If you prefer having control of your investing strategy or simply want to know what’s happening in the financial markets, there is a lot to keep up with. Few of us have the time to read the Wall Street Journal every day so we know the latest news.
Blog articles, podcasts, and books are some of the other ways that a person can learn about personal finance and investing. But, there are so many on the subject that the question then becomes where to start?
Not everyone has an investment advisor that they can turn to for sound advice either. Luckily individual investors and other interested parties can access investment newsletters to keep up with the financial markets.
Stock newsletters can be used to supplement surfing investment websites when conducting investing research or can be used as a standalone for investment ideas. So, what are the best stock market newsletters? We’re glad you asked! We did the research for you, so let’s take a closer look at stock market newsletters so you can find the top choice to get your information.
What are Stock Market Newsletters?
In the simplest terms, you can think of investment newsletters as magazines. Investing newsletters can be subscribed to for educational purposes.
What’s interesting is that these personal finance newsletters came to be because of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s website states the following:
“publishers of bona fide newspapers, news magazines, and business or financial publications of general and regular circulation” are not considered investment advisors.
A publication must have the following three elements to qualify from this exclusion:
(1) the publication must offer only impersonal advice, i.e. advice not tailored to the individual needs of a specific client, group of clients, or portfolio;
(2) the publication must be ‘bona fide’, containing disinterested commentary and analysis rather than promotional material disseminated by someone touting particular securities, advertised lists of stocks ‘sure to go up’ or information distributed as an incident to personalized investment services; and
(3) the publication must be of general and regular circulation rather than issued from time to time in response to episodic market activity or events affecting the securities industry.”
Basically, this is saying that investing newsletters should be published on a regular schedule (daily, weekly, or monthly newsletter) with general advice that’s for the education of its subscribers. An investment newsletter should not provide personalized investment advice such as stock recommendations for your investment portfolio.
How Investment Newsletters Work
The typical investment newsletter will have several sections divided up into subjects such as market analysis, stock recommendation, and other pieces of information. The information is intended to provide the reader with a view of what’s happening in the market and the trends that are occurring.
An investing newsletter can focus be more general or highly specialized. For example, it may only talk about mutual fund investments. Real estate, commodities, alternative investments are other areas that some investing newsletters specialize in.
Why Purchase a Stock Market Newsletter?
Experienced traders, long-term investors, and those who are new to investing can all benefit from investing newsletters. When seeking out investment advice, it is never a good idea to go the “cheapest route”.
Paying for an investment newsletter (or a few investing newsletters) can make a lot of sense when they are full of value. There are also investing newsletters that are totally free that can be used to learn about retirement planning or whatever type of information you’re seeking.
The reasons that people subscribe to these financial newsletters vary, but they are often for the following reasons:
Entertainment and Fun
Those that want to “beat the market”, keep up with the latest tech news, or enjoy reading about what’s going on may subscribe to an investing newsletter. They are a great resource for investment strategies and could spur investing ideas that you otherwise may never have considered.
Education and Improve your Investing
Stock newsletters can provide market insights, in-depth analysis, and other information that are educational in nature. Learning about the stock market through investing newsletters provides the opportunity to become more knowledgeable.
The writers and editors of these publications typically have vast knowledge and experience with the stock market. You get to borrow their mind-share on investment advice and other topics. Ultimately, this helps improve your investing abilities.
Save Time
Between working, kids, dealing with traffic, etc. we are are all very busy. Those of us who want to manage our own investment portfolio know that this is a time-consuming activity. Investment newsletters can generate trade ideas to guide fundamental research on what stocks to focus on.
Make Money
The most obvious reason that a person may want to look at these subscription services is to make money. This looks a bit different for each investor. Some want to focus on index funds that follow other markets or industries, while other investors are focused on dividends.
There are also investors that want to look at a high-growth investing service because they want to beat the market. There are various investment newsletters that are focused on these different areas.
Manage an Investment Portfolio
Many people prefer managing their own investments rather than having an investment advisor do it for them. Subscribing to an investing newsletter will provide a source of sound advice and investment recommendations for the individual investor to consider.
Matching Your Newsletter Service to your Investment Goals
The best investing newsletter is going to be the one that matches your specific investment goals. Don’t pay or subscribe to newsletters that focused on the bear market or a type of security that you have no interest in for your own portfolio.
Want to learn more about Vanguard or Fidelity funds? A stock advisor service that makes stock recommendations isn’t going to be your wheelhouse.
Investment newsletters will fall into usually one of these categories:
General market: Newsletters with this focus will discuss general economic and market conditions. This may include forecasts, trends, and analysis. Specific stock recommendations aren’t typically made.
