TipRanks Review – Can Analyst Opinions Improve Performance?

About TipRanks

TipRanks is a stock research platform that highlights stocks that have been rated or recommended by well-known analysts. While TipRanks itself does not provide any new information that could not be gleaned for free elsewhere, by collating and aggregating information about analyst ratings it makes it simple to see how smart investors feel about individual stocks or stock market sectors. In addition, TipRanks collects insider trading information to further identify stocks that are ripe for medium and long-term trading.

Is the service worth paying for? Keep reading our TipRanks review to find out.

TipRanks Pricing

TipRanks offers a basic membership for free, although access to the site is highly limited while using this plan. Free TipRanks users cannot see analysts’ recommendations, nor do they get access to portfolio management tools. However, free users can use the stock screener, view that day’s new analyst upgrades and downgrades, and view analyst ratings and price targets for any individual stock. They also get email alerts for up to five stocks.

A paid Premium plan costs $29.95 per month (billed annually) and provides access to the majority of TipRanks’ research tools. The only notable content that is not offered to Premium members is the ability to follow stocks that have significant insider trading activity.

The Ultimate plan costs $49.95 per month and allows traders to watch stocks that have insider trading activity. This plan also allows traders to create and manage multiple portfolios within TipRanks.

For paid plans, TipRanks offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

TipRanks Video Review

TipRanks Features

TipRanks has quite a few features for traders and investors who are interested in stock ratings from Wall Street analysts. Here are some of the features we took a look at during our review.

Top 25 Analysts

The first feature that TipRanks includes is a collation of the 25 best-performing financial analysts across Wall Street and in each market sector. For each analyst, you can view the current ratings that the analyst has issued and compare the analyst’s measured performance over the past one or more years to the S&P 500 or to the sector they focus on. You can also see historical data about an analyst’s past ratings.

You also have the option to follow individual financial analysts. While it is possible to see analysts you follow in your TipRanks profile, the primary advantage of following an analyst is to receive alerts and emails when that analyst issues new stock ratings. If you follow several analysts, this is a great way to get new investment ideas. However, these notifications can also be turned off.

Analyst Recommendations

Consensus recommendations on stocks from analysts are displayed across the site in several different ways. First, TipRanks collates a table of stocks that have “Strong Buy” or “Strong Sell” ratings from multiple analysts. These recommendations can be filtered by market cap and by sector.

On top of that, TipRanks collects a list of all ratings issued by analysts each day. This list can be quite long since it includes all notable analysts and financial bloggers – not just the 25 best analysts in each sector. However, the list can be filtered by a number of parameters, including a star rating for analysts that filters out analysts that tend to underperform their sectors.

Taking this consensus recommendation system one step further, TipRanks also allows you to easily see which stocks have received recent coverage by multiple analysts. This is one of the best places on the site to quickly find stocks that have been highly recommended by multiple analysts.

Insider Trading

TipRanks looks at trading by corporate executives in much the same way that it examines analyst ratings. The platform gives a positivity rating to each insider’s recent trading activity, which serves a similar purpose as an analyst’s “Strong Buy,” “Neutral,” or other rating. Interestingly, TipRanks also quickly summarizes what type of trading occurred – whether it was by the company’s owner, a C-level officer, or another important insider. It’s also extremely easy to see whether multiple insiders bought or sold stock.

Note that insider transactions can also be viewed on a daily basis, in much the same way as each day’s new analyst ratings.

Stock Viewer

The pages for individual stocks are extremely useful for traders who want to dig deeper into particular stock recommendations. A simple chart displays the recent price history of the stock as well as the high, average, and low 12-month price targets issued by analysts. A detailed table below the chart shows all of the analysts who have issued ratings on the stock and their price targets.

Interestingly, TipRanks goes beyond just analysts and insiders when it comes to individual stocks. The platform offers an “investor sentiment” rating for every stock. This is based on the number of investors on TipRanks who have added or removed that stock to or from their portfolios over the prior 30 days. The platform also collates online financial news sources to offer a “blogger opinions” rating. While some traders may find these ratings helpful in gauging overall sentiment around a stock, they should be interpreted with a grain of salt since the data isn’t necessarily coming from top investors.

TipRanks also recently added a web traffic chart that allows you to see how visitor traffic to a company’s website correlates with changes in the company’s stock price. You can filter by domains to check on how much attention specific services are attracting and by country. It’s a little hard to make informed decisions based on this data alone, but it’s a neat free service.

TipRanks also issues a Smart Score for each stock. The TipRanks Smart Score is on a scale from 1-10, with scores from 8-10 corresponding to an overall “outperform” rating. Smart Scores are based on a variety of factors including analyst ratings, insider trading activity, fundamental and technical analysis, investor sentiment, and news sentiment.

