VectorVest Review – A Look At This Stock Analysis Platform

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By Theo Madsen

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Vectorvest Review

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VectorVest Review

  • Ease of Use
  • Quality
  • Value
2.7

Summary

VectorVest is a stock analysis and portfolio management system created by investment expert, Dr. Bart DiLiddo. VectorVest uses a combination of fundamental and technical analysis metrics to help users find actional trading opportunities. It supports thousands of assets and includes features such as market timing indicators, stock ratings, charting, a built-in stock screener, and more. Learn more about this system by reading our complete VectorVest review.

Pros

  • Actionable buy and sell signals for the stock market
  • Algorithmic stock ratings and daily trade ideas
  • Market timing indicators ensure you’re trading with the trend
  • Built-in charting tools with technical and fundamental data
  • Compatible with Ally Invest, Interactive Brokers, and TradeStation

Cons

  • Complicated software with poor layout
  • Very little transparency about algorithmic stock ratings
  • Expensive

About VectorVest

VectorVest is a stock analysis and portfolio management system that’s designed to help you trade stocks for a profit. It uses a combination of fundamental and technical metrics to help you find the best stocks to buy right now and tells you when to buy and when to sell.

VectorVest was created by Dr. Bart DiLiddo, an investment expert who has spent more than 30 years creating market interpretation models. The platform is complex and has a steep learning curve, so it’s not right for every trader.

In our VectorVest review, we’ll explain what this platform can do and help you decide if it’s right for you.

Vectorvest Homepage

VectorVest Pricing Options

VectorVest offers 3 pricing tiers: Basic, Enhanced, and Premium. The Basic tier costs $69 per month and offers updated data only at the end of each trading day.

Vectorvest Pricing

The Enhanced plan costs $99 per month and offers data updates every 15 minutes, as well as access to VectorVest’s dynamic trading stop system.

The Premium plan costs $149 per month and offers real-time data, plus access to all of VectorVest’s trading add-ons. This includes access to VectorVest’s automated trading strategies, the most successful of which has returned 105% over the past year.

You can try out any VectorVest plan for 30 days for $9.95.

VectorVest Features

Supported Assets

VectorVest provides market data and analysis for thousands of stocks from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Australia. The platform has an add-on for options trading, but this isn’t part of the main VectorVest platform. VectorVest groups stocks into business sectors and indices, and offers aggregated financial data for these groupings.

Market Timing Indicators

VectorVest offers multiple ways to gauge whether right now is a good way to trade the stock market. The first is the market timing gauge, which VectorVest also refers to as the color guard. This is basically a red-green-yellow scale that indicates whether the market is bullish or bearish. VectorVest typically advises buying stocks when market trends are overall bullish.

Vectorvest Color Guard

You can also view the color guard on a day-to-day basis in table format. This table is useful because you can see the color change over the rows as price action improves or deteriorates. So, it makes it easy to see which way momentum is heading.

The second is VectorVest’s market timing graph. This plots the performance of the major US indices along with graphs of relative timing and the ratio of buying and selling action. In effect, this allows you to go beyond the color guard to look at what’s actually happening in the stock market.

Vectorvest Market Timing Graph

Stock Ratings

One of the most unique aspects of VectorVest is that it provides algorithmically-generated ratings for every stock it covers. The company provides several metrics for each stock, including value, relative value, relative safety, and relative timing.

Vectorvest Stock List

The value metric is essentially a price target, although it’s not clear what these targets are based on. Relative value compares a stock’s expected return to a AAA-rated corporate bond, while relative safety looks at financial stability and relative timing considers technical momentum.

All of these metrics are wrapped into a single VST rating, which offers a useful way to sort stocks in VectorVest. Each VST rating comes with a confidence interval as well as a buy/sell/hold recommendation. Stocks with the highest VST ratings are included in a list of top trade ideas that VectorVest calls Midas touch.

Charting

VectorVest offers in-depth charting tools for individual stocks, ETFs, industries, and indices. You can plot price data and technical indicators as well as a range of financial data from quarterly earnings reports. You can also plot relative timing, safety, and value ratings over time on stock graphs, which is useful for identifying changes in a stock’s momentum or fundamentals.

Vectorvest Charting

Compared to trading platforms like TradingView, technical charting in VectorVest isn’t straightforward or all that flexible. If you use VectorVest as a trading platform, it’s certainly helpful to have built-in charts. But we wouldn’t recommend using VectorVest as a standalone charting software.

UniSearch

The UniSearch module is VectorVest’s built-in stock screener. It comes with dozens of pre-made stock screens centered around price action and VectorVest’s stock ratings. Several of these screens have actionable strategies underlying them, although VectorVest doesn’t explain what they are or how they’re intended to work. So, you’ll need to spend some time understanding the parameters included in each screen and how to incorporate these screens into your trading strategy.

Vectorvest Unisearch

You can also build your own custom stock screens with UniSearch, although doing so is anything but easy. VectorVest’s parameter list isn’t well-organized or searchable, and you have to jump to another part of the platform to create custom formulas.

Customization and Layout

VectorVest’s platform is available as desktop software for Windows and Mac. It is not available online, although there is a stock advisory mobile app with limited trading tools.

Vectorvest Dashboard

VectorVest is complex, and often unnecessarily so. Technical indicators on charts and parameters for stock screens are poorly organized and not searchable. Most pre-made screens and trading strategies aren’t explained, so you have to inspect the relevant parameters yourself to find out how they work.

The good news is that you can set up an unlimited number of portfolios and watchlists within VectorVest. You can easily view stock ratings and pull up charts for any stocks in your watchlists.

VectorVest Compatible Brokerages

VectorVest offers integrated stock trading through Ally Invest, Interactive Brokers, and TradeStation.

VectorVest Platform Differentiators

VectorVest offers a unique and actionable trading system that tells you when to buy and sell stocks. The stock trading system offers simple ratings for each stock and offers a daily list of trade ideas to help you decide what stocks to focus on.

While VectorVest’s system may work for day and swing trading, it requires a lot of trust. VectorVest isn’t transparent about what goes into its stock ratings, and it doesn’t provide much information about how its trading system has performed over the long term. The platform’s market timing indicators are useful, but they can’t justify the cost of the platform on their own.

Compared to stock screening and stock analysis platforms like Trade Ideas, VectorVest is more complex, less customizable, and harder to use. It’s also not as capable for day trading as trading software programs like NinjaTrader. Integrated trading with several brokerages is a plus, but VectorVest doesn’t offer enough other trading tools or an affordable enough platform to help it stand out in a crowded field.

What Type of Trader is VectorVest Best For?

VectorVest is best for active traders who want an actionable, algorithmic trading system to rely on. The platform offers clear buy and sell signals, although these signals don’t come with a lot of information or justification. VectorVest is also difficult to get started with, so traders need to be prepared to spend several days to weeks learning how to use the platform’s trading tools.

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Theo Madsen

Theo has been actively trading the forex markets since 2013. Over the past five years, he has gained experience trading currencies, stocks, options, and futures. Theo's trading experience led him to test out over one hundred different trading services and he shares his insights in reviews to help other traders.

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