New Skills: These newsletters are like training a course or training on a new skill. They can teach you new investing skills and concepts that you can then use to apply to the real world.
Investment Ideas: Newsletters in this category work like a stock advisor, providing you with potential stocks to consider. Some may provide ratings but they don’t usually go as far as telling you when to buy, sell, or allocate to each position.
Investment Grades: Grades, scores, and ranks for lists of investments are found with these types of newsletters.
Model Portfolio: With these newsletters, they publish their model portfolios which subscribers can mirror their own accounts if they wish. It’s very similar to investment simulations where an initial amount is invested and allocating funds towards a certain number of stocks. Each time a trade is made, subscribers are notified.
What to look for in a Stock Newsletter
There are a ton of investment newsletters out there, aside from what we are listing here. Some of the newsletters could be great choices too.
Unless you have a ton of spare time, it’s not efficient to subscribe to every single one that sounds interesting. Here’s what you should look for:
Strong Performance
Decide what you want to get out of your subscription with an investment newsletter. That could be high dividend income, beating the market on annual returns, etc.
Find the newsletter that best aligns with this by looking for ones that track and report on their performance in that area.
For example, if you want a stock newsletter that consistently performs marketing-beating returns, they should be talking about how good they are at it. You should be able to find performance reporting that demonstrates this.
Accurate and Credible Performance
Once you’ve found a newsletter that performs well given your metrics, you need to verify that it is credible. Claims of extraordinary performance in marketing materials should be credible.
Read the fine print and do some research before accepting this as true. For example, a newsletter could claim that “Recommendations have led to an annualized return of 130% over the past five years”.
Yet upon closer review, you find out that the annualized return of the newsletter was 5% while the broad market was 5.5%.
Spot Concerning Signs
You should also be aware of some of the red flags which tell you exactly which stock newsletters to stay away from.
Practices and behaviors that demonstrate you should avoid them include:
- “Guaranteeing” that you will see results and profits in the future
- Penny stock newsletters are generally very speculative and the profit potential is low given the risk
- Vague tracking in how they track their performance and how it is reported
- Repeats their recommendations over several of their issues
- Provides personalized advice which is prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court’s description of an investment newsletter
Best Stock Market Newsletters
Now, let’s get to the meat of it and talk about the best stock market newsletters out there. Here they are below, ranked in order.
1. Motley Fool Stock Advisor
Our choice for the best investing newsletter is from Motley Fool. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor newsletter is a weekly newsletter that focuses on active investing, beating the market, stock picks. The annual subscription costs $199. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee if you want to try it out before taking the plunge.
This stock picking service is one of the oldest paid investment newsletters around. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor has one key focus: Make stock recommendations that beat the market.
Since its inception in 2002, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor has on average provided investing with stock recommendations that have done just that. Given their high price point, you’d expect their past performance to look like it does.
Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor emails a stock recommendation on the first and third Thursday of each month. So you’re not going to get a ton of trade ideas, but considering their track record, you can feel confident you’re getting the best investment options out there.
Some of the past stock recommendations include Netflix, Amazon, and Booking.com.
An updated list of their 10 “Best Buys Now” is sent on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. This ongoing list has stock picks that Motley Fool Stock Advisor believes will continue outperforming the market.
Motley Fool’s stock picks are a great choice for average investors. If you have little investing experience or are just starting out, this Motley Fool investment newsletter is especially useful.
The investment thesis that Motley Fool advises is that the long-term approach is the best investment strategy to follow. Motley Fool recommends diversifying your portfolio to manage risk factors and maximize gains.
To help do this, Motley Fool offers their “Steady Eddies” recommendations. These are stocks and ETFs that have had solid growth and stability that should provide steady future results to hit long-term goals.
Get Access to Motley Fool Stock Picks for Only $1.90/week2. Motley Fool Rule Breakers
Looking for an investment newsletter that consists of stick picks with high growth potential? Motley Fool Rule Breakers chooses the best stocks to invest in today that will be the future leaders in the market. The investing newsletter costs $99 per year.
This Motley Fool makes stock picks out of relatively unknown stocks. You won’t see names like Apple or Google on their list. Their stock recommendations are hidden gems in the stock market.
Motley Fool Rule Breakers has included investment ideas such as Netflix or Amazon in the past before they were what they are today.
How do they make their stock picks? When looking at growth stocks, Motley Fool makes a stock market analysis of the following:
- Innovative Company – The business must be making waves in emerging industries
- Competitive Advantage – It must have competitive advantages over competitors such as proprietary technology, patents, etc.
