Stockchase Review: The Place to Go for Top Stock Recommendations

I recently wrote an in-depth review of Wealthica, a Canadian company that’s helping investors to not only track their net worth, but view all of their investment and banking information in one place. It just so happens that Wealthica is closely connected to another longstanding Canadian investment website, Stockchase, which is the subject of my in-depth review in this article.

What Is Stockchase?

Stockchase compiles top stock picks from leading fund managers and market analysts as they appear on the Business News Network’s (BNN) programs, Market Call, and Market Call tonight. The website began as a labour of love as far back as 2000, when a man by the name of Bill Bruner began to publish the personal notes he was making online. In 2017, the company was acquired by Wealthica Financial Technology Inc., whose expressed goal is to maintain Stockchase as the #1 place to find expert stock opinions online.

About BNN

If you are even faintly interested in stocks, chances are you’re familiar with the Business News Network. It’s become known as the place to go for the latest Canadian financial market news. Every day, the shows BNN Market Call and Market Call Tonight feature top stock experts who offer up their opinion on the short and long term prospects of various stocks. The challenge with watching BNN is trying to stay on top of all of the information that’s presented, as it changes constantly. Stockchase makes it easier to sift through the data.

How to Use Stockchase

I love how easy it is to use the Stockchase platform. Upon arriving on their website homepage, simply enter the name of the company or your preferred stock expert (if you have one), and you’ll be presented with a long list of commentary on said company, or from your preferred expert. When you sign up for a free account, you’ll be able to add companies to a watch list and sign up to receive alerts. Some features can only be unlocked by registering for the paid version (Stockchase Premium), which I’ll get into a bit later.

Each company profile offers a wealth of information at your fingertips, starting with a chart that displays the recent stock price history (see Fortis example below).

Directly beneath the price chart, in chronological order, are thumbnails of top stock experts who have appeared on BNN providing commentary for that stock. Click on any thumbnail to access their detailed commentary. Alternatively, you can scroll down the page to see the full list of expert commentary. If you’re looking for a more advanced price chart, it’s included in the menu directly above the graph.

In the Fortis example above, there are no fewer than 590 pieces of commentary you can read. Of course, it will take you back years, but it’s pretty impressive that you can have that much information in one place. To unlock an expert’s overall ratings (far right of image), you’ll need to signup for Stockchase Premium. Is it worth it? Let’s take a closer look at what you get with the paid version of Stockchase.

Introducing Stockchase Premium

For $10/month, or $99/year, you can register for Stockchase Premium, which unlocks all of the site’s stock resources. Here’s what you get when you become a Premium member:

• Ad-free user experience
• Advance release of the daily top picks email
• Access to performance data from top pick portfolios
• Top 25 experts ranking
• Monthly newsletter is included with Premium

Whether Stockchase Premium is worth $10/month is up to you, but it’s a fairly low-risk proposition in that they offer a 60-day money-back guarantee, if after trying it out, you decide it’s not worth it.

Wealthica Spreadsheet Export

If you’re like most DIY investors and like to keep track of your investments on a spreadsheet, Stockchase Premium and Wealthica can make life easier by including a free Google Spreadsheet export via the Wealthica app. This is a feature that normally costs $72/year, but it’s free when you sign up for Stockchase Premium. It automates exports of your investment holdings and transaction data to a Google spreadsheet, saving you the time of having to manually input it on your own.

What Is Wealthica?

Most Canadians deal with multiple financial institutions, making it difficult to capture their entire financial picture on one screen. Chances are that you hold your day to day accounts at one bank, your mortgage at another, and your investment portfolio somewhere else entirely. Wealthica helps by collecting all of your financial information and displaying it in one place. This helps you get a handle on your money, and keep track of one of the most important indicators of a person’s financial health, your net worth. For more information, check out my Wealthica review.

The Stockchase Email List

One of the best ways to make use of Stockchase is by signing up to receive their daily emails. This puts the information you care about right at your fingertips, you don’t have to search for it on their site. There are 2 emails you can sign up to receive: ‘Top Picks Alerts’ and ‘Your Watchlist Alerts’, which includes stocks that you’ve chosen to receive commentary for. You don’t have to be a Stockchase Premium member to receive their daily emails.

A Caution About Picking Stocks

While my overall assessment of Stockchase is that it’s a useful tool that gathers timely and relevant data from some of the smartest minds in the industry, you do need to use caution when listening to the experts. Remember that a fund manager is paid to buy and sell huge quantities of stock on a fairly regular basis, and stock picking is what market analysts do, day in day out.

For the average investor without access to a large portfolio, purchasing individual stocks can be risky. To achieve proper diversification, you need to have a sizable portfolio and a large basket of carefully selected stocks. Not only that, active stock trading just isn’t wise for the average investor, as it often results in increased portfolio volatility, high fees, and below-average returns in the long term.

That said, if you’re an experienced investor, or making the occasional stock purchase and are in need of some investment ideas, Stockchase has plenty of tools to help you with your research.