US Market - research resources
Following on from what appeared to be a bit of interest in the US market in today's SCVR discussions and recognition that Stocko doesn't cater much for the US market in terms of commentary, I thought it would be useful to start an initial thread focusing on the resources for research and idea generation that people use for the US market. This could be a good base to start from and a useful information repository – additional discussion boards can then be started focusing on different themes and companies.
I’m happy to kick off though I should be clear from the outset that I’ve only been investing in the US market for around 18 months and am largely focused on growth companies (which have been hammered recently) so I’ve still got a lot to learn and I’m still adapting and refining my focus. But here’s what I currently use to research the US market:
Motley Fool (https://www.fool.com/premium/) I subscribed to MF UK for a year and wasn’t overly impressed but MF in the US is a totally different beast. There are a huge amount of resources available if you subscribe to any of their services, such as discussion boards, livestream discussions, deep dives, podcasts and of course their stock ideas. I subscribe to Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers which are their two most popular and cheapest services. Stock Advisor is $199 a year and Rule Breakers is $299 a year but there’s always a deal to get on at least the first year’s subscription. They’ve got a great record and I feel it’s a reliable source of ideas.
7investing (https://7investing.com/) – set up in 2020 by some ex-Motley Fool’s – they have 7 advisors who each have different styles (healthcare, growth, retail etc.) and each give 1 recommendation each month, so 7 rec’s each month in total (some are re-recommendations). So lots of interesting companies to research and lots of additional content outside of the rec’s. $399 a year.
Seeking Alpha (https://seekingalpha.com/) – huge amount of articles and research available. I currently only have free access which gives you only a handful of articles a month but think I’ll go for the paid option to have full access which is $20 a month.
Saul’s Investing Discussions (https://boards.fool.com/sauls-investing-discussions-120980.aspx?mid=35023110) – of all the discussion boards on the Motley Fool, this is the one that is the most popular. Set up years ago by a guy called Saul Rosenthal, the board focuses on hyper-growth stocks which are currently all SaaS companies. Huge amounts of really interesting research on specific companies and hyper-growth investing in general. They are very open and keen to share information. Saul himself has returned 1,351% in the past 5 years and he had an amazing record before that as well. Hyper-growth (and therefore highly valued) stocks won’t be for everyone but if you are interested, for me, this has been a really eye-opener.
ARK Invest (https://ark-invest.com/research-center/) – I know ARK and Cathie Wood split opinion but regardless of what you think of her and her funds, they have some really interesting research on innovation trends and some of the companies they cover. They make all their research public on the website which can be an interesting read.
YouTube – there seems to be more and more good content on YouTube though it helps if you know who to trust. My personal favourite is Brian Feroldi who works for the Motley Fool but is doing more and more on his own or with another Fool, Brian Stoffel as they do deep dives on individual companies and share their own investing checklists.
Podcasts – so many of these available for free but I will regularly listen to Motley Fool (various), 7investing, Pivot, Chit Chat Money, Animal Spirits, All-in, Pounding the Table, Stock Club (MyWallSt), Telescope Investing, FYI (ARK) amongst many others.
There is a HUGE amount of information – both free and paid for – out there, so much more than for the UK market I would say.
I hope that someone finds these useful and I’d be really interested to hear about any other resources people have got or any ideas for other US discussion threads.
Charlie
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34 comments
Sorry the Gremlins stole my post yesterday to somewhere else when I edited a number.
Stockopedia is not good for commentary/leads on US Stocks but the information in the Stock Reports is very good for doing research on buys or sells of US Stocks that one may be considering.
Other sources that used are MotleyFool.com Stock Adviser which is a subscription service but does produce very good leads on US Stocks to consider buying. It’s main disadvantage is that it is poor at advising when to sell even if they have exited.
Stock Rover is a Research and Portfolio service with the basic service free and the subscription service upgrades as you want to pay. Very good well written Research Reports on all US Stocks.
Portseido is a Portfolio site in Beta and free to date. It produces great graphics on Portfolio performance. Where it goes in the future is not certain but probably subscription.