- Sustainable Business – The long term prospects of the company must be good and the likelihood that they will be disrupted by new technology is low
- Good Management – Having a good management team that includes a strong leadership presence
- Strong Consumer Appeal– The branding must be strong and customer interest must be high
Stock picks from Motley Fool Rule Breakers come from the following categories:
- IPO stocks – Stocks that have been newly listed on the stock exchange
- Stocks in fast-growing and emerging industries – i.e. Technology-based companies in industries like Big Data, Cloud Computing, 3D Printing, and Cyber Security
- Stocks in emerging countries – Foreign countries including China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Thailand, etc.
- Stocks of future technology companies – Think of businesses in 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and the Internet of things
If you look at the track record of Rule Breakers, you can see that they’ve been successful at choosing the best stock picks. Let’s say that you invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 in 2004. This is the year that Rule Breakers was first launched. That investment would be worth a little over $40,000 as of the end of 2020.
Now if you had invested that $10,000 in Rule Breakers in 2004, your average return would be significantly higher – totally almost $120,000 at the end of 2020. That’s almost a three times return on your investment.
With a subscription to their investing newsletter, you get:
- Two stock recommendations each month including their “Best Buys Now” from founder David Gardner and his investment team
- Real-time email notifications when its time to sell so you always get the best stock prices
- Access to all Motely Fool Rue Breakers recommendations from the past
- The Motley Fool’s Best Buy Now
- The Motley Fool’s Starter Stocks; is great for new investors who are working on building their investment portfolio with stock picks
3. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
Another one of the best investing newsletters also has a lot of great personal finance content. Kiplinger’s is a monthly magazine that’s been around since 1947 under different names. 2/3 of its content is on personal finance while the rest of its content is dedicated to investing.
It’s only $29.95 a year to $39.90 for two years. You can choose between a print, digital-only, or a mix of both versions of the magazine.
While most newsletters focus on investing topics, what’s nice about Kiplinger’s is that also covers money management topics. This makes it a versatile resource for your overall financial well-being.
The focus areas include:
- Money – Articles that discuss financial issues including retirement, taxes, credit cards, budgeting, and saving. It also may discuss college, healthcare, real estate, and other areas that may require financial planning. Spending money on necessities like your utilities and products that protect or enhance your wealth such as insurance are also discussed.
- Spending – Topics related to discretionary consumer spending that doesn’t benefit your wealth or you don’t really need.
- Investing outlook – Includes outlooks, recommendations, and analysis on various markets. The majority of their trade ideas are mutual funds. Some stocks are also profiles and lesser-known investments including commodities.
- Investing method – Discussions on different investment products and strategies that investors may use. ETFs, how to use index funds, timing the market, and popular blogs to read are other topics that have been covered under this category.
Every issue varies a bit on the specific topics that are covered. Because it’s a monthly publication, you don’t have to invest time every day or week to read them.
The articles on investing themselves aren’t things that require you to jump on immediately. You can buy the stocks or funds later on and still get good results on these same trades if you take action faster.
Because of this, it is worth considering following a few financial websites or putting a few dollars in a more regular investment newsletter. That way if you want a mix of a leisurely and hard and fast approach to investing, you’ve covered all your bases.
The investing strategies themselves are timeless. it works well with advice from other sources like investing websites and a broker.
The money management articles are what truly differentiates Kiplinger’s from other investment newsletters. They can make you think differently about financial decisions and how you could save money by doing things differently.
Click Here To Get Started4. Morning Brew
This is a free investment newsletter that packs a ton of value. The Morning Brew delivers business and financial news every day except for Sundays. There is an optional Sunday Light Roast edition.
The material is short and sweet and well-curated. The content is sharp, witty, and humorous.
It was definitely written with Millennials in mind. Morning Brew was started by University of Michigan graduate, Alex Liberman in 2014. He noticed that his fellow business classmates all wanted to seem like they were informed and read The Wall Street Journey every day.
Yet, most of them simply glanced through for a few minutes and missed the key takeaways. Their subscriber base grew from 125,000 in 2018 to over 2 million by 2020.
The free newsletter starts out by providing a summary of the most relevant financial news. You also get charts with yesterday’s stock index performance (S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow-Jones Industrial Average), 10-year Treasury, and cryptocurrencies.
After this brief recap, the big business news stories are highlighted. Every Monday, the Morning Brew provides an economic calendar for that week. Major financial events such as Federal Reserve meetings, political events, and major earnings reports are broken down.
To provide entertainment and fun, there are little quizzes and trivia questions found near the end of the newsletter. Also found around the end of the issue is a “Breakroom” section. Morning Brew summarizes anything that’s noteworthy going on in the world including sports news.
