The foundation for solid investing or trading decisions is reliable, timely information. And ever since the launch of the world wide web, investors have had access to information that is only a few clicks away. The good news is as technology expands, the depth and breadth of information continue to get better.
However, with this volume of information – and with more investment services popping up almost daily, it can be hard to distinguish one service from another. Are you paying too much for too little? Are you paying for more than you need to make your investment decisions? Are these sites actually different?
We’re here to help. In this article, we’re going to compare MarketBeat to Yahoo Finance. A common feature of both sites is access to extensive free information. In some cases, the sites give you free access to information that other sites keep behind a pay wall. In fact, at a high level, there may not be much that distinguishes the two sites.
The purpose of this comparison is for you to better understand what each service provides, particularly if investors choose to access the company’s premium services. Here are the topics this article will cover:
MarketBeat Overview
Yahoo Finance Overview
The Key Difference
How Are MarketBeat and Yahoo Finance Alike
Review of Premium Services
Conclusion
MarketBeat Overview
MarketBeat was founded in 2011 with the mission of creating high-quality stock research tools and making them available to investors at all levels. The site uses the latest technology to provide proprietary, comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-the-minute financial data including information about analyst recommendations, dividend declarations, and earnings announcements.
All of this information, and more, was made available for free on the company’s website and via the company’s daily newsletters. MarketBeat aims to be a go-to resource for both retail and institutional investors. Currently over 15 million individuals visit MarketBeat.com every month.
Yahoo Finance Overview
Whereas MarketBeat is a relative newcomer to the investment analysis world, Yahoo Finance is one of the original financial websites. Yahoo Finance is currently ranked 15th SimilarWeb on the list of largest news and media websites.
The site launched in 1994 shortly after the Yahoo search engine debuted. And its familiar look and feel can be appealing to individuals who use Yahoo as their default search engine. Much like MSN Money or Google Finance, there can be value to staying in one location to get all your investment information.
The Key Difference
MarketBeat and Yahoo Finance are targeted at retail investors who use both fundamental and technical analysis and want access to actionable information to help them make better investment and trading decisions. As you’ll see, both sites have many of the same features. The original content on both sites provides stock-specific news that largely drives investor sentiment. However, Yahoo Finance offers original content of a more general news variety. This information is nice to find on the site, but it typically does not affect investor sentiment. Therefore in this case, the primary difference between the sites (other than the cost of premium services) may come down to familiarity and user preference. Yahoo Finance has a user interface that mirrors a user’s Yahoo home page.
How Are MarketBeat and Yahoo Finance Alike?
Both sites provide an extensive amount of free content on their websites. For example, users can search for specific stocks and they’ll get similar information such as earnings information, analyst ratings, dividend history, and interactive price charts. Yahoo Finance does provide information on a company’s sustainability (i.e. ESG) metrics that MarketBeat does not. Both sites get high marks for ease of navigation. And both MarketBeat and Yahoo Finance have mobile apps so you have access to the services wherever you are.
Market Insight & Stock Picks
MarketBeat provides subscribers with the Early Bird which is delivered every morning before the market opens as well as the Night Owl which is delivered every evening.
- These newsletters give readers insight on stocks that MarketBeat analysts are tracking as well as a curated selection of investment articles from other financial outlets.
- These newsletters do not directly make stock picks.
- In addition to these newsletters, the MarketBeat site is refreshed every day in real-time with Top Stories including Most Read Stories and the Most Recent Stories. Many of these articles provide exclusive content from MarketBeat analysts.
Yahoo Finance delivers a free e-newsletter called The Morning Brief every weekday morning.
- This provides readers with highlights of timely market news and commentary and is delivered to subscriber’s inbox by 6:30 a.m. every trading morning
Portfolio Services
Both sites offer free portfolio tracker tools. Subscribers receive daily email alerts, earnings estimate revisions, analyst recommendation changes, and more. The MarketBeat site provides real-time updates for subscribers. .
Ticker Search
Both sites have an easy-to-use search tool that allows subscribers to get more information on the holdings in your portfolio, or to look at new trades. Both sites give you earnings data, analyst ratings, and other features. And both sites make it easy to quickly add those stocks to your portfolio. MarketBeat provides information about quarterly earnings including links to transcripts of the earnings call and the SEC Form-4 filings.
Stock Screeners
Both sites offer stock screening tools. However, the Yahoo Finance page has a limited number of criteria and ranges. Also, users have found it difficult to compare the stocks in the site against each other.
