How to Use Seeking Alpha? – Wall Street Survivor

Beginner investors can easily get overwhelmed thinking about what to buy or where to start their research. And if you’ve heard of it, you might be wondering how to use Seeking Alpha.

We get it. There are thousands of potential investments to choose from, not to mention different investment classes.

Seeking Alpha bills itself as the world’s largest investment community, and that’s something that sets it apart from other investment research platforms.

Since its inception, Seeking Alpha has evolved into one of the most popular platforms for stock research and analysis with upwards of 20 million users each month. It has benefits for both beginners and seasoned investors, providing a ton of useful information including user-generated articles, stock data, and earnings reports.

We’re here to walk you through what you need to know and give you step-by-step instructions to teach you how to “Seek Alpha”. We’ll include screenshots and details about the most important and useful features, so you’ll be ready to decide whether Seeking Alpha is right for you.

What is Seeking Alpha?

Let’s start by reviewing what Seeking Alpha is and what it isn’t.

Simply stated, Seeking Alpha is an online investment research and analysis platform. While it’s certainly not the only one, it offers some things that you can’t get anywhere else.

Seeking Alpha got its start back in 2004, when it was founded by David Jackson, a former technology analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Subscribers get access to a huge library of market news and analysis, plus 10 years of financials for publicly-traded companies, portfolio management tools, and access to the investment community and investment groups.

The news comes from distribution partners such as CNBC, MarketWatch, MSN, NASDAQ and TheStreet.com. You’ll get access to these as a premium subscriber, plus access to real-time stock market updates to help you manage your portfolio.

Here are a few stats to help you understand just how many people use Seeking Alpha and the kind of value you can get as a subscriber.

• There are 20 million active users and 85 million page views per month
• More than 18,000 Seeking Alpha contributors post up to 5,000 new investment ideas every month
• Analysis covers 4,000+ small and mid-cap stocks
• There’s research and analysis for large-cap stocks, dividend stocks, and ETFs
• Seeking Alpha’s Quant Ratings are widely respected and have beaten the S&P 500 since the company’s inception by more than 400%

Seeking Alpha isn’t a brokerage and it’s not a stock recommendation or stock picking service. The former means that the company isn’t regulated by FINRA or the SEC. 

There are some things you can’t do on Seeking Alpha that you might be able to do if you chose a stock-picking or brokerage service. As you read this article, keep in mind that we’re here to tell you how to use the platform, not to promise you results or tell you that Seeking Alpha is the right choice for you. We’ll give you the information you need to make that decision yourself.

Pro Tip:

If you sign up with Seeking Alpha Premium today, you will receive $30 off and access to an exclusive 7-day free trial!

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Use Seeking Alpha

It’s time to walk through the process to learn how to use the platform to make smart investment decisions as a beginner or experienced investor.

Step 1: Create a Free Account

First, you’ll want to set up a free account. (Don’t worry, you can always upgrade to Premium later if you want.) Just click the orange button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

You’ll get a screen that looks like this, where you can sign up with an email address or use Google, Facebook, or Apple.

We like the option to sign in with Google, etc., because it makes the sign-up process super fast and easy. You don’t need to enter a credit card number at all at this stage. You’ll get instant access to the free features.

Step 2: Search for Stocks

The next step is to start your investment research by searching for stocks. You’ll find the search box at the top of the page once you’ve created your account.

You can see the latest news on the right, so let’s use that for inspiration and look up Boeing, which is the first company listed. Here’s what you’ll find when you search for them.

There are some things in this image you won’t see with the free account, including the Ratings Summary and Factor Grades. We’ll talk more about those later.

Step 3: Analyze Earnings Reports

The next step when researching a stock is to look at earnings reports. You can access them by clicking the Earnings tab just under the current stock price.

On the left, you can see a summary of their last earnings reports, which was released on July 31, 2024. This was an earning miss. On the right, you’ll see estimates for the next earnings call, which is scheduled for October 23. Analysts are once again predicting a miss.

This information is useful and it hints in the direction of why Boeing might be considering selling some assets to raise cash, as noted in the headline we saw earlier.

Step 4: Read and Interpret Earnings Transcriptions

Next, you’ll want to take a look at Earnings Call Transcriptions, which are written versions of quarterly earnings calls held by publicly-owned companies. These focus on results including revenue, sales, and earnings per share (EPS), all of which can be useful in helping you evaluate potential investments.