There are other sites like Wallmine which is good on portfolio results analysis and Seeking Alpha which has a lot of guys pumping shares but generally good for information on Stocks but take with a grain of salt some of the posts.
Personally think US Stocks will struggle and show moderate price growth in 2022 . Hold 21 US Stocks in one portfolio and 15 US Stocks in another. Think European Stocks are undervalued and some UK Stocks and intend to pick carefully in 2022 in these Stocks. There are great forward thinking companies in Scandinavia, France, Holland and Switzerland that are ignored by UK investors.The problem with UK is that because the overall Stock market is really small that one knee jerk issue can upend the entire market for ages. The US Stock market is more sheepish so that when the mood changes it is across the board in a given direction,
Would welcome more commentary and potential ideas to kick around in Stockopedia . As the largest Stock market in the World Stockopedia really should have a section on US Stocks!!!!
Totally agree on the US-focus, which should be higher here.
Thanks for the input on sources. I wasn't familiar with Stock Rover. Are you paying for that currently?
Seeking Alpha I find good for inspiration and data, but super unreliable. I wouldn't bet my own money on bears and bulls on there.
I also found Seeking Alpha unreliable for researching data on EU companies, which is a concern. If your data isn't correct, don't present it.
For a good service on Stock Rover, the Essentials Plan which is free is very basic, and, you will need to go higher. Suggest if interested load your Portfolio on Essentials and play around with it then consider moving to Premium which starts at $17.99pm or $180py when you have got used to it. You can buy a further higher stage which I have not got. The Dashboard is a bit clunky. The US Stocks Research Reports even at the price $100 py are worth it and are very clear included for sub paying service. Think it is highly rated in the US if you Google site comparisons.
Seeking Alpha has some good contributors on it for free but you need to take a lot of the comments with a grain of salt as they are probably promoting or running down the Stock. When Trump was in Office it got very nasty and partisan. Never used it for European shares apart from shares that are double quoted in US and Europe - ASM.AS, ASML.AS, ADYEN.AS
I agree about Seeking Alpha, the problem is you get too many articles, it is difficult to pick the wood from the trees. I use Tipranks now, I find it better than SA, lots of information for free. You can follow certain members, who all have a success rating.
some features I think are better than Stockopedia, such as the quarterly reported earnings, how they compare to the forecasts. Reporting in the US is a lot more controlled, with scheduled quarterly reports.
Not convinced about Stockopedia for the US.
Agree with you on Stockopedia and US Stocks because of the importance of Quarterly reporting and tuning in to that vibe which changes the market very quickly if news is not good. However, the financial data on US Stocks on Stockopedia in Stock Reports is very good if you want data to back up your own views.The Stockopedia Dashboard is also very good for US Stocks and seems accurate as I annually compare the numbers to another portfolio schedule from my brokers. Will try Tipranks thanks for the “tip”
Sorry apologies there on Stock Rover subs I was reading off the website rather than my own notes on subs. There is Stock Rover Free, Essentials is $8pm/$80py, Premium $18pm/$180py and Premium Plus more again. Think Premium at $180py is fine if you experiment with Free.
OK
Please add the Capital Employed Podcast to your list https://capitalemployed.fm/
We cover a lot of US companies especially in the small cap end of the market.
Hi Jon - I've really enjoyed your podcast and should have included it on the list though must confess i'm disappointed you've gone to a premium model. don't blame you for doing so, just disappointing for a podcast whore such as myself. Thanks, Charlie
Interesting post. This discussion tempted me to take out a subscription for the US as well as the UK. I've just been playing with it for a few minutes but I can already see that the stockranks appear to have less relevance in the US markets. If you look at all the combinations of stockrank, the UK significantly outperforms US, despite UK markets overall lagging the US.
For example, the VM Rank in the UK achieves +401% since inception, whereas for the US it's only 78%.
Not sure if it's a methodology thing but does suggest that this is one aspect of the data that it less helpful.
Any thoughts? Has Ed done any of the Stockrank analysis on the US universe?
