Best Stock Picking Services - Based on Research

The Mindful Trader stock picking service is run by one guy, Eric Ferguson. He’s a legitimately nice and caring person, which is a breath of fresh air in this industry. (And a bonus is that he’s so fast at responding to emails.)

Eric did years of research on stock market price tendencies. So when he posts a stock pick, it’s because he knows from history that the trading strategy has historical odds in its favor.

That’s a big difference from most other stock picking services, who make trades based on gut instincts rather than historical evidence. It’s a more scientific approach to trading than flying by the seat of the pants.

His stock picks are for swing trades, which means that most trades last several days. And he normally posts 5-10 stock picks per week, although it varies.

All his stock picks are for stocks he bought in his own trading account. They look like this:

You can tell that it’s pretty simple. Stoplosses and profit targets are assigned upfront and there is a time limit for each trade. You can use any trading platform you want to make the trades.

So once you see the trade information, you set up everything at the start, and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore until the time limit hits (which is also alerted as a handy reminder). It’s a set-it-and-forget-it type of stock picking service and typically only takes a few minutes to set up each trade once you get used to it.

What we love most about Mindful Trader, aside from the fact that there’s so much intelligence that’s gone into his trade decisions, is that this guy is just totally transparent and honest.

There are some periods where his trades don’t do well, but he doesn’t hide that. He puts his trade performance out in the open for everyone to see. And he doesn’t make a secret of the fact that there are periods of strong profits and also periods with no profits or drawdowns.

With some other stock picking services, they claim to make endless profits without ever losing. In our experience, that’s just not possible, and we’ve tried a lot of stock picking services. So when one of these services makes it clear up front that there are periods of losses, that’s appealing to us because it reflects the type of candor we want from a stock picking service.

He’s pretty aggressive with position sizing, but he gives you a calculator so that you can calculate how to do a fraction of his position size if you want.

Overall, Mindful Trader is right for someone who is looking to generate long-term wealth, is willing to commit about 15 minutes per weekday to managing trades, and wants to be educated by someone who takes a very academic approach to trading.

Mindful Trader is not right for you if you’re looking to day trade, if you want to be looking at the stock market all day, or if you want overnight riches. You’ll see below that there are other stock picking services we’d recommend if those are your objectives.

The Market Life stock picking service is run by Adam Grimes, who by all accounts is a true expert in the industry. This guy has been hired by a number of Wall Street trading firms to educate their traders. He has a phenomenal reputation and takes a very academic approach to trading.

You can just tell this guy is super smart when you listen to him. From his quantitative approach with trading to his passion for crazy technical violin music, this guy just oozes intelligence.

Market Life’s stock picks do not come in the form of text messages with an instant alert. In fact, Adam doesn’t even say exactly when he got into trades or what price he paid for his positions. Instead, he has a place on his website where he shows all active trades and all trades he is considering.

It is therefore on you to regularly check that webpage to look for updates, and to follow along. There is a bit of a delay factor since you aren’t alerted the minute Adam gets into a position, but that being said, he tells you up front which positions he is considering, so you have time to do your own due diligence and prepare for the trade.

So it’s not as quick and easy as a trade alert service where they just text or email you right when they make each trade, but the upside is that you’re getting inside access to the trading decisions of a highly acclaimed stock market trader.

And from our perspective, his service is more like a stock picking service where he’s telling you which stocks he’s watching and a lot of the value in his service is knowing those stock picks.

And he does well with those stock picks! Check out his track record:

He has handily beaten the market’s rate of return while offering a more consistent rate of return (which is what the Sharpe ratio measures that he references in the chart).

There are some other cool things about the Market Life service. One is that Adam hosts weekly webinars where members can post questions in the chat and he’ll answer them directly.

He also talks in those webinars about his perspective of the big picture with the markets, which is nice for those people who like to be a little more involved in the stock market than just dipping in and out to make trades.

In general, Adam Grimes is a great educator, and although he’s telling you the trades he’s making, he’s also encouraging you to learn on your own what the premises for the trades are and whether you personally would want to make the trade yourself, regardless of what he decides to do.

Overall Market Life is right for you if you want to get access to the trades made by a guy who trains professional Wall Street traders how to trade. It’s also right for you if you want to spend maybe an hour per day doing stock market activities and like the thought of employing a fair amount of personal discretion and research in your trading decisions.

Market Life may not be for you if you want someone to just tell you exactly when to trade and you want to minimize the time you spend looking at the stock market each day. It’s also not right for you if you are interested in day trading.

The Investors Underground stock picking service is a different beast than the other services on this page. It’s more of a community where there is expertise surrounding you every way you turn. It’s also focused on day trading.

It’s run by Nathan Michaud, who has been renowned in day trading circles for years.

But Investors Underground is much more than just Nathan Michaud; it’s an entire community of people who are constantly looking for the best trade opportunities. There are eyes and ears everywhere, and they all feed their trade ideas to you.

In other words, joining Investors Underground is like joining a community. And the goal isn’t just to take stock picks from someone, make the trade, and be done with it. The goal is to go through the education and training to become an expert trader yourself.

 
The first step toward becoming a day trading expert is going through the stock trading course that Investors Underground offers.  

We liked the chapter in the Textbook Trading course about the ABCD trading pattern. It’s a key trading strategy that Nathan Michaud uses and that has a track record of success in a variety of different market environments. We still use that strategy regularly!

There are tons and tons of educational videos that offer training from all the key trading gurus at Investors Underground. There are also weekly webinars from a variety of in-house experts there. And as you start to get a handle on stock trading, then you can really start to capitalize on the trade alerts that come through the trading chat room.

These are not formal, official stock picks though. Instead, the stock picks come from people in the community who see an opportunity and announce it to the group. They’re typically very time-sensitive since they are for day trade opportunities, but you get that stock alert right when you need it.

In our experience, we tended to gravitate toward stock picks that came from the “gurus” at Investors Underground who lead the educational program, but in the chat room, all traders can make an alert when they see an opportunity. If you have the core training down and become good at day trading, then these sorts of alerts can be very valuable, mainly because you can’t be everywhere and see everything at once. So it can be a great benefit to have all these eyes and ears out there alerting you when opportunities arise.

Overall, Investors Underground is right for if you want to be heavily involved in the stock market, want to be part of an active community of traders, and like the idea of day trading.

It also might be good for if you are driven to make big sums of money in a short period of time. It might be extremely hard, risky, and unlikely to get rich overnight from day trading, but there are certainly success stories from Investors Underground of people growing their accounts tenfold and more within a year.

Investors Underground is not right for you if you want cut-and-dry stock picks where you are told in simple and easy terms exactly what to trade and when to trade it. It’s also not right for you if you want more limited involvement in the stock market.