In this Simply Wall St Review, we’ll explore whether this stock research, screener, and portfolio management tool is right for your investing toolkit.
Quick Summary:
Simply Wall St. is an investment research and stock analysis platform that provides investors with powerful prebuilt and custom stock screeners, research reports, portfolio management tools, and automatic portfolio integration functionality across 1,000 brokers.
The company offers free and premium versions of its platform, with varying levels of functionality and pricing at each tier, making it ideal for beginner and advanced traders and investors.
Overall Rating:
Stock Analysis:
Tools & Features:
Ease of Use:
Price:
Best For:
Buy and hold investors
Capital appreciation-oriented investors
PROS
- Great visuals
- Dedicated mobile app
- Easy to navigate
CONS
- Research reports can be lacking
- No prebuilt screeners
- Portfolio management less robust vs. competitors
Price:
$0 – $12/month
Features:
Custom and prebuilt screeners
Advanced portfolio management tools
Brokerage account integration
Stock Research reports
Mobile App?
Yes
Current Promotions:
14 Day Free Trial
Investing in the stock market is never simple. That’s where platforms like Simply Wall St comes into play.
Aimed at simplifying the complex world of stock research and analysis, Simply Wall St offers a wide range of fundamental research and portfolio management tools for novice and experienced investors.
But is it worth the subscription fee? Let’s examine the key features, pros, and cons to help you decide if Simply Wall St should be part of your investing toolkit.
What is Simply Wall St?
Simply Wall St. is an investment research and stock analysis platform that provides investors with powerful prebuilt and custom stock screeners, research reports, and portfolio management tools with portfolio integration functionality.
The company offers free and premium versions of its platform, with varying levels of functionality and pricing at each tier, making it ideal for beginner to advanced investors.
Simply Wall St was founded in 2014 by Al Bentley in Sydney, Australia.
This investing platform boasts 5 million users worldwide and covers 150,000 stocks across 170 countries.
Simply Wall St has been featured in Forbes, Tech Crunch, and CNBC, to name a few.
Best For
Below, we explore who should use this investing platform and why.
Investors Focused on Fundamental Analysis
The platform is ideal for investors who want to perform in-depth stock analyses that focus on fundamental analysis metrics.
Budget-Conscious Investors
With paid plans starting at $10 a month, Simply Wall St offers one of the most cost-effective stock research and portfolio management tools available, making it the perfect solution for budget-conscious investors.
Beginner Investors
Compared to some of the more advanced stock research and screening platforms available, Simply Wall St is easy to use – their research reports are well-structured and concise. Meanwhile, their screeners are easy to set up with just a few clicks.
They do not overwhelm you with tons of data and information, making it ideal for beginner to intermediate investors.
Key Features
Simply Wall St. offers several stock analysis tools, including stock screeners, research reports, portfolio management, etc.
Stock Research Reports
Stock analysis is one of the key offerings at Simply Wall St.
These folks are firm believers in fundamental analysis and have built their stock research reports using a bottom-up fundamental analysis.
Their stock research reports includes taking a company’s financials and analyst forecasts and using them to assess a stock’s potential over the long run.
The Simply Wall St platform performs several quantitative checks across a wide range of assessment criteria:
- Valuation: The fair value of the company’s shares and how that value compares with the current share price, other companies, and the stock market
- Future Growth: Anticipated future financial performance based on analyst forecasts
- Past Performance: The historical financial performance of the company
- Financial Health: The financial strength of the company’s balance sheet
- Dividend: The dividend being paid and the sustainability of the dividend
PRO TIP: You can see the details of each check by hovering over the checklist to the right of each analysis section on the Simply Wall St app.
Unlike Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor, Simply Wall St does not offer explicit stock picks. Instead, they aim at empowering investors to make their own investing decisions.
And like Seeking Alpha, Simply Wall Street recently rolled out its ‘Narrative’ functionality. Narratives aim to provide subscribers with crowdsourced views on specific stocks.
Snowflake Analysis
Another interesting feature of Simply Wall St is the Snowflake Analysis functionality.
The snowflake analysis gives an instant snapshot of a company’s investment profile, focusing on its fundamental characteristics.
This snapshot should help you quickly decide if a company is worth researching.
The results are presented as a visually intuitive summary.
The Snowflake is a visual summary of a company’s analysis based on five fundamental areas:
- Value
- Future
- Past
- Health
- Dividend
Each fundamental area has six metrics they measure a company against, which it either passes or fails.
