Seeking Alpha Review 2024: Legit or Scam?
Seeking Alpha is the largest investing community. It serves as an online space for investors to share and discuss stock and investment ideas.
What is Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha is the largest investing community. It serves as an online space for investors to share and discuss stock and investment ideas. Because of its crowd-sourced nature, the content is primarily generated by the community of contributors, which includes individual investors, finance professionals, and unique industry experts. .
The platform has a few primary features:
- In-Depth Articles and Analyses: Seeking Alpha publishes information on individual stocks, market sectors, and investment strategies.
- Open Forums and Discussions: Users have the opportunity to participate in open discussions about specific stocks, investment strategies, and market trends.
- Portfolio Tracking: Users can track their own investment portfolios and receive updates related to their investments.
Seeking Alpha’s Plan Options
Seeking Alpha offers a free subscription, but it comes with a monthly limit on the number of articles you can read. For greater access, you’ll need to subscribe to one of their paid options.
Basic
The free Basic plan comes with:
- One free Premium article per month
- A free portfolio and real-time alerts on the stocks you follow
- The ability to view real-time stock prices
If you’re looking for surface-level stock insights, the Basic plan will suffice.
Premium
The Premium plan costs $199 per year for the first year, unless you sign up using an affiliate link. In that case, you’re able to get a subscription at $189 per year. After that, it’ll run you $239 per year. It comes with:
- Unlimited access to expert investor content
- A community of “serious” investors
- Quant Ratings (Seeking Alpha’s ratings on stocks that have outperformed the S&P 500)
- Rankings of the top stocks and ETFs
- Stock and ETF screeners
- A portfolio health check and warnings to help you become a more informed investor
- Premium is ideal for mid-level investors with more investing knowledge than the average Joe.
Premium is ideal for mid-level investors with more investing knowledge than the average Joe.
Pro
Seeking Alpha Pro will run you a whopping $2,400 per year, but it comes with quite a bit:
- Instant access to investment ideas and performance tracking from the top 15 analysts on the platform
- Insider information on under-the-radar investment opportunities
- VIP service, including the option to receive a list of top analysts to follow
- Information on high-quality growth stocks, before they become mainstream
- All the features included in the Premium bundle
In our opinion, the Pro membership only makes sense for incredibly seasoned investors. Otherwise, it’s a decent chunk of cash that you might be better off investing with instead.
Investing Groups
If you’d prefer to subscribe to a single investing expert, you can do so through Seeking Alpha’s Investing Groups. Each group offers real-time investing and trading ideas, direct contact with the leader, and a community chat room for in-depth discussions.
The price of each group varies from around $30 to $300+ per month.
Alpha Picks
For $99 per year, the Seeking Alpha quantitative analysis team will provide you with their Alpha Picks — two portfolio additions per month that they believe will perform well. The team conducts in-depth, data-driven research to generate their picks and has a track record of outperforming the market by around 20%.
The Pros and Cons
Like any financial platform, Seeking Alpha has its pros and cons.
Pros
Diverse Content: Due to the platform’s crowd-sourced content, there is a wide variety of thoughts and opinions.
Engaged Community: Seeking Alpha has over 200 million monthly users, leading to an engaged community of investors.
Timely News: The platform offers timely news updates that allow you to stay in the loop about what’s going on in the market.
Free Plan Option: While it does have limitations, there is a free version of Seeking Alpha. This makes the platform more accessible to investors that want to learn and engage but might not have the funds to purchase a premium plan.
Cons
Potential for Biases: Contributors may have their own biases when it comes to the information they share and the advice they give. It’s important, as a user, to exercise caution when reading the information you find within the platform.
Potential for Overwhelm: Seeking Alpha is packed with value, but this might be overwhelming to the average investor.
Limited Free Subscription: While the platform does have a free option, it is severely limited.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Trustworthy is Seeking Alpha?
Seeking Alpha hosts opinions of various contributors, and each individual’s advice will vary in its trustworthiness. Exercise caution when engaging, and do your own research for accuracy.
Is Seeking Alpha a Good Stock Picking Service?
Seeking Alpha is an excellent stock picking service. In 2023, their Quant Ratings outperformed the market and competitors like Motley Fool.
Is Seeking Alpha Worth It?
Seeking Alpha’s free plan is great for individuals dipping their toes into the world of investments. The paid options are better for experienced investors.
How Can You Read Seeking Alpha Without Paying?
Seeking Alpha’s free Basic plan allows you to read any article on any stock, although there is a monthly limit to how much you can read. You can begin a free two-week trial to see whether upgrading for more content is worth it.
Is it Safe to Link a Brokerage Account to Seeking Alpha?
Yes. Seeking Alpha uses Plaid to connect to your brokerage account. Plaid is fully encrypted from end to end and employs strict security protocols to ensure your data remains safe.