You can click on Transcripts on the Earnings screen to see an overview of the transcriptions that are available. It looks like this.

This is what it looks like when we click on Boeing’s Q2 2024 earnings call transcript. 

As you can see, you have the option to play the call, view a slide presentation, read a press release, or read the official 10-Q form, or you can scroll down to read the full transcript. 

Pay attention to what the presenters say and how they say it. You should expect to get a positive spin when appropriate, but also see honest representations of misses and losses, with explanations for each and plans for what the company will do to address any challenges.

If you scroll down to the bottom, you can read the Q&A, and this is extremely useful if you’re looking for answers to questions that weren’t addressed in the initial remarks. Here’s what we mean.

Notice that this questioner pushed back and asked for some specifics about the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that were mentioned in the CEO’s remarks. This questioner wants to get a better feeling for what’s holding back rate increases. 

Step 5: Buy Stocks and Create Your Portfolio

Since Seeking Alpha isn’t a brokerage platform, you can’t buy stocks on their website or link to an active portfolio. What you can do is create a portfolio that mirrors what you’ve bought, so you can take advantage of Seeking Alpha’s portfolio monitoring features.

Your portfolio will give you a list of your investments, along with real-time prices and a few other metrics, even with the free account. If you upgrade to premium, you’ll also get the Quant Ratings, a Portfolio Health Score, the option to customize your portfolio view, and some extra portfolio monitoring tools.

Step 6: Stay Updated with Alerts

The final step to use Seeking Alpha is to create alerts to help you stay on top of changes in your portfolio. You can do that by clicking any stock in your portfolio. When you do, you’ll see an overview of the stock, plus a bell icon at the top of the page. Click that to set up an alert.

Once you click it, you’ll get a dialog box with the option to set different kinds of alerts, including content (news and articles) and price and ratings (price and ratings changes).

For example, you might set up an alert to notify you when the price drops more than 5% or when the rating changes.

Pro Tip:

If you sign up with Seeking Alpha Premium today, you will receive $30 off and access to an exclusive 7-day free trial!

 Key Features of Seeking Alpha

Now, let’s look at some of the key features of Seeking Alpha, including features for both the free and premium versions.

Seeking Alpha Free Features

The Seeking Alpha free subscription gives users access to a limited number of features that still offer a lot of value. 

• Set up a portfolio
• Access news and some analysis, including one free Premium article per month
• Access to real-time stock prices
• Price alerts

What you won’t get is full access to the Seeking Alpha community and investment groups, access to all research, or access to Quant Ratings.

Seeking Alpha Premium Features

Here’s what you’ll get if you upgrade to Seeking Alpha Premium.

• Set up a portfolio
• Unlimited access to expert investor and content and analysis
• Portfolio Health Score, which compares the strength of your portfolio to other Seeking Alpha members’ portfolios and analyzes your risk
• Create custom alerts based on price, ratings, plus alerts for news
• Access to Seeking Alpha’s proprietary Quant Ratings, plus Wall Street Analyst and Seeking Alpha Analyst ratings
• Custom watchlists
• Access to Seeking Alpha’s preset screeners, including Top Stocks, Top ETFs, and Top Dividend Stocks
• Custom screeners
• Full access to the Seeking Alpha community
• Access to investment groups

We’ll get into the prices soon, but many beginner investors choose Seeking Alpha Premium just to get access to those Quant Ratings. As a reminder, someone who started buying all “Strong Buy” rated stocks from the beginning would have beaten the S&P 500 by more than 400%.

There’s also a Pro subscription, which gives immediate access to content written by Seeking Alpha’s top analysts, Short ideas, alerts for upgrades and downgrades, and VIP customer service. It comes with a hefty price tag and most investors should be satisfied with the free or premium options.

Pro Tip:

If you sign up with Seeking Alpha Premium today, you will receive $30 off and access to an exclusive 7-day free trial!

Comparison Table

Feature	Seeking Alpha Free	Seeking Alpha Premium
Set up portfolio	Y	Y
Portfolio Health Score	N	Y
Real-time stock prices	Y	Y
Quant Ratings	N	Y
Access to expert analysis	One article per month	Unlimited
Access to financials	Y	Y
Access to community	N	Y
Access to investing groups	N	Y
Price alerts	Y	Y
Ratings alerts	N	Y

CTA: Sign Up for Seeking Alpha

Tips for Maximizing Seeking Alpha

Here are some of our insider tips to help you make the most of Seeking Alpha, whether you opt for the free or premium option.

