Investors who are looking for stock recommendations have a lot of different services to choose from. Some offer ready-to-buy picks while others offer ideas and research. In addition, some focus on growth stocks while others seek out value.
Two stock recommendation platforms worth considering at Moby and The Motley Fool. Both have strong track records, but they take different approaches to making recommendations and focus on different kinds of stocks.
We’ll compare Moby vs. The Motley Fool to help you decide which service is best for you.
About Moby and The Motley Fool
Moby is a relatively new investment research and learning platform. It offers stock picks, daily market updates, educational guides, and more. The platform covers both stocks and cryptocurrencies and has attracted more than 3 million free and paid users.
The Motley Fool is an investment guidance platform founded by brothers Tom and David Gardner in 1993. The platform’s flagship stock-picking newsletter, Stock Advisor, launched in 2002 and now has more than 1 million subscribers.
Moby vs. The Motley Fool: Stock Recommendations
Moby and The Motley Fool both offer ready-to-buy stock recommendations. You can build a portfolio from scratch or add to an existing portfolio.
Moby has a handful of different portfolios, each with different strategies and goals. There’s a dividend stock portfolio, a tech stock portfolio, an ESG investing portfolio, and an emerging markets portfolio. Each portfolio contains 5-10 stocks and is updated once per month. Position weightings are adjusted each month, and stocks are typically rotated out of the portfolios every few months.
Moby uses a proprietary algorithm to decide what stocks are included in each portfolio, so it’s difficult to know exactly what fundamental and technical factors the recommendations are based on. Each portfolio update covers the performance of key stocks and briefly highlights any new stocks that are being added.
The Motley Fool has numerous stock recommendation services, but we’ll focus on the flagship Stock Advisor newsletter. This service offers two new stock picks each month and aims to recommend explosive growth stocks. Past picks include Amazon, Netflix, and Tesla – all before these stocks saw triple-digit growth.
All stock recommendations have a long-term investment horizon. Stock Advisor recommends planning to hold picks for at least three years, and many stocks have been in the portfolio for 10 years or longer. The Motley Fool is solely focused on fundamentals and is willing to pay premium prices for stocks that the service’s analysts believe have room to run.
In addition to the two new picks each month, Stock Advisor offers a list of timely stocks already in the portfolio that investors might consider doubling down on. Another list offers evergreen “starter stocks” that The Motley Fool believes every investor should have in their portfolio.
Moby vs. The Motley Fool: Stock Research
Moby and The Motley Fool take similar approaches when it comes to stock research. You won’t find a database of fundamental data or detailed stock charts at either of these platforms. Instead, they select individual stocks or groups of stocks to discuss in blog post-style articles.
These research articles can be great for generating investment ideas, but investors may also want to approach them with caution. For both services, articles tend to be short and look at stocks from just perspective, and they may not consider the bear case for a stock at all.
Moby presents almost no explanation when adding new stocks to one of its model portfolios. There’s a brief description of what the company is, but no details about why Moby’s analysts like it.
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The Motley Fool offers brief research reports with each of its new stock picks. These are usually focused on big-picture qualities like management, moats, and overall financial performance. The reports explain why the Stock Advisor team recommends a stock, which is nice, but don’t provide enough detail to really dig into a company.
Moby vs. The Motley Fool: Performance
Unfortunately, Moby doesn’t make it easy to find out how well its various portfolios have performed. The platform offers monthly performance updates for each portfolio and compares that monthly performance against the relevant benchmark index. But Moby never discusses year-to-date performance or performance since inception.
Each portfolio is accompanied by expected returns, which generally range from 10-25% per year. However, these are based on strategy backtests, and Moby does not provide information about whether these expected returns were met or exceeded.
The Motley Fool, on the other hand, is upfront about its all-time performance. Since Stock Advisor launched in 2002, it’s returned 367% compared to 116% for the S&P 500 (as of December 2022). Another long-running Motley Fool service, Rule Breakers, has returned 187% compared to 99% for the S&P 500 since 2004 (as of December 2022). You can also see the total return for all current and closed positions in the Stock Advisor portfolio.
It’s hard to overstate how impressive The Motley Fool’s performance has been over the past 20 years. While some stock recommendation services can beat the market for several years, very few can outperform the market over multiple decades.
Moby vs. The Motley Fool: Cryptocurrency Investing
For investors who want to invest in cryptocurrencies alongside stocks, Moby offers basic crypto research, while The Motley Fool doesn’t cover cryptocurrency at all.
Moby releases reports on crypto roughly once per month and tends to focus on major tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The platform can offer helpful advice if you’re looking for a few coins to hold in your portfolio. However, Moby doesn’t offer model crypto portfolios or in-depth analysis.
Moby vs. The Motley Fool: Pricing
You might be surprised to find that both Moby and The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor are fairly affordable. Moby costs $29.95 per month or $99.96 per year, and you can try it out risk-free for 30 days. Stock Advisor costs $199 per year but you can often find a discount on your first year.
If you have a small portfolio, these annual fees could outpace any potential gains. But for most investors, these annual subscriptions will pay for themselves with a few strong investments.
Which Platform is Best?
Moby and The Motley Fool are both good choices if you’re looking for stock recommendations to add to your portfolio. Moby’s model portfolios turn over relatively frequently, making the service better-suited for active investors who don’t mind tweaking their portfolio each month. However, since Moby doesn’t release long-term performance information, investors should approach this service with caution.
The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor is best-suited for long-term growth investors. All stock recommendations from this service have a multi-year investment horizon. Stock Advisor has a long history of beating the S&P 500 by a wide margin, so it’s hard to find a reason why investors shouldn’t take advantage of this service.
Alternatives to Moby and The Motley Fool
Self-driven investors who prefer to research their own stock ideas might find that Moby and The Motley Fool feel restricting. In that case, services like Seeking Alpha and Zacks Premium may be good alternatives. Both platforms provide in-depth stock research, proprietary stock ratings, and stock screeners to help investors find strong value and growth stocks. Seeking Alpha includes multiple opinion articles and a wide range of contributors for each stock, while Zacks Premium includes professional stock research reports written by in-house analysts.
Seeking Alpha costs $239 per year, and Zacks Premium costs $249 per year.
Conclusion: Moby vs. The Motley Fool
Moby and The Motley Fool can each help investors build a portfolio with actionable stock recommendations. Moby offers several model portfolios and shorter investment horizons, while The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor focuses on growth stocks and long investment horizons.
