Best Swing Trade Alerts

In the stock market, no one will hold your hand.

It’s the truth, harsh as it may be. All of the help, education, and tutorials aside, at the end of the day, you’re going to be facing your challenges alone. If only someone would be so kind as to offer a helping hand or some advice—“buy this, sell when it hits this value…”

Well, you can get that sort of assistance… for a price. Stock trade alert services are used by thousands of traders worldwide—and these services are usually backed up by serious research conducted by professionals. Usually. 🌍

As always, there are bad services and good services—and telling them apart isn’t the easiest job in the world. But that’s where we’re going to help you out. We are going to review five stock alert services, with a particular focus on swing trading—a sensible, well-rounded trading strategy that gets less attention than it deserves compared to day trading and long-term investing.

In essence, swing trading seeks to capitalize on short-term trends or “swings” in the market. These can be caused by various factors—from the release of economic data to world events such as the spread of new COVID variants. Whatever the case, the markets will react, and when they do, it pays to have a helping hand—so let’s see what the best swing trade alert providers really have to offer. 

1.  The Trading Analyst: Best Overall

The Trading Analyst is a trade alert service that fills quite a specific niche—although it caters to all swing traders, it is focused on using options to secure profits. This alert service is quite new—it was founded in 2018 but has already managed to reach over 12,000 clients. This is one of the only services that focus solely on swing trading—and it has a track record that inspires confidence.

The Trading Analyst boasts a profit factor of 2.05—which tells us that when the service proposes a trade and it turns out to be profitable, it is on average slightly more than twice as profitable when compared to how much an average losing trade loses. Think of it this way—if the average losing trade loses $20, then the average winning trade gains $42. Over time, this makes a significant difference.

The next obvious question is success rate—how many of the alert service’s trades pan out. You’ll be happy to hear that we’re dealing with a majority—52% of all recommended trades end up being profitable.

So, what is it that makes this our top overall pick for swing trade alerts? Well, this is one of the only alert services out there that specifically cater to swing trading. All of the positions recommended by the Trading Analyst need to be held from anywhere between 3 days and a couple of months. 🗓

Clients receive anywhere from 2 to 10 alerts weekly, delivered in real-time via text message. Moreover, the targeted gains for these trades usually fall in the range between 50% and 100%, which is one of the likely reasons why the service has a good reputation. 

Now, whether you want to trade stocks directly or you want to use options, it’s up to you. However, keep in mind that options are used to lower capital requirements as an individual options contract for 100 shares of a major stock can be hundreds of times cheaper than buying said shares.

As far as keeping track of your trades goes, the Trading Analyst also provides users with a real-time portfolio tracker, which quickly and neatly summarizes the performance of your investments. In a broader sense, the service also publishes a market report each week, which gives you an easily digestible summary of the goings-on in the market. 📰

Regarding research, The Trading Analyst is one of the alert services that doesn’t focus on this area. You won’t get access to any sort of stock screener, or investment ratings, and there are no research reports to speak of. We wouldn’t necessarily regard this as a drawback, however, as you can get the same resources from a good stock trading app that you will need to trade anyways.

Sure, something is lost because you can’t pour over the research methodologies of these experts and pick their brains—but the fire and forget approach has its own charm. Besides—you wouldn’t really want to spend hours analyzing the service’s datasets and machine learning algorithms, would you?

As far as pricing goes, three options are available: monthly, quarterly, and annual subscription. A monthly subscription costs $147 each month, while the quarterly and annual options will set you back $357 and $787 in total. When you do the math, it’s clear that the annual subscription is the most affordable, seeing as how it costs only $65 per month.

Still, this is a big step to take—this service isn’t cheap. However, we firmly believe, looking at these results, that the price is worth it. While some might be daunted by the fact that this service mostly focuses on options, we think that there’s no better way to step forth into the world of derivatives.

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2.  Mindful Trader: Best Runner Up

Mindful Trader is a newcomer in the industry—it was founded in November of 2020 by Stanford graduate Eric Ferguson. It offers data-driven solutions, great average annual returns, and is a great choice for swing traders of all skill levels.

Ferguson’s story might strike a chord with you. Although he was an economics graduate with a knack for mathematics, his first few years of trading saw him losing quite a lot of money. Not one to be dissuaded, he decided to roll his sleeves up and come up with a rational, by-the-numbers solution—and it seems to have worked out.

Based on 20-year backtesting, the average annual return of the service is 181%. Users will receive anywhere from five to fifteen trade alerts weekly—and they’re all swing trades. All of the trades include a time limit to prevent you from accruing losses, and most of the trades will be canceled if they don’t turn profitable within two weeks, putting this service squarely in the shorter-term end of swing-trading alert services.

