Validea Review – Is This Stock Research Platform Worth Using?

About Validea

Validea is a stock research platform that builds model portfolios based on the investing strategies used by some of the world’s top investors. These guru portfolios are easy to follow, and Validea also offers a screener to help you find top stocks that may have just missed the cut. Validea also offers ETF portfolios, making it easy to build a diversified portfolio that’s more resilient against changing market conditions.

In our Validea review, we’ll cover everything you need to know to decide if this platform is right for you.

Validea Pricing Options

Validea offers two plans: Standard and Professional. Validea Standard costs $29.95 per month, $74.95 per quarter, or $269.95 per year. It includes only the platform’s original 12 guru portfolios and doesn’t offer ETF portfolios.

Validea Professional costs $99.95 per month, $269.95 per quarter, or $899.95 per year. It includes all 22 guru portfolios, ETF portfolios, and options for tax-efficient portfolio rebalancing.

You can try out Validea free for 7 days.

Validea Features

Guru Portfolios

Validea has taken the investing strategies of gurus like Warren Buffet, the Gardner brothers, Peter Lynch, and others and used them to create model portfolios. Each portfolio targets stocks based on different criteria, based on Validea’s interpretation of a guru’s investing strategy. However, the exact parameters that Validea uses to decide what stocks to include in these model portfolios are not shared.

Most of Validea’s guru portfolios have beaten the S&P 500 when limiting each portfolio to 10 stocks and rebalancing monthly or annually. You can also see how they would have performed with 20 stocks or a different rebalancing frequency.

For each portfolio, you can see what stocks are currently included as well as what stocks would make the portfolio cut if it were rebalanced today. The service sends out email alerts to let you know whenever changes are made in each portfolio, making them easier to follow along with.

Still, this isn’t exactly a stock-picking service. Without any explanation behind the stocks that are included in each portfolio, it’s hard to know what’s going on or to augment the picks with your own research.

ETF Portfolios

Validea also has a selection of 23 ETF portfolios. Of these, 7 are variations on a “permanent” portfolio. They invest in a mix of asset classes, including stocks, bonds, gold, and commodities, to provide relatively stable returns in all market conditions.

Another 8 are factor portfolios, each of which invests in 5-10 ETFs based on momentum, growth, value, or other characteristics. Only 15 factor funds are tracked in Validea’s ETF universe, so the 8 portfolios aren’t very different from one another.

Similarly, the final 8 ETF portfolios are sector portfolios. Validea tracks 10 sector ETFs, and each portfolio invests in a different combination of them based on value, momentum, and performance.

Stock Research

Validea offers a few different tools for researching individual stocks. First, the factor research module enables you to generate a stock profile based on factors like market cap, value, momentum, volatility, and more. You can compare multiple stocks’ profiles side-by-side, which is helpful when diversifying your portfolio.

The guru analysis module lets you see whether an individual stock passes the criteria that Validea uses for its guru portfolios. This analysis can be handy if you want an overview of a stock’s valuation or growth metrics, since most of the guru strategies are based around either value or growth. 

Guru analysis is also available in the form of a stock screener. You can pull up a list of stocks that pass any individual guru strategy in Validea, or that pass strategies from multiple different gurus. The screener also lets you set basic fundamental and technical filters, but it’s not very customizable.

For quick stock screening, there are built-in screens for top value, momentum, and growth stocks and ETFs. These screens are not customizable, and Validea does not reveal the filters that go into them.

Ease of Use

Validea is well-laid out and easy to navigate. You can follow specific guru portfolios and get email alerts any time holdings are moved in or out of a portfolio. 

However, Validea doesn’t offer many customization options. You cannot create your own portfolios or watchlists for comparison against the guru portfolios. You also can’t save a custom stock screen for future use. These are minor drawbacks, but they make it harder to use Validea for building your own portfolio as opposed to only for copying the existing guru portfolios.

Validea Platform Differentiators

Validea takes a creative approach to helping everyday investors build a portfolio that investors like Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch would be proud of. While we wish that Validea would provide more information about the specifics behind each guru strategy, it’s very useful to be able to simply copy the strategies of the world’s most successful investors. The stock screener also makes it easy to identify promising stocks that meet the investing criteria for multiple different gurus.

What Type of Trader is Validea Best For?

Validea is best for long-term investors who want to apply the strategies of the world’s most successful investors to their own portfolios. With Validea, it’s easy to follow a model portfolio from any single guru or to build your own custom portfolio that combines stocks from multiple different gurus.

Validea is also useful for ETF investors, and particularly for investors who want to use ETFs to hedge against uncertainty. The model ETF portfolios are simple to follow and don’t change over frequently.

Importantly, Validea doesn’t offer many tools for active investors to do their own research. It’s a great platform if you’re happy taking the model portfolios and incorporating them into your own portfolio, with only limited modifications using the factor reports and stock screener for research. On the other hand, Validea is lacking for investors who want to dig deep into recommended stocks to find out more about what makes them worth investing in.

If you are interested in stock picks and model portfolios, here are some of our other reviews you may want to read:

• Motley Fool Review – Stock picks from a time-tested team of analysts
• Zacks Premium Review – Self-directed research tools for stock discovery and analysis
• TipRanks Review – Model portfolios and stock picks from wall street analysts, fund managers, and investors
• GuruFocus Review – Model portfolios from investing “gurus” (very similar to Validea)

Pros

• Easy to follow guru portfolios
• ETF portfolios hedge against market risk
• Email alerts about portfolio changes
• Preset stock screens
• Doesn’t require much research effort

Cons

• Limited information about strategies used to build portfolios
• Few tools for in-depth stock research
• No saved custom portfolios or stock screens