#1: Subscribe to Wall Street Breakfast

After you’ve set up your account, subscribe to Seeking Alpha’s “Wall Street Breakfast” email newsletter. Once you’re subscribed, you’ll get a daily email with market news that’s delivered to your inbox.

You can use the newsletter to stay on top of what’s happening in the market and find new investments to research.

#2: Create a Portfolio and Sign Up for Alerts

While you can’t link to a brokerage account, you should set up a portfolio in Seeking Alpha to mirror your actual investments.

We suggest setting up alerts for every stock or ETF you hold, particularly price alerts and (with Premium) ratings alerts. For example, you might want to be alerted if one of your investments drops by 5% or more, or if the rating changes from a Strong Buy or Buy to Hold, Sell, or Strong Sell.

#3: Check Out Top Performing Authors

Check out the Authors with the highest scores and follow them to get immediate notifications when they post new content.

Keep in mind that Seeking Alpha doesn’t vet all community-created content, but they do vet the content they choose to highlight.

#4: Use the Library of Research

As we’ve mentioned, Seeking Alpha has a huge online resource library where you can get access to research, analysis, and news.

We encourage all subscribers to check financials and read earnings call reports before buying any stock or ETF.

#5: Monitor Your Portfolio

While you’re researching stocks and ETFs, make sure to keep an eye on your portfolio, including your Health Score (if you’re a Premium subscriber) and your diversification and asset allocation.

There’s no one-size-fits-all rule for asset allocation and diversification, but you may want to keep in mind the “100 minus your age” rule for asset allocation. For example, a 20-year-old just buying their first investments could comfortably put 80% of their money in stocks, with the rest in bonds and mutual funds.

A good rule of thumb for diversification is not to have more than 10% of your total holdings in any one investment.

#6: Be Active in the Community

As a Premium subscriber, you’ll get full access to the Seeking Alpha community. Participating in discussions will help you make connections and learn more about investing.

We believe that community involvement is one of the best ways to get a handle on investor sentiment about a stock or ETF you’re considering buying.

Free vs Premium: Is Seeking Alpha Worth the Upgrade?

Here’s our quick comparison of the Seeking Alpha Free vs Premium options and whether you should think about upgrading to Premium.

	Free	Premium
First Year Cost	Free	$299 per year
Second Year (and Beyond)	Free	$499 per year
Trial	N/A	$4.95 for 30 days
Features	Portfolio, limited alerts, limited research & analysis	Full access to research & analysis, Quant ratings, community and investment group access, preset and custom screeners

The downside of the free plan as we see it is that you won’t get access to the Quant Ratings and full access to research and analysis, and those really are the things that set Seeking Alpha apart from other investment research platforms.

We believe that many beginners, as well as intermediate and experienced investors, can benefit from Seeking Alpha Premium. Anybody who wants a research short-cut can use Quant Ratings to make investment decisions. As a reminder, “Strong Buy” rated stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 by 400%, averaging an annual return of 26%.

Our suggestion is to try the $4.95 trial of Seeking Alpha Premium. It will allow you to get full access to the Premium features, including Quant Ratings, expert analysis, screeners, watchlists, and much more. 

Keep in mind that there is an automatic renewal at $299 per year, so if you don’t want to subscribe to Premium going forward, make sure you cancel your free trial in plenty of time to avoid being charged.

Conclusion

Now you have an idea of how to use Seeking Alpha. This is an investment research platform that offers everyone from beginners to experienced investors access to a huge and impressive library of research and analysis, including:

• 10 years of financial statements
• Earnings call transcripts
• Real-time market news
• Expert analysis
• Community-created analysis
• Quant, SA Analyst, and Wall Street ratings

You have nothing to lose by signing up for a free account. The one-month Premium trial for $4.95 offers a low-risk way to check out the full features and try them for yourself. 

We think that many investors can benefit from Seeking Alpha Premium. Access to the Quant Ratings is worth paying for, especially when you consider the historical performance of “Strong Buy” rated investments.

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