Investment Ideas
The “heart” of MarketBeat is the My MarketBeat tab. This provides subscribers with access to information such as Research Tools, Stock Screeners, Top-Rated Analysts, Stock Lists, Trending Stocks and Premium Reports. Yahoo Finance offers similar features under its My Portfolio tool.
Review of Premium Services
For buy-and-hold investors who simply want to have instant information regarding the equities in their portfolio, these free services may be adequate. However active traders will typically need access to more detailed insights. For that, both companies offer several premium services. For the purpose of this article, premium services are defined as services for which customers have to pay to access.
MarketBeat Premium Services
MarketBeat Momentum Alerts - $97 per year
- This service provides short-term trading opportunities identified by MarketBeat editors using trading momentum, market sentiment, and specific financial triggers.
- Subscribers receive approximately 3 to 5 new ideas each month through MarketBeat Momentum Alerts.
MarketBeat Daily Premium – $199 per year/$19.97 monthly
- MarketBeat Daily Premium is delivered 30 minutes before the market opens and provides actionable news, analyst upgrades and downgrades, dividend payout changes, insider buying and selling disclosures, earnings reports and technical data.
- Subscribers get information that is personalized to their My MarketBeat stock portfolio and watchlist, giving them the latest information for the stocks they care about the most.
- Investors can also choose to receive email or SMS alerts for their stocks so they don't miss major shifts in the market.
- Their daily newsletter contains a summary of key analyst ratings, earnings and dividend announcements, insider transactions of the day.
MarketBeat All Access – $399 per year/$39.97 monthly
- MarketBeat All Access is the company’s premier research platform.
- Subscribers receive all the information included in MarketBeat Daily Premium, plus a Sunday market preview, advanced portfolio monitoring tools (via My MarketBeat), access to MarketBeat’s full suite of research tools and stock screeners, a real-time news feed including email and SMS alerts.
- Subscribers also get access to the MarketBeat Idea Engine, trending stock lists, proprietary brokerage rankings, extended data export tools, and more.
Yahoo Finance Premium Services
According to the company’s website, Yahoo Finance Plus “delivers actionable insights so you can take your portfolio to the next level. Make smarter investments with exclusive data and analytics, discover new opportunities with independent research and daily investment ideas, and trade up with advanced tools and charts.” Yahoo currently has two versions of this service:
Yahoo Finance Plus Light - $250 per year or $25 per month/free 14-day access
Yahoo Finance Plus Light offers features that are not available in the free service including:
- Fair value analysis for stocks
- Advanced portfolio performance analysis tools
- Monthly educational webinars with Q&A
- Enhanced alerts
- Yahoo Plus perks include live chat support on desktop; Fewer ads on Yahoo; 24/7 tech support
- Investment ideas and daily trade ideas that are customized to the companies that subscribers follow. They get trending trading or investing opportunities that are relevant to their investing style.
- Community Insights let investors see what’s trending in the market and what other subscribers are adding, deleting or reallocating in their portfolios.
- Company Outlook is a feature that gives subscribers a snapshot of how a company is performing against its sector or market. This includes exclusive alternative data sets, intuitive visualizations, including hiring, insider sentiment, earnings, and dividend yield.
- A news feed (branded as their Blog) with recent articles curated from other sites as well as original content.
Yahoo Finance Plus - $350 per year or $35 per month/free 14-day access
Yahoo Finance Plus is Yahoo’s top-of-the-line service. It includes all the features of the “Light” package, plus these additional features:
- Research Reports – Yahoo partners with Morningstar and Argus to provide these reports which have filters that allow investors to find information specific to their investing style or specific areas of interest.
- Enhanced charting with auto pattern recognition
- Unique company data
- Market Digest newsletter
- Historical financials & statistics with CSV export
Conclusion
Why would we do this? For starters, we’re confident in the value that your MarketBeat subscription provides. Second, we realize that, as with streaming services, investors may have different sites that they use for different purposes. And while we certainly believe that MarketBeat can be your one-stop site for all things investing, we want to provide the information so you can decide for yourself.
As you can see, both MarketBeat and Yahoo Finance offer many tools for investors of all types. What may be right for you will depend on a combination of factors. Objectively, MarketBeat’s premium services cost less and may satisfy the information needs of most traders. The site is a one-stop resource that will provide most investors with the information they need to execute a trade.
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