Thanks
I think that would make sense - if the top performers in the us have tended to be the faang companies and similar it would make sense they probably havent flagged up as being value candidates. Not sure where the rest of the us outperformance has come from (if there is any) - i would guess for the good companies you would have needed to pay that bit extra for the priviledge as the market would know its a good un and price accordingly. I bought some Disney a couple of years back and dont particularly remember it being particularly cheap when i bought it.
Isn't that because the US rank doesn't get introduced until 2015 while Europe and UK starts in 2013? If I change the calculation to last three years - where all three markets are available - then it looks quite different.
US 109%
EU 103%
UK 64%
I don’t have the US region. How does the QM rank compare?
I believe Stockopedia works better on small to mid caps, much of the growth in the US has been large caps, stocks such as $SHOP 10 bagged in a few years, I don’t think that was highly rated on Stockopedia. Of course the companies in the US are generally larger than the UK. Also they have large technology companies which we don’t.
I wonder if Stockopedia would consider doing a trial period for different regions?
Last 3Y QM list for EU, US and UK:
UK; 97%, EU; 69%; US; 72%.
You're right about Shopify. It's been at a 50-ish StockRank the last few years. Currently its only redeeming rank in StockRanks is Growth, which is at 90. Everything is either in red or neutral.
In general Stockopedia punishes growth stocks that are losing money.
Thanks that is useful.
$SHOP has fallen back recently which may account for the red ratings now. There were a lot of US growth stocks around last year, that were making losses, but were expected to start making profits shortly, these would not be well ranked on Stockopedia but the share prices were rocketing, this is what happened with SHOP a few years ago, went from $100 to around $1600 in a few years. Stockopedia is not good on new companies or loss making ones because it looks backwards.
On stocks such as $MSFT and $AAPL it probably works well and I think both of those were quite highly ranked.
Thanks for your post. I'm missing a bit more discussion here on EU and US stocks. I'm apparently one of the few non-UK people here :)
You're already following more or less the same resources as I do although you're paying for more of them than I would. So I will just add a few more that wasn't already mentioned.
Keep in mind that my strategy for investing is 75% dividend growth and 25% pure growth and you already mentioned some of the resources for researching pure growth stocks.
www.SureDividend.com for detailed info, analysis and inspiration on dividend stocks.
www.DividendGrowthInvestor.com for a very US-centric point of view. But I feel like his strategy aligns well with my own, so I follow it for comments on a few stocks that we both own as well as inspiration.
www.io-fund.com for analysis and research reminiscent of Motley Fool and ARK on pure growth. Focused on technology.
One challenge with Stockopedia is that it only goes back 10 years, which is a limitation when you're researching dividend growth over the long term. In this case I will combine Stockopedia with SeekingAlpha.
Not sure if this thread is fine for ogoing US stock comments - in the absence of another genral thread lets use this one for now.
Ok next us stock idea is dropbox.
Dropbox is very simple business model online storage of info - via monthly or annual subscription from customers. They have huge pool of active users at 600mill with 15 mill being paying users. They really don't need to find their future paying customers they are mostly sat their waiting to upgrade to subscritoion or will be drawn in by the free basic offering. Its about a simple business model as you can get.
Personally i love dropbox for its simplicity - for non techy bods the default is that its simply a folder sat in your my documents folder on your computer or similar.
Note dropbox are expanding their range of services to increaee their Total addressavble market - by doing things like document signing etc.
They are flexible and will tend to actively partner up with anyone and everyone - so if you buy some new tech or sign up to third party app or service - you may simply be one click (and signup) away from storing your data in dropbox. even hmrc started using dropbox ref verifying bods ref seiss grants (done in very sketchy manner) recently.
Do they have a moat - the market possibly thinks their service is of the type that should be universally free or should cost pennies - so the worry is this type of service will be a race to the bottom price wise - with free google drive / microsoft one drive etc - it certainly could be the fact that long terms bods will not have to pay a penny for something similar to what dropbox does - so that will probably rule this one out for some if they like a decent moat or worry about margin erosion.
