To beat the market, you need to know not only how to invest smartly, but also how to identify opportunities and maintain a diversified portfolio. While it requires considerable work, an investment service aligned with your strategy can significantly simplify boosting your returns.
In this guide, we’ll explain the benefits of using an investment service and highlight the seven best investment platforms available today.
How Can Investment Services Help You?
Investment services cover substantial ground. Most provide multiple tools for stock analysis, idea generation, investor education, and more. Here are the key ways a professional service can help you maximize your investing potential.
Education
Learning everything you can about investing forms the foundation of investment success. It’s a consistent message from legendary investors like Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, and Peter Lynch that education remains the best investment you can make.
Investment services that teach core investing principles or specific strategies unlock your full potential. The more you understand, the better you can evaluate companies, identify hidden opportunities, and manage investment risk.
Idea Generation
Many investment services center around generating investment ideas. This proves invaluable because finding potential opportunities ranks among the most challenging—and time-consuming—aspects of investing.
Idea generation tools encompass stock screeners, recommendation services, and financial news platforms.
Analysis
Once you have an investment idea, you need analytical tools to determine if it’s a smart investment. Analysis-focused services offer resources to evaluate a company’s financial health or competitive advantage. They also provide access to analyst insights, stock comparison tools, and more.
Numerous different investment analysis services exist. Many investors utilize multiple platforms to examine stocks from various perspectives.
Diversification
Maintaining a diversified portfolio shields you from market volatility. Investment services facilitate diversification by providing insights into companies across broader industry ranges or enabling you to explore new investing strategies.
Portfolio analysis tools also exist that offer metrics about your portfolio’s diversification level. These services can reveal additional diversification opportunities.
Best Investment Services
Now that you understand the value of using investment services, let’s examine seven of our top platform recommendations.
(explain what each offers, who it is good for, and how it benefits investors)
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a stock research platform ideal for self-directed investors. The platform provides comprehensive fundamental data about companies, allowing you to examine a company’s financial health and valuation thoroughly. Seeking Alpha also features a robust fundamental stock screener for finding stocks matching your investment criteria.
Seeking Alpha’s most distinctive feature is its collection of opinion articles from professional investors, analysts, and financial bloggers for every stock. These articles examine the same stock from different perspectives, providing deep insights into its investment potential.
Seeking Alpha costs $4.95 for your first month, then $239 annually.
Motley Fool Stock Advisor
Stock Advisor is Motley Fool’s flagship stock picking newsletter with an outstanding track record of identifying explosive growth stocks. Since launching in 2003, Stock Advisor has returned 454% (as of June 2023) compared to 122% for the S&P 500.
Stock Advisor delivers two new stock recommendations monthly plus a ranking list highlighting the 10 best existing portfolio stocks to double-down on. The service primarily focuses on growth stocks with a five-year investment horizon. Minimal self-directed research is required, making this ideal for investors seeking simplicity.
Stock Advisor costs $199 annually.
IBD Leaderboard
IBD Leaderboard is a stock picking service designed for swing traders and active investors. The service provides weekly recommendations for stocks poised for significant upward moves. Recommendations rely primarily on technical analysis, with most trades resolving within weeks.
IBD Leaderboard’s standout feature is its complete trade planning. You receive entry and exit points plus annotated technical charts showing the patterns you’re trading. These annotated charts serve as valuable educational tools for new investors learning technical analysis.
According to IBD, Leaderboard returned 35.6% compared to 18.8% for the S&P 500 from 2020 through 2022. The service costs $69 monthly, with a four-week trial available for $39.
Stock Rover
Stock Rover is a fundamental stock research platform offering extensive features for investigating potential stock purchases. The service provides research reports for each stock, customizable fundamental data charts, and a powerful stock screener.
Stock Rover particularly excels in portfolio analysis. You can import positions from multiple brokerages to track performance and assess diversification. The platform also assists with position rebalancing and projects future dividend income. The software even simulates how your portfolio statistics will change based on potential trades.
Stock Rover offers a free plan with basic portfolio analysis tools. Paid plans begin at $7.99 monthly.
GuruFocus
GuruFocus embraces the strategy of beating the market by mimicking successful investors’ portfolios. The platform reveals holdings of investors like Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, Carl Icahn, and others. It also highlights stocks multiple gurus are buying simultaneously.
Beyond famous investors, GuruFocus tracks corporate insiders and politicians. A screener helps narrow ideas to stocks fitting your strategy and held by gurus you follow.
GuruFocus starts at $499 annually. You can try the platform free for seven days.
Morningstar
Morningstar stands among the best investment services for ETF and mutual fund investing. The platform provides exceptionally detailed fund analysis, including benchmarks showing how funds compare to their categories in price and performance.
Morningstar maintains lists of top-rated funds across categories like small-cap funds, “inflation fighters,” and foreign funds. These rating lists simplify building diversified fund portfolios with minimal effort.
Morningstar’s portfolio analysis tools are specifically designed for funds. The platform examines holdings within your funds to clarify whether you’re adequately diversified across industries, countries, and market caps.
Morningstar costs $34.95 monthly or $249 annually. A seven-day free trial is available.
TipRanks
TipRanks analyzes what Wall Street analysts, financial bloggers, and professional investors think about stocks to generate investment ideas. The platform offers lists of the highest-rated stocks according to analysts and insiders.
You can follow individual analysts on TipRanks, which helps track analysts covering stocks you’re interested in or those with similar investing strategies. When researching individual stocks, you can view 12-month consensus price targets from all analysts or only top-performing analysts.
TipRanks starts at $30 monthly and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion: Investment Services
Investment services can help you discover and analyze new ideas, diversify your portfolio, and learn new investing strategies. The top seven investment services we’ve highlighted are powerful tools for elevating your investing game and boosting returns.
