Learning To Invest | US Market - Research Resources

12th Jan '22 by Charlie Matheson

34 comments 1959 reads

Following on from what appeared to be a bit of interest in the US market in today's SCVR discussions and recognition that Stocko doesn't cater much for the US market in terms of commentary, I thought it would be useful to start an initial thread focusing on the resources for research and idea generation that people use for the US market. This could be a good base to start from and a useful information repository – additional discussion boards can then be started focusing on different themes and companies.

I’m happy to kick off though I should be clear from the outset that I’ve only been investing in the US market for around 18 months and am largely focused on growth companies (which have been hammered recently) so I’ve still got a lot to learn and I’m still adapting and refining my focus. But here’s what I currently use to research the US market:

Motley Fool (https://www.fool.com/premium/) I subscribed to MF UK for a year and wasn’t overly impressed but MF in the US is a totally different beast. There are a huge amount of resources available if you subscribe to any of their services, such as discussion boards, livestream discussions, deep dives, podcasts and of course their stock ideas. I subscribe to Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers which are their two most popular and cheapest services. Stock Advisor is $199 a year and Rule Breakers is $299 a year but there’s always a deal to get on at least the first year’s subscription. They’ve got a great record and I feel it’s a reliable source of ideas.

7investing (https://7investing.com/) – set up in 2020 by some ex-Motley Fool’s – they have 7 advisors who each have different styles (healthcare, growth, retail etc.) and each give 1 recommendation each month, so 7 rec’s each month in total (some are re-recommendations). So lots of interesting companies to research and lots of additional content outside of the rec’s. $399 a year.

Seeking Alpha (https://seekingalpha.com/) – huge amount of articles and research available. I currently only have free access which gives you only a handful of articles a month but think I’ll go for the paid option to have full access which is $20 a month.

Saul’s Investing Discussions (https://boards.fool.com/sauls-investing-discussions-120980.aspx?mid=35023110) – of all the discussion boards on the Motley Fool, this is the…

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SCI20

15th Jan '22

Dropbox: Quality72 Value32 Momentum51 StockRank™51

rmillaree

How do you find Stockopedia for the US market? I was put off by the underperformance of the top ranked stocks.

Being a tightwad i don't subscribe to the us side of things here on stocky - its slightly annoying not having the info to hand but yahoo finance and simplywallstreet (well worth playing with the free signup) that gives me enough to go on supplemented by the 3 monthly info chucked out by most us companies and there is some fairly good coverage on you tube ref most us stocks too - if you filter out the obvious rampers.
Cheers for highlighting the numbers SCI20 - seems pretty middle of the road for now ref those numbers. Thats not unexpected as really the bottom line profits at present arent as good as the underlying cashflow suggests should be the case later on.

Rusty2

16th Jan '22

Thanks, I will have a look at simplywallstreet. I’m similar, but I did have Europe for a while. The US region I may try it for a while, I can drop it at next renewal if I wish.

One issue with dropbox that i didn't highlight that is probably relevant is that with regard to the sharebuybacks these look like they are being done at the same time as they issue wads of options/shares to staff/directors. Its somewhat more common in the us to go down the shares route and not sure if newer listed companies that want to concentrate on allocating their cash are more likely to use this more during early expansion. Hopefully its also the case that if its say $150-$200 mill per year of wages not getting expensed and hidden in the share options then if that stays roughly the same as profits increase the sums become less of an issue as the years go buy. In some repects parking the difference into cheap debt and repaying when cashflow is truly prodigious rather than diluting shareholders now isnt the worst route. It would probably turn into a complete disaster though if they don't keep increasing profits and cashflow each year.

dennisvictor

17th Jan '22

Thanks for your post. I'm missing a bit more discussion here on EU and US stocks. I'm apparently one of the few non-UK people here :)

You're already following more or less the same resources as I do although you're paying for more of them than I would. So I will just add a few more that wasn't already mentioned.

Keep in mind that my strategy for investing is 75% dividend growth and 25% pure growth and you already mentioned some of the resources for researching pure growth stocks.

www.SureDividend.com for detailed info, analysis and inspiration on dividend stocks.

www.DividendGrowthInvestor.com for a very US-centric point of view. But I feel like his strategy aligns well with my own, so I follow it for comments on a few stocks that we both own as well as inspiration.

www.io-fund.com for analysis and research reminiscent of Motley Fool and ARK on pure growth. Focused on technology.

One challenge with Stockopedia is that it only goes back 10 years, which is a limitation when you're researching dividend growth over the long term. In this case I will combine Stockopedia with SeekingAlpha.

stevef77

Interesting post. This discussion tempted me to take out a subscription for the US as well as the UK. I've just been playing with it for a few minutes but I can already see that the stockranks appear to have less relevance in the US markets. If you look at all the combinations of stockrank, the UK significantly outperforms US, despite UK markets overall lagging the US.

For example, the VM Rank in the UK achieves +401% since inception, whereas for the US it's only 78%.

Not sure if it's a methodology thing but does suggest that this is one aspect of the data that it less helpful.

Any thoughts? Has Ed done any of the Stockrank analysis on the US universe?

Thanks

I think that would make sense - if the top performers in the us have tended to be the faang companies and similar it would make sense they probably havent flagged up as being value candidates. Not sure where the rest of the us outperformance has come from (if there is any) - i would guess for the good companies you would have needed to pay that bit extra for the priviledge as the market would know its a good un and price accordingly. I bought some Disney a couple of years back and dont particularly remember it being particularly cheap when i bought it.

Isn't that because the US rank doesn't get introduced until 2015 while Europe and UK starts in 2013? If I change the calculation to last three years - where all three markets are available - then it looks quite different.