I have found the simplicity of dropbox is great for sharing stuff with many others - my old skool liking of file folders stored like filing cabinet may mean i am slightly biased and old fashioned in this respect. Note at present only 2.5% of customers pay so plenty of room for skinflints to use the service here.
ok what about the financials.
Business model is ridiculously simple cashflow is very consistent and not an issue and paid upfront or each month - pretty much bullet proof. SAAS companies can really pimp up cashflow simpyly by turning off the spending tap at any time - it can be a great way to make a quick buck pimping out existing customers with investing much back into anything new. Obviously dropbox is spedning decent amounts to do what they need to do to drive the busines forward.
market cap is £9.45 billion dollars .
dropbox have a stated goal of reaching $1 billion free cashflow by 2024 - they are well on the way to that target = last 3 month period reported on they managed $221 mill and year end expecations are for $720 mill year just finished.
So the attraction here is that in next 10 years the company could easily make its market cap in free cashflow. Dropbox seem to have a simple plan for future cashflow - they have announced $1.6 of share buybacks in recent times - so the potential here is that shareholders will have an ever increasing piece of the pie if that contiunues. They are also spending some wonga adding complimatary new services.
Are they under margin issues? - they have been steadily increasing revenues per user (perhaps aided by acquisitions for more added value services)
In guess the worry here may be the lack of moat and margin pressures - but in business we see plenty of clients happy to pay $20-$30 per month to companies that make their life easy whether that be adobe / google apps or whatever so despite the competition perhaps offering similar stuff free i am happy to hold this company shares while there are prospects of it soon making 10% of its market cash each year in free cashflow.
You should set up a US thread.
Had a quick look at Dropbox, one thing puts me off is the very large director selling ($27m), in the last 2 months, presume that is part of the reason, the shares have fallen back?
Analyst are not very positive. Of course Docusign would be the major rival in signing documents. $DOCU has had a major fall from $311 down to $130.
I don't have the US region on my Stockopedia subscription so I can't see all the figures.
I think Adobe Photoshop is $10 pm , I still use a disc but may decide to do monthly subscription, but that is for full photoshop with all updates, so is quite a lot for $10 pm, before cloud based, it was about $600 for Photoshop disk, not sure what Dropbox is offering is anything like that.
don't have the US region on my Stockopedia subscription so I can't see all the figures.
If you want to be able to drill to very useful free info fast as per earlier post simplywallstreet is a decent free easy signup resource.
Had a quick look at Dropbox, one thing puts me off is the very large director selling ($27m), in the last 2 months, presume that is part of the reason, the shares have fallen back?
Personally i have no real issues ref the share sale - Salary for Drew is pretty much a pittance so i am guessing he is mostly rewarded with options.
Looking at his current holding he still retains over 22% of the buisness - so for such a large company his interests are still massively aligned with that of the company . think his sale was 1.5% of his holding. In some respects moving away from having all his eggs in one basket is a no brainer for him medium term.
Note there was specific comment ref the share sale that it at least partly related to tax due on stock options. Presuming he is mostly rewarded via stock options it makes sense that he would be a consistent seller. I am happy that the share sale is more likely than not a red herring here in that it had to hapen sometime about now.
comment on sec filing
Represents shares that were sold to cover tax withholding obligations in connection with the vesting of restricted stock awards previously reported.
I suspect drift down in price is simply in sympathy with oher similar us tech shares more than that share sale.
Analyst are not very positive.
Yep - its certainly true that the market doesnt rate this company no arguments there , with regard to profits it certainly has been plodding along presumably with tech the market loves mid double digit / treble digit sales growth - ignoring analysts though looking at the numbers they are churning out they look fine to me. Nearly 10% increase in revenues each year is just fine with the modest market cap we have here - and analysts are expecting 10% sales increase again in 2022 - so the numbers look ok even if the analsysts dont like what they see.
Thanks for all that information, I will certainly look into it more deeply, I’m only just starting to research it. How does it rate on Stockopedia?
How do you find Stockopedia for the US market? I was put off by the underperformance of the top ranked stocks.