While there is some basic charting and fundamental data given for each stock, technical analysis tools and detailed financial information is relatively scarce. To do your own analysis, you’ll likely need to use another source for in-depth research.

Stock Screener

The stock screener offered by TipRanks is notable in that it focuses far less on fundamental metrics or technical indicators than most standard screeners. Instead, it essentially serves as a search function for TipRanks itself, allowing you to filter stocks by smart score, analyst ratings, investor sentiment, insider trading activity, and sector.

This kind of feature is always appreciated on data-driven platforms. We’ve seen similar features on other platforms like Zacks Premium and IBD’s Marketsmith. Having the ability to filter the unique data points can be great for investors who want a flexible tool that can be molded to their personal investment strategies.

TipRanks’ screener is easy to use and has a nice visual interface that makes it easy to comb through results.

Portfolios

Depending on the tier of your subscription plan, you can establish one or more portfolios within TipRanks. Portfolios can be imported from most major brokerages or added manually. Portfolios can be used like watchlists since you do not need to add purchase prices.

The usefulness of these portfolios for individual investors is somewhat limited, as the main information displayed is a pie chart of analyst recommendations on each stock in your portfolio. One interesting analysis tool for portfolios is that returns can be compared against the S&P 500 and the average TipRanks user’s portfolio. However, while a basic news stream and an earnings calendar can be useful for some traders, there are otherwise few surprising or particularly smart portfolio analysis tools within TipRanks.

Is TipRanks Easy to Use?

TipRanks is an easy-to-use browser-based platform. The site is well-organized, although there are a few repetitive menu items that can make navigating the site somewhat confusing at first. In addition, many sections of the site resemble advertisements for other parts of the site. This can be a little annoying when trying to find information quickly.

That said, TipRanks uses a highly graphical approach that makes it easy to research stocks and digest information. Pie and bar charts are abundant across the site, and tables are shaded and illustrated to make it easier to find information. While most pages cannot be customized, you have the option to choose settings for your portfolio, alerts, and emails.

TipRanks Platform Differentiators

TipRanks focuses heavily on analyst recommendations and insider trading, essentially promoting a strategy of following the smart money. While all of the information available on TipRanks could be obtained elsewhere, TipRanks vastly simplifies the work of digesting analyst ratings by aggregating the data and displaying it in a highly graphic manner. The investor sentiment and blogger rating tools are somewhat unique to this platform, although traders should interpret them cautiously.

Where TipRanks falls short is in not providing much in the way of fundamental to give traders a more holistic view of why a stock has received positive or negative reviews from analysts. There are also few technical analysis features to help you identify entry and exit points for top stocks.

Alternatives to TipRanks

TipRanks is really focused on helping medium and long-term investors find great investments. It’s primarily focused on what “smart money” – analysts and institutional investors – thinks rather than on helping you do your own fundamental and technical analysis.

If you’d prefer to do your own stock analysis, there are several alternatives available. For fundamental research, you might consider Stock Rover or Old School Value. Both platforms enable you to create custom financial models to find out if a stock is undervalued.

Other services to consider include Zacks Premium, Seeking Alpha, and Motley Fool. You can see how TipRanks compares to those services in these guides:

What Type of Trader is TipRanks Best For?

TipRanks is best for traders whose stock market strategy is to follow smart Wall Street money – that is, institutional investors, hedge fund managers, executive insiders, and analysts. The platform makes it extremely easy to keep an eye on what Wall Street analysts and corporate insiders are doing, even going so far as to send alerts when analysts you follow issue new ratings. While TipRanks could work for short-term traders, it is better suited to medium and long-term investors since there is little in the way of technical data to inform entry and exit points and all price targets are 12-month targets.

Is TipRanks Premium Worth It?

Based on our TipRanks review, you need a Premium subscription to make the most out of the service. At $29.95/month, the Premium subscription is worth it if you rely heavily on analyst data when making investment decisions.

While TipRanks offers a range of features, the analyst recommendation tools are at the center of the service. The platform gives you great tools to help you find new investment ideas and analyze your current investments.

That said, not every investor will rely on analyst recommendations when making investments. Some investors follow analysts religiously, while others ignore them entirely. If you are in the former group, you will get a lot of value out of TipRanks. If you are in the latter group, you will likely get more value out of a different type of stock market analysis tool.

Pros

See ratings from top analysts in each market sector

Quickly identify stocks with multiple recent buy or sell ratings

Alerts when analysts issue new ratings or insiders trade on a portfolio stock

Stock viewer makes it easy to identify price targets

Highly graphical and easy to interpret display

Cons

Very little emphasis on fundamental or technical indicators

Includes data from analysts with historical performances worse than the market