US 109%

EU 103%

UK 64%

I don’t have the US region. How does the QM rank compare?

I believe Stockopedia works better on small to mid caps, much of the growth in the US has been large caps, stocks such as $SHOP 10 bagged in a few years, I don’t think that was highly rated on Stockopedia. Of course the companies in the US are generally larger than the UK. Also they have large technology companies which we don’t.

I wonder if Stockopedia would consider doing a trial period for different regions?

Last 3Y QM list for EU, US and UK:
UK; 97%, EU; 69%; US; 72%.

You're right about Shopify. It's been at a 50-ish StockRank the last few years. Currently its only redeeming rank in StockRanks is Growth, which is at 90. Everything is either in red or neutral.

In general Stockopedia punishes growth stocks that are losing money.

18th Jan '22

Thanks that is useful.

$SHOP has fallen back recently which may account for the red ratings now. There were a lot of US growth stocks around last year, that were making losses, but were expected to start making profits shortly, these would not be well ranked on Stockopedia but the share prices were rocketing, this is what happened with SHOP a few years ago, went from $100 to around $1600 in a few years. Stockopedia is not good on new companies or loss making ones because it looks backwards.

On stocks such as $MSFT and $AAPL it probably works well and I think both of those were quite highly ranked.

jonkingston

Please add the Capital Employed Podcast to your list https://capitalemployed.fm/

We cover a lot of US companies especially in the small cap end of the market.

Charlie Matheson

19th Jan '22

Hi Jon - I've really enjoyed your podcast and should have included it on the list though must confess i'm disappointed you've gone to a premium model. don't blame you for doing so, just disappointing for a podcast whore such as myself. Thanks, Charlie

Ragusa

30th Jan '22

31st Jan '22

Sorry the Gremlins stole my post yesterday to somewhere else when I edited a number.

Stockopedia is not good for commentary/leads on US Stocks but the information in the Stock Reports is very good for doing research on buys or sells of US Stocks that one may be considering.

Other sources that used are MotleyFool.com Stock Adviser which is a subscription service but does produce very good leads on US Stocks to consider buying. It’s main disadvantage is that it is poor at advising when to sell even if they have exited.

Stock Rover is a Research and Portfolio service with the basic service free and the subscription service upgrades as you want to pay. Very good well written Research Reports on all US Stocks.

Portseido is a Portfolio site in Beta and free to date. It produces great graphics on Portfolio performance. Where it goes in the future is not certain but probably subscription.

There are other sites like Wallmine which is good on portfolio results analysis and Seeking Alpha which has a lot of guys pumping shares but generally good for information on Stocks but take with a grain of salt some of the posts.

Personally think US Stocks will struggle and show moderate price growth in 2022 . Hold 21 US Stocks in one portfolio and 15 US Stocks in another. Think European Stocks are undervalued and some UK Stocks and intend to pick carefully in 2022 in these Stocks. There are great forward thinking companies in Scandinavia, France, Holland and Switzerland that are ignored by UK investors.The problem with UK is that because the overall Stock market is really small that one knee jerk issue can upend the entire market for ages. The US Stock market is more sheepish so that when the mood changes it is across the board in a given direction,

Would welcome more commentary and potential ideas to kick around in Stockopedia . As the largest Stock market in the World Stockopedia really should have a section on US Stocks!!!!

1st Feb '22

Totally agree on the US-focus, which should be higher here.

Thanks for the input on sources. I wasn't familiar with Stock Rover. Are you paying for that currently?

Seeking Alpha I find good for inspiration and data, but super unreliable. I wouldn't bet my own money on bears and bulls on there.

I also found Seeking Alpha unreliable for researching data on EU companies, which is a concern. If your data isn't correct, don't present it.

For a good service on Stock Rover, the Essentials Plan which is free is very basic, and, you will need to go higher. Suggest if interested load your Portfolio on Essentials and play around with it then consider moving to Premium which starts at $17.99pm or $180py when you have got used to it. You can buy a further higher stage which I have not got. The Dashboard is a bit clunky. The US Stocks Research Reports even at the price $100 py are worth it and are very clear included for sub paying service. Think it is highly rated in the US if you Google site comparisons.

Seeking Alpha has some good contributors on it for free but you need to take a lot of the comments with a grain of salt as they are probably promoting or running down the Stock. When Trump was in Office it got very nasty and partisan. Never used it for European shares apart from shares that are double quoted in US and Europe - ASM.AS, ASML.AS, ADYEN.AS

I agree about Seeking Alpha, the problem is you get too many articles, it is difficult to pick the wood from the trees. I use Tipranks now, I find it better than SA, lots of information for free. You can follow certain members, who all have a success rating.
some features I think are better than Stockopedia, such as the quarterly reported earnings, how they compare to the forecasts. Reporting in the US is a lot more controlled, with scheduled quarterly reports.
Not convinced about Stockopedia for the US.

2nd Feb '22

Sorry apologies there on Stock Rover subs I was reading off the website rather than my own notes on subs. There is Stock Rover Free, Essentials is $8pm/$80py, Premium $18pm/$180py and Premium Plus more again. Think Premium at $180py is fine if you experiment with Free.

Agree with you on Stockopedia and US Stocks because of the importance of Quarterly reporting and tuning in to that vibe which changes the market very quickly if news is not good. However, the financial data on US Stocks on Stockopedia in Stock Reports is very good if you want data to back up your own views.The Stockopedia Dashboard is also very good for US Stocks and seems accurate as I annually compare the numbers to another portfolio schedule from my brokers. Will try Tipranks thanks for the “tip”

US Market - research resources

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Charlie Matheson

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