Here is where the first major flaw comes in, though. Unlike many of the other services we’ve reviewed, Mindful Trader doesn’t actually send out alerts—you’ll have to log in to the website and keep an eye on the page where Ferguson posts his trades.

The list of trades is easy to follow and well-structured, seeing as how they include the timing, ticker, entry price, profit target, and stop-loss value for each trade. However, as clear-cut and easy to recreate as this is, the lack of text messages or even e-mail alerts goes a long way in hindering the overall accessibility of the service.  📩

However, Ferguson does mostly post his trades within an hour of the U.S. stock market opening—but still, having to manually check the page is a chore. As a relatively new service, Mindful Trader lacks a mobile app, and the only customer service avenue available to you is to write directly to Ferguson via e-mail, which is not ideal.

In Ferguson’s own words, the recommendations given out by his service will work best for accounts that are worth $10,000 and over. Keep in mind that trading fees can easily take a chunk out of your profits—Ferguson himself uses TD Ameritrade, but you’re free to use any low-cost stock brokerage.

As a member, you’ll also gain access to Ferguson’s personally curated watchlists, a live overview of his positions, as well as the historical data regarding all of his trades since the beginning of the service. 📃

On top of that, members also gain access to a pre-market update, as well as educational video content that focuses on technical analysis, along with a couple of tutorials and some resources dealing with derivatives such as futures and options.

So, how much does this service cost? Well, it will set you back $47 per month, and although that isn’t too large an asking price, it can easily be a bit steep for some beginners. The service is well worth the price, but it could stand to improve quite a bit in terms of accessibility.

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3. Tim Alerts: Best for Swing Trading Penny Stocks

Timothy Sykes is a well-known success story—a young man who took $12,000 that he’d received for his bar mitzvah and turned it into a multi-million dollar penny stock empire. 

Tim is one of the most popular voices in the penny stock sphere—and you might have come across a couple of his articles already. So, how does the alert service of today’s premier penny stock guru compare to the competition?

One of the main advantages that this service has over the competition is the frequency of alerts that are sent out. Tim alerts sends clients anywhere from 5-10 trading ideas every day—a significant increase compared to most of the other services we’ve reviewed.

Alerts are sent out whenever Sykes opens or closes a position. The alerts are sent out via text message, e-mail, or push alert—but you can also download an iOS or Android app through which you can receive the alerts. However, these are penny stocks we’re talking about—and there’s nothing as volatile and rapidly-changing as penny stocks, so quick text messages are probably the best method. 🏆

As far as price goes, Tim Alerts will set you back $697 if paid on an annual basis, and slightly more ($74.95 each month) if you decide to pay monthly. However, there is another, more expensive version of Sykes’s alert service—and it’s called “Pennystocking Silver.”

This subscription costs $149.95 a month, or $1,297 if billed annually. It includes everything the basic Tim alerts subscription does, as well as access to weekly video lessons and a video lesson library that contains more than 7,000 entries. The video lesson library is just as expansive as it sounds, and it covers a wide range of topics including swing trading, short selling, options trading, trading volume, breakouts, technical analysis, and much more. 📽

So, all of that sounds nice—but let’s take a look at the numbers. Tim Alerts has a winning percentage of 51.21%—and the average dollar gain from a winning trade is $443. That’s not too shabby, considering we’re dealing with penny stocks here.

However, one area where this service does somewhat drop the ball is research. Although the service does send out plenty of alerts, Sykes doesn’t particularly go in-depth when explaining his picks. Don’t get us wrong, he does explain and justify his choice (usually in videos), but it isn’t particularly detailed and doesn’t let you get familiar with his methodology.

Be that as it may, the lack of in-depth research is dampened by the sheer scope of the educational materials at hand. On top of that, there is a rather large and active community gathered around Sykes—and the chatroom associated with his alert service is quite lively and vigorous. The chatroom offers a great opportunity to exchange ideas, learn from your peers, and stay informed about the goings-on in the market. 💬

All in all, Sykes’s alert service is a well-rounded package—and although it isn’t perfect, it doesn’t have any glaring flaws or drawbacks. Penny stocks are often maligned and get a bad rap because they’re a wellspring of fraud—but they are a legitimate source of income if you know how to avoid bad-faith actors. 

However, they’re still volatile, risky, and very unpredictable—so we’d recommend that beginners stay away from them, at least until they get a couple of notches under their belt. The same goes for Sykes’s alert service.