For example:
Microsoft example below, this stock failed all 6 of the Dividend Metric checks. I will note, that while Microsoft “failed” the dividend criteria check, this needs to be taken in totality with the companies’ large strategy e.g., they have never historically been known as a dividend paying stock, and this doesn’t necessarily make them a bad company, just not part of their larger strategy.
The color of the Snowflake relates to its size. The more metrics a company passes, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes. Inversely, the fewer metrics a company passes, the smaller and more red the Snowflake will be.
Note: Of all the companies I analyzed, most snowflakes mostly resemble blobs, so not sure where the snowflake term is coming from.
The snowflake is not a buy or sell recommendation.
It represents how attractive a company’s fundamentals are. While its color changes from red to green depending on how many checks the company passes, a low score in a particular assessment criteria should not necessarily exclude a stock from investment consideration.
There are a total of 10 sections in the stock report:
- Executive Summary
- Share Price & News
- Valuation
- Future Growth
- Past Performance
- Financial Health
- Dividend
- Management
- Ownership
- Company Information
Stock Screener
Another great feature of Simply Wall St is its stock screener, which leverages institutional-quality data from S&P Global.
You can use the stock screener to filter by:
- Market
- Industry
- Market Cap
- Valuation
- Past Performance
- Financial Health
- And much more
Unlike other “free screeners”, you also have the ability to screen Exchange Traded Funds “ETFs” and Mutual Funds “Funds.”
The screener is easy to navigate and visually appealing. I created my screener in just a few moments, and my results were presented in an easily readable format.
Market Insights and News
The Market Insights feature provides unique analysis and views on investing-related themes. For example, the Simply Wall St. analysts recently provided an in-depth perspective on investing in 3D Printing.
Portfolio Tracker and Analysis
Simply Wall St. recently launched its enhanced portfolio tracking functionality.
Through the Simply Wall St. interface, you can securely import your brokerage data to Simply Wall St. where you can use their platform to analyze your investing account. Simply Wall St. has compatibility with over 1,000 different brokerages.
If you cannot automatically link your account, you still have the option to add your holdings manually.
Once you connect your brokerage account, you can:
- View individual stock returns
- Total Portfolio Returns vs. U.S. Stock Market
- Stock current value vs. fair value estimate
- Below that, Simply Wall St. will tell you if the stock is overvalued or undervalued and by what percent.
- Receive news updates regarding stocks in your portfolio, e.g., if any key executives bought or sold stock.
Overall, the portfolio functionality is a bit lackluster. There is no option to run portfolio simulations such as a Monte Carlo simulation like you can with Stock Rover, plus:
- The performance vs. market does not account for any transactions that may have occurred, e.g., buys or sells. However, the company is working on this functionality.
- You cannot change your benchmark index, e.g., S&P 500, Dow Jones, etc.
- Performance vs. Market comparison only goes back 1 year. It would be helpful to see 2, 3, 5, and 7 years back too.
PROs and CONs Explained
PROs
Great Visuals: The Portfolio dashboard, research reports, and snowflake analysis are well-designed and easy to follow.
Dedicated Mobile App: Unlike other stock analysis platforms, Simply Wall St offers a dedicated mobile app that provides the same functionality and flexibility as the desktop version.
CONs
Portfolio Management is less robust vs. competitors: Other competitors offer advanced analysis tools like Monte Carlo simulations allowing you to take a more in-depth look at your portfolio.
Research reports are lacking: Except for the Fair Value Analysis, most of the metrics provided in the research reports could be attained from a free resource like Yahoo Finance.
No prebuilt screeners: Unlike competitors such as Stock Rover, there are no prebuilt screeners, which could help you generate investing ideas.
Pricing and Value
Simply Wall St offers 2 paid pricing tiers and a free version.
The primary difference between the free, premium, and unlimited plan is the number of company reports and stocks analyzed per month.
However, at the free level, you do not have access to the screener, while the ability to export to Excel and PDF is limited to unlimited tier subscribers.
That said, If you are looking to do considerable stock research, then the premium or unlimited plan is probably your best option.
Simply Wall St: Free
The Simply Wall St Free plan is good for investors who want to test out the platform and see if it matches their investing needs before committing to a paid subscription.
With a free plan, you have access to:
- Global Markets Access
- 5 Company Reports per Month
- 5 Portfolio Stocks Analyzed
- 5 Watchlists
Simply Wall St: Premium
The Premium Plan is a good option for investors who want more detailed and personalized information about their investments.
