Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen – Which Is Better?

If you want help finding stocks that can outperform the market, there are two routes to take. You can use a stock picking service like Motley Fool that offers ready-to-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.

Both Motley Fool and WallStreetZen have benefits, but they cater to very different investing needs. In our Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen comparison, we’ll take a closer look at these services and help you decide which is better for you.

About Motley Fool and WallStreetZen

Motley Fool is a stock research firm established in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner. It’s best known for its flagship stock picking service, Stock Advisor, which has more than 750,000 subscribers. Stock Advisor has outperformed the S&P 500 656% to 150% from its inception in 2002 to March 2024.

In addition to Stock Advisor, Motley Fool has a selection of other stock picking services including Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks, and Real Estate Winners. It also has recommendation services that focus 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 around 700,000 monthly visitors and offers tools for researching stock fundamentals, monitoring analyst recommendations, and staying on top of market movements.

Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Investing Style

Several of 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 hold onto stock recommendations for a minimum of five years, and often much longer. For example, there are several stocks in the Stock Advisor portfolio that have been there for 20 years.

Since Motley Fool is focused on growth stocks, its stock picks tend to come from the tech 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 think can run further.

WallStreetZen takes a more active approach to investing, but leaves it up to you to decide what investing style appeals to you. You can use the platform to find growth, momentum, or value stocks. You can also build your own criteria for what stocks to invest in and use WallStreetZen’s stock screener to find candidates that fit your strategy.

WallStreetZen doesn’t have a time horizon associated with its top stock lists. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that many Wall Street analysts—whose opinion WallStreetZen leans on heavily—have investment horizons of one year.

Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Stock Recommendations

The fundamental difference between Motley Fool and WallStreetZen is that Motley Fool focuses on giving you ready-to-buy stock recommendations, whereas WallStreetZen gives you research tools to help you decide for yourself what stocks to buy.

At Motley Fool, most services offer one to two new stock picks each month. Recommendations are intended to be bought immediately—you don’t need to wait for a specific entry price or setup.

If you have cash to invest in between new stock picks, services like Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers include “Rankings” lists. These highlight 10 stocks already in the services’ portfolios that are good candidates to double-down on right now.

WallStreetZen doesn’t 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 a Strong Buy rating from top-performing Wall Street analysts. There’s also a “Bullish Insider Buys” list, which highlights stocks that are seeing insider buying activity alongside bullish fundamental catalysts like increasing earnings.

WallStreetZen has several 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, Growth at a Reasonable Price,” and “Volatile Penny Stocks.”

Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Stock Research Tools

Motley Fool doesn’t have many tools to help you research stocks. Each new recommendation is accompanied by a short research report that discusses why a company is being added to the portfolio. However, these reports focus more on a company’s moat, leadership team, and future potential than on financial performance or peer analysis. There are no research reports for stocks that aren’t in one of Motley Fool’s portfolios.

WallStreetZen, on the other hand, offers fundamental research into more than 6,000 stocks. For any stock, you can view a fair value analysis, valuation metrics, volatility, and more. WallStreetZen runs what it calls “due diligence” checks, which give each stock a pass/fail rating for more than two dozen financial criteria. The due diligence checks are used to assign an overall Zen score on a scale of 0-100.

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 they have a lower P/B ratio than the industry average, whether they’re priced below fair value, and more. This is a very helpful tool for finding stocks that suit your custom investing strategy.

Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Pricing

The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor service costs $199 per year and it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Other services, like Rule Breakers and Everlasting Stocks, each cost $299 per year. The Motley Fool’s Epic Bundle includes Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks, and Real Estate Winners for $499 per year.

WallStreetZen costs $234 per year. You can try it out for 30 days for $1.

Which Service Is Better?

Motley Fool and WallStreetZen are both excellent services, but they cater to very different types of investing needs.

Motley Fool is best if you want stock recommendations that you can buy right away. 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 on your own. Many of Motley Fool’s services have beaten the market by a wide margin, so self-directed investors will have a hard time outperforming the Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers portfolios.

WallStreetZen is best if you prefer to build your own portfolio using 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 significantly more time and effort than just buying Motley Fool’s stock picks, but you get access to much more information and have more control over your portfolio.

Alternatives to Motley Fool and WallStreetZen

If you’re looking for something in between Motley Fool and WallStreetZen—something that blends stock recommendations with research tools—there are a few options available.

Seeking Alpha is a good choice because it offers a top stocks list with recommendations that you can buy right away. 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 that’s similar to 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 in the Zacks #1 rank list than is realistic to buy, so you’ll need to do some research to decide what stocks to invest in. Zacks Premium costs $249 per year.

Motley Fool vs. WallStreetZen: Conclusion

Motley Fool is a stock picking service that offers recommendations you can purchase right away to build a growth stock portfolio. WallStreetZen is a stock research service that helps you find promising stocks that meet your custom investment strategy. Both platforms have a lot to offer, but it’s important to think about how you want to approach investing when deciding which is right for you.

For more about these services, check out our guide to Motley Fool’s services and our WallStreetZen review.