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4. Bear Bull Traders: Good Reputation

Bear Bull Traders was founded in 2016 by Canadian trader Andrew Aziz, a bestselling finance author. Since then, his stock alert service has seen exponential growth—nowadays, he has an entire team around him. So, how does his swing trade alert service stack up?

First things first—the primary focus on Bear Bull Traders is day trading. That’s simply the preferred style of Andrew Aziz. So, what if you’re a swing trader? ☀

Well, you’re in luck. Aziz’s right-hand man, Brian Pezim, is a swing trader—and most of the content he produces focuses on this strategy. The Bear Bull chat room has a strict schedule—so every day from 3:30 PM to 4.00 PM, Pezim will share his swing trading ideas in the chatroom. On top of that, you can also sign up for swing trading email alerts.

Most of the swing trades focus on stocks and ETFs, and the recommendations are also sent in real-time in the chatroom. If you’re still on the fence about following the recommendations, don’t worry—the team themselves recommend using a simulated paper trading account first to get the hang of things.

It just so happens that one of the more unique features of this alert service is that it offers access to a paper trading account via DAS Trader Pro.

As far as pricing goes, you have a choice between three subscriptions: basic, which is billed at $99 monthly, elite, which is also billed monthly at $199, and elite annual, which is billed annually at $1,199, which translates to $99 per month.

The basic membership gives you access to an introductory webinar, as well as two chatrooms—one which is general in nature, and the other which is focused on small accounts. You also gain access to a course that consists of 8 different classes that span a variety of topics related to investing.

A lesson on swing trading is also included as a part of the advanced course. Aziz and Pezim have also authored a book on swing trading that might be worth picking up. 📕

If you have money to spare, the elite membership will give you access to mentorship sessions, as well as additional lessons on technology, trading psychology, and strategy, as well as a dedicated class for cryptocurrency investing and trading.

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5. Morningstar: Best for Research 

Morningstar is one of the most dominant sources of research in the entire finance industry. Millions of investors worldwide, institutional and retail alike, swear by Morningstar ratings—and for good reasons.

Although the research that you’ll receive if you go with Morningstar is in-depth, the actual user experience is quite intuitive. However, this is a DIY service—to leverage this service to its full potential in swing trading, you’re going to have to do a lot of the work on your end.

Morningstar’s famous ratings evaluate exchange-traded funds. They look at past performance, and they’re available from a variety of sources for free. If you decide to subscribe to Morningstar premium, which costs $199, you’ll get a lot more, however.

Subscribing to the premium service gives you access to a whole new set of ratings that cover stocks and funds. However, these are forward-looking, and the research that goes along with them explains why the experts believe the investment in question will outperform the market.

This by itself is a good lead for any swing trader—but the premium subscription also gives you access to powerful screening tools, which allow you to sift through thousands of possible investments to find the right one. It does take skill to use, and isn’t all too accessible to beginners, but if you’re experienced, the tools at your disposal will probably meet all your needs. ⚒

Alerts are sent out via e-mail and push notifications, and you can even set up custom alerts by using a screener. On top of that, Morningstar offers plenty of market commentary to keep you up to date, and the service also allows you to create a variety of watchlists.

The biggest advantage of Morningstar is that it offers you the chance to mature as an investor. The rationale behind their stock picks, as well as the breadth and level of detail included in market analysis and the provided research, is a great way to get an idea of how professionals think, and what they look for when choosing investments. 🔍

That’s not the end of it, however. You can also choose to subscribe to one of Morningstar’s four investor newsletters. These newsletters focus on specific asset classes—in particular, stocks, mutual funds, dividends, and ETFs.

Subscribing to one of these newsletters gives you access to specific watchlists, a new set of email alerts, as well as additional market commentary and analysis. These vary in price from $145 to $199 annually, which equates to between $12 and $16 per month, which isn’t all that expensive. However, if your trading style involves more than one asset class, the price can easily snowball.

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What Exactly is Swing Trading? 📚

Swing trading is a strategy that seeks to capitalize on the short to medium-term changes in a security’s price in order to lock in profits. Swing traders hold positions anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.

Because the time frame is longer than day trading and scalping, swing trading is a much less hands-on approach. Moreover, the odds of a security’s price seeing a significant increase is also much higher than it would be in the span of a single day. 

However, there are also drawbacks. If you do decide to take up swing trading, you’ll be exposing yourself to overnight and weekend risk, which is the possibility that a security’s price could vary significantly from trading session to trading session.

As far as research goes, swing traders generally don’t concern themselves with the fundamentals too much—instead of that, technical analysis, which is the analysis of past price movements, is the bread and butter of this strategy. Another key factor in play here are stock chart patterns—swing trading seeks to leverage trends or swings in the market in order to lock in profits, and chart patterns are a great tool for this goal.