The easy to skim and entertaining format is a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the business and financial space. The Morning Brew casts a very large net of topics to give you the big picture of what’s happening.
If you’re interested in a more subject-specific newsletter, they have three: Retail Brew, Marketing Brew, and Emerging Tech Brew. These all go out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Click Here To Get Started5. Zacks
Zacks Investment Research was founded by Len Zacks in 1978. A team of experts who focus on the quantitative analysis of ETFs, mutual funds, and equities provides independent research to investors.
They have developed their own mutual fund ranking system that’s designed to help determine which funds have the best chance of outperforming the market. Each fund is given a rank based on one to five scales.
A “One” rating indicates a “strong-buy” while a “Five” recommends a “strong sell”. They can’t guarantee future results, but it’s a trading tool for investors who interested in the outlook of funds.
There are different membership options for their service. You can gain free access to Zack’s e-newsletter at the base level. The Profit from the Pros is emailed every weekday morning.
A summary of the market, what it means for investors, and recommendations on the next steps are included. In addition, there are links to articles like Bull Stock of the Day, ETF and fund recommendations, and Zack’s Rank #1 (“Strong Buy”) stocks.
Zack’s Premium is their next tier of membership. There is a 30-day free trial if you want to try out the subscription first. The annual fee is $249 and there’s also a 90-day money-back guarantee.
You get access to the top-ranking list of funds, company research reports, ranking, and screening tools. Subscribers also receive daily email alerts with important news and can track their portfolios against the Zacks rating.
There is one more level called the Ultimate subscription that’s available. You can try it out for 30 days for only $1. After that, it’s $299 a month.
This is one of the most expensive investing newsletters out there. For that price tag, subscribers get access to every recommendation they have to give and all the research tools and reports that are part of the Premium package.
Zacks has strategy recommendations that are neatly separated by investing style, trades per month, number of stocks in a portfolio, and your time horizon. Each of these strategies is also available at the individual price level if you don’t want to pay for the Ultimate subscription.
Click Here To Get Started6. Stansberry Research
Founded by Frank Porter Stansberry with the goal of helping people by writing articles about finances, the company has expanded its offerings to include this newsletter.
The newsletter is best for experienced investors who want to manage their own investment portfolios.
Each month you will receive an email that details relevant stories that cover whether or not certain companies are worth investing in. For $199 per year, you’ll receive 12 issues. There’s a 30-day free trial that allows you to figure out if you want to pay for the service.
New information about companies that you may consider investing in is outlined as well as their predictions as to their chances of success. This doesn’t come up with predictions on the fly or randomly.
Stansberry Research looks at data from the past and present to present what they believe will be the outcome next month. You should be aware that not every investment they discuss may be worth investing in for your goals.
Decide if their recommendation is an investment that you want to consider beforehand.
Each issue takes about half an hour to read, given its once-a-month format. That makes it easy to carve out time each month to dedicate to read it. You can also go back and read over it again as needed.
The Gold Investor’s Manual, The World’s Most Valuable Asset in a Time of Crisis, and America’s Big Power Shift are other resources your subscription gives you access to. There’s also a Member’s Only Section available to help you with your investing journey.
Click Here To Get StartedFinancial Markets Newsletter Notable Mentions
Here are some of the best investing newsletters that didn’t make the list, but are worth mentioning below. Depending on your investment goals, they could be fit for you.
From Mark Hulbert and The Hulbert Financial Digest
There are five different newsletters to choose from based on which sentiment index(es) you want to focus on. The Digest itself ended its publications in 2016. They use their newsletter format to continue to provide objective and independent performance ratings in the industry.
Prices range from $50 to $200 per month.
Click Here To Get StartedSeeking Alpha’s Wall Street Breakfast
Taking a global approach, you can receive summaries of foreign markets, commodities, a daily economic calendar, and currencies all before 7 a.m. There is also a podcast if you prefer an audible version.
Click Here To Get StartedDividend.com
For investors that seek to focus on dividend growth investing, Dividend.com is for you. Their Dividend Advantage Rating System is used to rate over 1,600 stocks based on their:
- Relative strength
- Overall yield attractiveness
- Dividend reliability
- Dividend uptrend
- Earnings growth
They have a free service or you can upgrade to premium for $149 a month to receive DARS ratings and recommendations, “Best Lists”, payment estimates, and much more.
Click Here To Get StartedMorningstar
Investing research is made easier with Morningstar. It is much more than a newsletter with great tools for investors who want to sharpen their investing strategy. Stocks, funds, ETFs, bonds, and personal financial planning are all areas that a subscription to Morningstar can help with.
Sign up for $29.95 a month. If you’re shy about commitment, try out their two-week trial to test the waters first.