Dropbox: Quality72 Value32 Momentum51 StockRank™51
How do you find Stockopedia for the US market? I was put off by the underperformance of the top ranked stocks.
Being a tightwad i don't subscribe to the us side of things here on stocky - its slightly annoying not having the info to hand but yahoo finance and simplywallstreet (well worth playing with the free signup) that gives me enough to go on supplemented by the 3 monthly info chucked out by most us companies and there is some fairly good coverage on you tube ref most us stocks too - if you filter out the obvious rampers.
Cheers for highlighting the numbers SCI20 - seems pretty middle of the road for now ref those numbers. Thats not unexpected as really the bottom line profits at present arent as good as the underlying cashflow suggests should be the case later on.
Thanks, I will have a look at simplywallstreet. I’m similar, but I did have Europe for a while. The US region I may try it for a while, I can drop it at next renewal if I wish.
One issue with dropbox that i didn't highlight that is probably relevant is that with regard to the sharebuybacks these look like they are being done at the same time as they issue wads of options/shares to staff/directors. Its somewhat more common in the us to go down the shares route and not sure if newer listed companies that want to concentrate on allocating their cash are more likely to use this more during early expansion. Hopefully its also the case that if its say $150-$200 mill per year of wages not getting expensed and hidden in the share options then if that stays roughly the same as profits increase the sums become less of an issue as the years go buy. In some repects parking the difference into cheap debt and repaying when cashflow is truly prodigious rather than diluting shareholders now isnt the worst route. It would probably turn into a complete disaster though if they don't keep increasing profits and cashflow each year.
One decent tool for doing us research is the simply wall street app/website. They try to getyou down the paid subscription route but the free version allows you to get plenty of decent content. For each company you can view key metrics very well laid out with news stories and details oompany announcements.
Tech buyer beware imo just now…
Not very inspiring yet…
US markets are great but are far more beholden to the army of traders worldwide than U.K. markets, the options market also has a significant effect in comparison.
Until the index can show progress to the upside from this descending channel, the short term trend is down. The longer timeframe is also shaping up for a reversal pattern. Even the mega caps could be getting cheaper soon…
Charlie, incredibly useful. Thank you!
The big risk for FootLocker (and rivals) is Nike's DTC online shopping channel growing at 25% pa.
As I said on the SCVR, I prefer TipRanks to Seeking Alpha, there is quite a bit of free information and rankings. They rank stocks 1-10 based on various data. I don't know how well the 10s perform. I only use the free version, premium is $30pm. To get all the rankings you need premium, but you can look up stock, $MSFT and $AAPL are both ranked 9.
Foot Locker
Ok this thread deserves comments to get us up and running.
I have recently purchased Foot Locker - this share is presumably being dlagged up as some sort of value trap at present. The specialise in trainers so probably an american version of SHOE? albeit trainers not shoes - they have a very high proportion of sales from Nike (they may be Nikes biggest reseller) - not sure if thats a good thing (they may get dibs on nike products ahead of smaller competitors) - that might be a bad thing if they are over relaint on being lap poodle for Nike.
https://www.nasdaq.com/article...
https://www.wsj.com/market-dat...
The company hae just been downgarded by JP morgan for the following reeasons
"diminishing athletic wear market share as a potential threat."
Looking at where we are now - expectations are for eps of $7.5 this year and $6.5 and $6.7p the following 2 years. note this year end is 31/1/2022 - so we are nearly in next year now. Note 2021 eps was only only $3.07 so perhaps in a bad year we cannot expect the above numbers to be acheived!
I have picked up a holding at $42 dollars purchase price thats pe of 6.5 !! - 6 months ago shareprice was $65 so share has takena bit of a tanking recently.
Must admit its a bit of a punt purchase here - i have followed in the popular investor on you tube ref this purchase - albeit i dont yet know his reasons for buying and the choice is mine to add (sheep i am not) , i have always found the popular investor to be top banana when it comes to doing research before buying ref the financial metrics of the business . A quick bit of research indicates they are adding new brands and growing online - so hopefully that will reduce the issues highlighted by JP morgan with regard to losing market share - there was interview with top bod who didn't argue market share had dropped - hopefully its about qualifty of sales not volume. Hopefully i havent bought into a value trap here. hmmm hopefully used to sentances in a row that sounds like straw clutching.
