If you want help finding stocks that can outperform the market, there are two paths to take. You can use a stock-picking service like the Motley Fool that provides ready-made buy recommendations. Or you can use a research platform like WallStreetZen that helps you find promising stocks, but leaves it up to you to decide what to buy.
The Motley Fool and WallStreetZen both have benefits, but they meet very different investment needs. In this Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen comparison, we'll take a closer look at these services and help you decide which one is best for you.
About the Motley Fool Wall Street Zine
The Motley Fool is a stock research company founded in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner. It is best known for its leading stock-picking service, Stock Advisor, which has more than 750,000 subscribers. Stock Advisor has outperformed the S&P 500 by 656% to 150% from its inception in 2002 through March 2024.
In addition to Stock Advisor, The Motley Fool has a selection of other stock picking services including Rule Breakers, Perpetual Stocks, and Real Estate Winners. It also has recommendation services focused on retirement investing, options trading, and IPOs.
WallStreetZen was launched in Hong Kong in 2020 as a research platform for part-time investors. It has about 700,000 visitors per month and offers tools to research stock fundamentals, monitor analyst recommendations, and stay on top of market movements.
Motley Fool vs. Wall Street Zane: An Investing Style
Many of the Motley Fool's most popular investing services, including Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, and Everlasting Stocks, focus on long-term growth stocks. Typically, the platform encourages investors to stick with stock recommendations for at least five years, and often much longer. For example, there are many stocks in Stock Advisor's portfolio that have been around for 20 years.
Because the Motley Fool focuses on growth stocks, its stock picks tend to come from the technology sector. The service doesn't pay much attention to momentum or valuation. In fact, many of its recommendations are highly valued stocks that Motley Fool analysts believe could continue further.
WallStreetZen takes a more active approach to investing, but leaves it up to you to decide what investment style suits you. You can use the platform to find growth, momentum, or value stocks. You can also create your own criteria for which stocks you want to invest in and use WallStreetZen's stock screener to find candidates that fit your strategy.
WallStreetZen does not have a time horizon associated with its top stock lists. However, it's worth noting that many Wall Street analysts – whose opinions WallStreetZen relies heavily on – have one-year investment horizons.
Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Stock Recommendations
The primary difference between the Motley Fool and WallStreetZen is that the Motley Fool focuses on giving you ready-to-buy stock recommendations, while WallStreetZen gives you research tools to help you decide for yourself which stocks to buy.
At the Motley Fool, most services offer one or two new stock picks each month. The goal of recommendations is to buy immediately — you don't need to wait for a specific entry price or setup.
If you have cash to invest between new stock picks, services like Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers include “rankings” lists. This highlights 10 stocks already in utility portfolios that are good candidates to double now.
WallStreetZen does not issue stock recommendations, but it does have some tools to help you find stocks that are likely to outperform the market. The best tool for this purpose is the “Strong Buy Stocks” list, which includes stocks with Strong Buy ratings from the best-performing Wall Street analysts. There's also a “Bullish Insider Buys” list, which highlights stocks seeing insider buying activity alongside bullish fundamental catalysts such as rising earnings.
WallStreetZen has many other stock lists, which are just pre-made stock screens that you can modify to better fit your strategy. Examples include “undervalued stocks, undervalued growth stocks, affordable growth,” and “volatile penny stocks.”
Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Stock Research Tools
The Motley Fool doesn't have many tools to help you research stocks. Each new recommendation is accompanied by a short research report discussing why the company should be added to the portfolio. However, these reports focus more on the company's moat, leadership team, and future potential than on financial performance or peer analysis. There are no research reports for stocks that are not in one of the Motley Fool's portfolios.
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WallStreetZen, on the other hand, offers fundamental research for over 6,000 stocks. For any stock, you can view fair value analysis, valuation metrics, volatility, and more. WallStreetZen runs what it calls “due diligence” checks, which give each stock a pass/fail rating on more than two dozen financial criteria. Due diligence checks are used to assign an overall Zen score on a scale of 0 to 100.
WallStreetZen also has a stock screener with a wide range of financial, valuation and fundamental filters. You can search for stocks based on their Zen Score, whether their P/B ratio is below the industry average, whether their price is below fair value, and more. This is a very useful tool for finding stocks that fit your customized investment strategy.
Motley Fool vs. Wall Street Zine: Pricing
The Motley Fool's Stock Advisor service costs $199 per year and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Other services, such as Rule Breakers and Everlasting Stocks, each cost $299 per year. The Motley Fool's Epic Bundle includes Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Perpetual Stocks, and Real Estate Winners for $499 per year.
WallStreetZen costs $234 per year. You can try it for 30 days for $1.
What is the best service?
The Motley Fool and WallStreetZen are both excellent services, but they meet very different types of investing needs.
The Motley Fool is best if you want stock recommendations that you can buy immediately. It's a great option if you want to invest in long-term growth stocks and don't want to spend a lot of time researching stocks yourself. Many Motley Fool services have outperformed the market by a wide margin, so self-directed investors will have a hard time outperforming stock portfolios and rule breakers.
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WallStreetZen is best if you prefer to build your own portfolio with a custom investment strategy. You can create a strategy that blends growth, momentum, and value, then do your own research using WallStreetZen to find stocks that fit your strategy. Using WallStreetZen takes a lot more time and effort than simply buying Motley Fool stock picks, but you get access to more information and have more control over your portfolio.
Alternatives to Motley Fool and WallStreetZen
If you're looking for something between the Motley Fool and WallStreetZen — something that blends stock recommendations with research tools — there are a few options available.
Seeking Alpha is a good option because it provides a list of the best stocks with recommendations that you can buy immediately. At the same time, the platform has very in-depth financial research on thousands of stocks. It caters to a slightly more advanced audience than WallStreetZen and costs $239 per year.
Seeking Alpha also has a stock picking service called Alpha Picks which is similar to the Motley Fool's Stock Advisor, but focuses on momentum stocks with a shorter investment horizon. It costs $499 per year.
Another option is Zacks Premium. Zacks gives you access to fundamental stock research as well as lists of top-rated stocks. There are more stocks on this Zacks Rank #1 list than are realistic to buy, so you'll need to do some research to decide which stocks to invest in. Zacks Premium costs $249 per year.
Motley Fool vs. Wall Street Zane: Conclusion
The Motley Fool is a stock-picking service that provides recommendations that you can buy instantly to build a portfolio of growth stocks. WallStreetZen is a stock research service that helps you find promising stocks that meet your customized investment strategy. Both platforms have a lot to offer, but it's important to consider how you want to approach investing when deciding which one is right for you.
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Our team has reviewed more than 300 services. These are our favourites:
For more information about these services, see our guide to Motley Fool services and our WallStreetZen review.
