.
Seeking Alpha’s customer service can be accessed through the Contact Us page, where you can access the company’s feedback forum to report any issue you may have. Additionally, you can email the company or call in the U.S. at 347-509-6837. The Seeking Alpha website does not have a Live Chat feature, and telephone contact can only be made during Eastern Time business hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Seeking Alpha’s pricing for the Premium and Pro services may be somewhat on the high side for new traders and investors, but for seasoned traders, the value of the information provided is well worth the money.
Seeking Alpha’s pricing for different subscription plans. Source: Seeking Alpha.
The pricing for each subscription option appears below:
- Basic: Free.
- Premium: The most popular option costs $19.99 a month billed annually, which saves you $120 if you pay for the entire year. Otherwise, the service costs $29.99 a month.
- Pro: The Pro option costs $199.99 a month billed annually or $299.99 a month.
- Marketplace: Pricing varies depending on the market tools and professionals you pick. All options include a monthly price list describing the service and expert.
You can download an excellent version of Seeking Alpha’s mobile app, which is available for iOS and Android devices from Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Seeking Alpha’s mobile app for smartphones and tablets. Source: Seeking Alpha.
Some of Seeking Alpha’s most notable advantages include:
Seeking Alpha Marketplace
The Seeking Alpha Marketplace consists of an online page where you can access exclusive content from a wide range of individual financial authors that complement their free articles on Seeking Alpha. For example, if you find a particular author whose investing style agrees with you, you could subscribe to that author through the Marketplace service. By signing up to the author’s service, you receive all of that author’s Premium articles as well.
Seeking Alpha’s Quant Rating System
The Quant Rating System produces an unemotional evaluation of a stock based on the company’s financial statement, stock performance and analyst forecasts for future revenue and earnings.
Seeking Alpha uses 100 metrics for each stock and compares them with other stocks in the sector. The stock then receives a Quant Rating between 1 and 5. A rating of 1 is very bearish, 2 is simply bearish, 3 is neutral, 4 is bullish and 5 is very bullish.
The stock is then graded by 5 factors: value, growth, profitability, momentum and earnings-per-share revisions. The relevant metrics are then compared to the same metrics for other stocks in the sector. The Quant Rating system can be extremely useful in evaluating stocks — the best stocks for retirement, for example. The Quant Rating System is also one of Seeking Alpha's most valuable research tools.
Graphic of a pie chart for a 30-stock portfolio with ticker symbols and percentages that was set up using the Quant Rating System. Source: SeekingAlpha.
News
Seeking Alpha’s extensive financial news resources cover a wide range of investment-related information provided in real-time. You can also get news on the latest initial public offerings (IPOs); top movers on earnings in the tech, energy and healthcare sectors; notable analyst calls; and even cryptocurrencies.
Markets
Seeking Alpha’s market analysis covers stock markets, the economy, gold and precious metals markets and the forex, real estate, commodities and cryptocurrency markets. You can also access the editor’s top picks and a global investing center for international traders.
Education
Seeking Alpha provides an extensive guide to investing for new traders and investors, beginning with opening an account with a broker to trading in stocks, ETFs, commodities, bonds and derivatives. The section also walks you through each stage of investing starting with paper trading and the basics of stock fundamentals to building a portfolio. You can also access a wide range of podcasts and videos on investing.
Seeking Alpha’s site is intuitive and quite easy to navigate, although experienced investors and traders will probably be able to navigate it with more ease. New traders and investors may find the website a bit more challenging to navigate, but that will improve with regular use.
The informational content and expert opinions expressed on Seeking Alpha’s site can be an invaluable resource for traders and investors at all levels. In fact, Seeking Alpha has been one of the go-to websites for this reviewer’s fundamental research on stocks, cryptocurrencies and other assets for the last decade.
Seeking Alpha platform screen. Source: Seeking Alpha.
- ETF Traders
Seeking Alpha vs Competitors
In addition to giving investors the option of linking their portfolios directly to Seeking Alpha, the wide range of useful information from more than 1 million sources makes Seeking Alpha an invaluable research resource for any trader or investor. If you currently lack experience in trading and investing, you can access numerous video presentations and tutorials directly from Seeking Alpha’s website.
Other market information websites generally lack the range and depth of information available on Seeking Alpha, often because of their crowdsourcing models. Also, Seeking Alpha’s website and platform give subscribers exclusive access to its proprietary research tools, such as the Quant Rating System and Seeking Alpha Marketplace.
Because of the high quality and voluminous amount of market information, the excellent proprietary market research tools and the crowdsourcing nature of Seeking Alpha, the market information service definitely deserves a high rating of 4.5 stars. The lack of a live chat feature and the somewhat high monthly subscription price for the service were the main reasons that Seeking Alpha did not attain a 5-star rating.
Seeking Alpha Tutorial
For more information, and for those that prefer to learn through audio-visual means, you can go to Seeking Alpha’s YouTube channel for a tutorial on using Seeking Alpha and other videos.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Seeking Alpha used for?
Seeking Alpha’s main use is for market research because it offers the latest information on U.S. and Canadian stocks as well as other markets. The service can also track your portfolio and gives you access to a wide range of market analytic and research tools.
Can you trade on Seeking Alpha?
No, you cannot use Seeking Alpha to trade. You must instead trade through your preferred broker.
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About Jay and Julie Hawk
Jay and Julie Hawk are a married financial writing and authorship team who co-founded TheFXperts, a notable financial writing services provider. The Hawks each worked professionally in the financial markets and have more than 40 years of trading experience among them. Together, they write books, trade forex online for their own account and others, mentor traders, and have worked actively as professional freelance writers specializing in financial topics for over 15 years.