Motley Fool Alternatives – 5 Worthy Options

Although Motley Fool has an outstanding track record at picking market-beating stocks, this stock picking newsletter isn’t right for everyone. It may not suit your investing style, or you may enjoy the thrill of doing your own research and finding winning stocks on your own.

There are plenty of alternatives to Motley Fool, including newsletters with different styles and self-directed stock research tools. We’ll take a closer look at five of the best Motley Fool alternatives to use today:

• Best for Self-Directed Investors – Seeking Alpha Premium
• Best for Stock Picks – Seeking Alpha Alpha Picks
• Best for Stock Ratings – Zacks
• Best for Fund Ratings – Morningstar
• Best for Portfolio Diversification – Stock Rover

Best Motley Fool Alternatives

We’ll explain what makes these top Motley Fool alternatives stand out and who should use them.

Best for Self-Directed Investors – Seeking Alpha Premium

Seeking Alpha is a great Motley Fool alternative for investors who enjoy doing their own research and want help finding ideas to investigate. The platform provides in-depth financial data and valuation metrics for thousands of stocks, giving you all the data needed to evaluate growth and value stocks.

On top of that, Seeking Alpha offers analysis op-eds from professional contributors. These are nice because they offer multiple viewpoints on a stock, often with competing bullish and bearish perspectives. So, you can get a better sense of what analysts and financial bloggers think about a company before making an investment decision.

Best of all, Seeking Alpha has a top stocks list with around 30 stock ideas to explore. Stocks on the list are highly rated by Seeking Alpha contributors, Wall Street analysts, and a proprietary Seeking Alpha algorithm. The top stocks list turns over every few weeks, bringing in fresh ideas for you to evaluate.

Key Features

• Detailed financial and valuation data
• Comprehensive stock screener
• Top stock list with ideas to explore
• Op-ed articles from professional analysts
• Each stock is rated based on growth, valuation, and more

Pricing: $239 per year

Best for Stock Picks – Seeking Alpha Alpha Picks

Alpha Picks is a stock picking service from the Seeking Alpha team. It’s similar to Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor in that you get two new ready-to-buy stock picks each month. However, it has a very different investing style.

Alpha Picks is designed for active investors, with an investment horizon for picks of around one year. The service focuses on momentum stocks rather than long-term growth stocks. Alpha Picks recommends stocks from a wide range of industries, which is helpful for investors who want to build a more diversified portfolio.

Alpha Picks comes with research reports similar to those offered by Stock Advisor. However, you don’t get access to all of the in-depth research offered with Seeking Alpha Premium.

From its launch in July 2022 to March 2024, Alpha Picks has outperformed the S&P 500 131% to 38%.

Key Features

• Two new ready-to-buy stock picks every month
• Each pick includes a research report
• Picks cover a wide range of industries
• Outperformed the S&P 500 since launch
• Recommendations for already picked stocks to repurchase

Pricing: $499 per year

Best for Stock Ratings – Zacks

Zacks is an investment research firm that provides detailed research on thousands of stocks. What’s great about Zacks is that the research is highly curated by professional analysts, so you don’t have to run your own analyses from scratch.

For example, Zacks gives every stock in its library an A-F grade for valuation, growth, and momentum. It also gives each stock an overall score from 1-5. You can find #1 ranked stocks in a top stocks list, which is a great place to start when searching for new investment ideas.

Investors who want to dig deeper into stocks will find plenty of financial data, although not as much as on platforms like Seeking Alpha or Stock Rover. The platform also offers research reports written by professional analysts, which can provide a nice overview of whether a stock is worthwhile or not.

Key Features

• Value, growth, and momentum ratings
• #1 rank list offers ideas for top stocks to buy
• Stock screener with wide range of fundamental and ratings filters
• Research reports from professional analysts
• Includes #5 rank list for sell-side ideas

Pricing: $249 per year

Best for Fund Ratings – Morningstar

Morningstar is one of the best platforms for fund investing. It offers ratings on thousands of ETFs and mutual funds, making it easy to quickly build a diversified portfolio.

As you build your portfolio, you can use Morningstar’s Portfolio X-ray tool to make sure you stay diversified. This tool analyzes the assets that each of your funds hold so you can see how your portfolio is balanced across market caps, countries, industries, and more.

Morningstar also has excellent mutual fund and ETF screeners, plus “best of” lists to help you quickly find the best fund for any investment niche. You can also compare similar funds side-by-side to find the lowest fee or best performance.

While Morningstar excels at fund research, it’s also a good platform for stock research. You don’t get incredibly detailed financial data, but you do get fair value estimates and research reports written by professional analysts.

Key Features

• Ratings on thousands of ETFs and mutual funds
• Dozens of top funds lists
• Portfolio X-ray tool helps you stay diversified
• Stock, ETF, and mutual fund screeners
• Fair value estimates for thousands of stocks

Pricing: $249 per year

Best for Portfolio Diversification – Stock Rover

Stock Rover is an advanced stock research platform designed for long-term investors. It’s a great choice if you want to develop your own growth or value investing strategy, then find stocks that fit your strategy.

With Stock Rover, you can directly compare stocks to find industry winners or decide which ones are best-suited to your portfolio. The platform offers Excel-like data tables, color-coded data visualizations, and ratings for key factors like value, growth, and quality.

You can also screen for stocks using more than 500 built-in valuation, fundamental, and performance metrics. Stock Rover comes with around 140 built-in screens and these are easy to customize.

Stock Rover also has excellent portfolio management tools. You can easily monitor your portfolio’s performance and ensure you’re fully diversified using correlation analysis. If you want to diversify further, you can use Stock Rover’s screener to find the perfect stock.

Key Features

• Compare stocks in data tables and visualizations
• Screen stocks with 500+ data metrics
• Includes 140+ built-in screening strategies
• Portfolio management tools including correlation analysis
• Fair value estimates for thousands of stocks

Pricing: From $79.99 per year

What Kind of Motley Fool Alternative Do You Need?

If you’re considering alternatives to Motley Fool’s stock picking newsletters, it’s important to think about the type of investing platform you want. This comes down to your investing style.

If you like the idea of getting ready-to-buy stock picks, but don’t like Motley Fool’s focus on long-term growth stocks, then you might want an alternative stock picking service. Alpha Picks offers the same number of picks as Stock Advisor, but it has a shorter investment horizon and offers more diversification across market sectors.

If you prefer to make your own stock picks, then you have several options. Seeking Alpha is a good choice for active investors, while Stock Rover is a powerful research platform for experienced long-term investors. Zacks and Morningstar fall somewhere in the middle, offering easier-to-digest ratings and research for medium and long-term investors.

FAQs

What’s the best stock picking alternative to Motley Fool?

A good alternative to Motley Fool for stock recommendations is Seeking Alpha’s Alpha Picks service. Alpha Picks offers two stock recommendations each month. It also rates stocks already in the portfolio so you know what to repurchase if you have extra cash to invest between new picks.

How do I research Motley Fool stock picks?

Motley Fool provides short research reports with all of its stock picks. However, if you want to do additional research to decide for yourself whether or not to buy a recommendation, you can use a research platform like Seeking Alpha Premium, Zacks, or Stock Rover.

Conclusion: Motley Fool Alternatives

Motley Fool is a stock picking service with an outstanding track record, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for every investor. If you want shorter-term stock picks, consider Seeking Alpha Alpha Picks. If you want to find and research your own stock ideas, we recommend Seeking Alpha Premium, Zacks Premium, and Stock Rover. If you want to build a portfolio with both stocks and funds, consider Morningstar Premium.