It does seem some us shares can easily double or halve in value without much changing ref prospects - not sure if generally its harder to revitalise these "larger" companies when things go bad due to their size and perhaps lack of nimbleness. It does seem like random swings are at least as big in us as in the uk.
Foot Locker
Ok this thread deserves comments to get us up and running.
I have recently purchased Foot Locker - this share is presumably being dlagged up as some sort of value trap at present. The specialise in trainers so probably an american version of SHOE? albeit trainers not shoes - they have a very high proportion of sales from Nike (they may be Nikes biggest reseller) - not sure if thats a good thing (they may get dibs on nike products ahead of smaller competitors) - that might be a bad thing if they are over relaint on being lap poodle for Nike.
https://www.nasdaq.com/article...
https://www.wsj.com/market-dat...
The company hae just been downgarded by JP morgan for the following reeasons
"diminishing athletic wear market share as a potential threat."
Looking at where we are now - expectations are for eps of $7.5 this year and $6.5 and $6.7p the following 2 years. note this year end is 31/1/2022 - so we are nearly in next year now. Note 2021 eps was only only $3.07 so perhaps in a bad year we cannot expect the above numbers to be acheived!
I have picked up a holding at $42 dollars purchase price thats pe of 6.5 !! - 6 months ago shareprice was $65 so share has takena bit of a tanking recently.
Must admit its a bit of a punt purchase here - i have followed in the popular investor on you tube ref this purchase - albeit i dont yet know his reasons for buying and the choice is mine to add (sheep i am not) , i have always found the popular investor to be top banana when it comes to doing research before buying ref the financial metrics of the business . A quick bit of research indicates they are adding new brands and growing online - so hopefully that will reduce the issues highlighted by JP morgan with regard to losing market share - there was interview with top bod who didn't argue market share had dropped - hopefully its about qualifty of sales not volume. Hopefully i havent bought into a value trap here. hmmm hopefully used to sentances in a row that sounds like straw clutching.
It does seem some us shares can easily double or halve in value without much changing ref prospects - not sure if generally its harder to revitalise these "larger" companies when things go bad due to their size and perhaps lack of nimbleness. It does seem like random swings are at least as big in us as in the uk.
Foot Locker are up against our own Jd Sports Fashion (LON:JD.) who are expanding through US acquisitions.
e.g https://www.retailgazette.co.u...
Thanks for that JohnEustace will be interesing to see how that battle pans out - is it possibly the case that Foot Locker have had things too easy previously? . I do wander nowadays with retail though whether going forwards its less likley these big boys will compete on price i.e. they will be happy simply to charge similar prices and hope they survive by being better brand? . I doubt either party would would to start a price war here. Perhaps its like two pubs next to each other where that often brings more than twice the amount of paying punters than one pub on its own.
quick look at the numbers next 12 months - could easily be wrong i dont have the benefit of us subscription :(
jd.com - coverted at 1.35
sales $11.9 bill
profit $776 mill
market cap $15.2 bill
pe 19
Foot locker
sales $9.2 bill
profits $675 (worked back from yahoo finance market cap may be wrong)
market cap $4.42 bill (yahoo finance may be wrong)
pe 6.5 (worked back from yahoo finance market cap may be wrong)
per sec filing 100,368,462 shares in issued dec 2021 - seems kinda consistent with above numbers
Ok market is saying jd.com are quality outfit and Foot Locker are a basket case looking at my sketchy comparisons.
From a quick google search, Footlocker seems to be more highly regarded than FinishLine, JD's US brand. Footlocker had to compete against finishline prior to JD purchasing it, so it wasn't as though there wasn't any competition. This does seem to be quite an interesting pick.
https://www.shoppingspout.us/b...
https://www.comparably.com/com...