A Premium Simply Wall St subscription includes:
- Global Markets Access
- 30 Company Reports per Month
- 30 Portfolio Stocks Analyzed
- 5 Watchlists
- Stock Screener
- $6/mo billed yearly
Simply Wall St: Unlimited
The unlimited plan comes with what it sounds like: unlimited company reports and stocks analyzed, plus Excel and PDF export capability.
The unlimited plan is best for investors who need more data and flexibility.
$12/month billed yearly
- Global Markets Access
- Unlimited Company Reports
- Unlimited Stocks Analyzed
- 5 Watchlists
- Stock Screener
- Excel & PDF Export
Mobile App
Simply Wall St. is one of the few stock analysis platforms that offers a dedicated mobile app.
The mobile app’s functionality is almost identical to the desktop version’s, including the ability to read research reports, set up screeners, track portfolio metrics, and much more. Compared to the desktop version, I thought the Mobile app was very user-friendly.
Best Alternatives
If you’re not sold on the functionality of Simply Wall St., don’t fret, there are plenty of excellent alternatives that also offer stock analysis, screeners, and other technical trading tools.
Below are the best ones:
1. Stock Rover
Stock Rover is a popular stock research and analysis platform and an excellent alternative to Simply Wall St.
Stock Rover is an investment research and analysis platform that provides investors with powerful prebuilt and custom stock screeners, advanced charting capabilities, research reports, portfolio management tools with portfolio integration capabilities across over 1,000 brokers, market research, and much more.
Read our complete Stock Rover Review.
2. Finviz
Finviz is another great alternative to Simply Wall St.
FinViz (Financial Visualizations) is a stock screener that offers individual investors a single platform to screen stocks, view market visualizations, backtest, read financial statements, view real-time quotes, set email alerts, and much more.
This platform best suits long-term and short-term investors looking for stocks that fit specific search criteria using customizable filters. The platform offers technical and fundamental screeners, signals, and much more. However, Finviz does not offer stock research and is really more for advanced screening.
Read our complete Finviz Review.
3. Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a popular investment research platform that offers a wide range of financial content to help investors make informed decisions.
Seeking Alpha is most similar to Simply Wall St, as they offer analyst research, stock screeners, and brokerage important functionality. However, Seeking Alpha is a bit more expensive at $199/year, making it less ideal for budget conscious investors.
The website features articles, analyses, and blog posts written by professionals and individual contributors, covering various investment topics, market trends, and specific company analyses.
Read our complete Seeking Alpha Review.
Final Thoughts
The simplicity of Simply Wall St., coupled with its reasonable pricing, great data visualizations, and dedicated mobile app, make it a no-brainer for many investors. That said, the limited portfolio management, less the ideal research reports, could leave some subscribers desiring more.
Either way, with such a low price point, it’s hard not to at least try it and see if it’s worth it.
Try Simply Wall St TodayOur Review Methodology
Investing in the right financial products is crucial for achieving your financial goals. That’s why our review methodology is designed to give you a comprehensive understanding of various investing platforms and tools. Here’s a breakdown of what we focus on:
Tools and Features
We dig deep into the suite of tools that each platform offers. Whether it’s automated investment features, tax optimization, or specialized charting tools, we evaluate how these features contribute to smarter investing decisions. We ask questions like:
- What is its main offering, and how does it compare to its peers?
- How effective are the risk assessment tools?
- Are there any value-added services like educational content?
Price and Value
Price matters, especially when it comes to investing, where every penny counts. We analyze:
- Subscription fees
- Hidden Charges
- Price compared to the overall value received
We’ll let you know if the platform gives you the most bang for your buck.
Ease of Use
User experience can make or break an investment platform. We assess:
- Interface Design – Is it intuitive and easy to use?
- Mobile app availability and functionality
- Customer Support – where applicable.
Nobody wants to navigate a clunky interface when dealing with their hard-earned money.
Stock Breakdown
Good investing is rooted in great research. We examine:
- The quality of stock analysis tools
- Returns on an absolute and comparative basis
- Availability of real-time data
- Depth of research reports
We check if the platform provides actionable insights to make informed decisions.
How We Do It
- Hands-On Testing: I signed up for Simply Wall Street to actually provide real insight. This is how I give a unique perspective. We’re unlike some other sites where they simply rehash marketing materials.
- Customer Reviews: What are other users saying? We look at reviews and customer feedback to gauge public opinion.
- Comparative Analysis: Finally, we compare each platform against competitors regarding features, pricing, and user experience.