And as for execution—complex order types, such as stop-loss orders, and price targets are essential if you want to take home your gains. Swing trading is usually done with stocks—but other asset classes, such as ETFs and options, can also be traded using this approach.

Swing and Day Trading Compared ⚖

So, why would someone choose swing trading over, say, day trading as a more rapid-fire approach, and traditional buy-and-hold investing on the other end of the spectrum? Well, to cut to the chase, this approach combines some of the benefits of both extremes, and the drawbacks are much less pronounced. 

This “compromise” between short-term trading and long-term investing is an approach that offers plenty of advantages that regular, working people can appreciate. Unlike day trading, you don’t have to pour over a screen all day and obsessively check for price movements in a misguided attempt to time the market—and unlike buy-and-hold, you don’t have to let your investments sit for years on end before you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

When we look at swing trading vs. day trading then, swing trading isn’t as time-sensitive as day trading—but it is also much less stressful, and on the whole, it wouldn’t be unfair to call it a lower-stakes approach. Seeing as how you’ll be holding the stocks for a bit longer, there’s more time for any drops in price to correct—if you’re confident in your research and technical analysis, a small dip doesn’t have to mean that you have to sell. 

On top of that, a good alert system will tell you when your price targets have been reached—or when the stock has dropped below an acceptable price point—meaning that you’ll have an easier time closing good trades and getting out of bad ones. You’re also much less dependent on bid/ask spreads with swing trading, as you’re not aiming to make use of the razor-thin differences in price that are seen in intraday trading – and you’re much less likely to experience slippage.

Why Would a Swing Trader Need Alerts? 🔔

Now that we’ve given you an overview of the best swing trading alert services, as well as a short rundown of the advantages of swing trading, one important question remains—why exactly would a swing trader need an alert service?

Sure, some of the benefits are obvious—but there need to be plenty of good reasons for a swing trader to fork up the amount of money that’s required for these services.  So, let’s go into specifics—we’ll outline some of the most important reasons in this section.

Alerts Can Help to Increase Returns 📈

This is by far and large the best reason to invest in a stock alert service. A stock alert service allows you to grow your account much faster than you usually would be able to—and with a lot less effort too. 

The fact of the matter is, swing trading, although not the riskiest approach, still carries a lot more risk than long-term investing. Research and the proper application of technical and fundamental analysis can reduce this risk—but mastering those disciplines takes a lot of time and effort.

The track records of the services we’ve covered speak for themselves. Although they don’t always get it right, the odds are in their favor—and when they do get it right, they make a lot of money.

The benefits of outsourcing your research to professionals are obvious—but a stock alert service’s picks also factor in something that you usually won’t be able to include in your own, personal research—and that is a comparison of investments. Sure, you can research a stock on its own—but comparing it to competitors and making sure that it truly is the best possible choice is something that is reserved only for those who research stocks as their day job.

The longer time horizon of swing trading also brings about an additional factor of risk—in short, a lot more can go wrong if you hold a stock for a few weeks or a month, compared to a few hours or a day. An alert service is a great boon in this regard—if anything unexpected happens, you’ll be notified, and you’ll be able to adjust, correct your course, and react much faster than you otherwise would.

Trading Alerts Can Broaden Horizons 🚀

The stock market is incredibly large and varied—a regular retail investor simply doesn’t have the time or the means to get a detailed overview of the market at large. So, how does a stock alert service focused on swing trading help in getting you closer to that goal?

Well, first of all, there aren’t many “pure” stock alert services out there anymore. Simply put, that has proven to be too narrow of an approach—so most offerings in this sphere have become a mixture of an alert service and a stock picking service.

What this distinction boils down to is that there’s a lot more research going on behind the scenes than there used to be. The in-house researchers employed by these services scour large swathes of the market to find good trading opportunities—in short, they allow you to outsource the researching process to a large degree.

This allows you to get a concise, digestible, and actionable rundown of large parts of the market—without the enormous amount of manhours it would usually take. This, in turn, allows you to broaden your horizons: to be aware of opportunities you wouldn’t have ever considered or come across—many of them in sectors or industries that you are unfamiliar or underexposed to.

Of course, the most logical place to start is stocks—seeing as how they’re some of the best securities for swing trading. But don’t limit yourself—swing trading can also utilize ETFs, options, and even cryptocurrencies. To be fair, swing trading in these other asset classes is a skill of its own, and takes a lot of time to master—but don’t exclude these approaches in the future.

Swing Trading Alerts as a Timesaving Tool ⏳

Let’s be real—researching stocks is time-consuming, and it’s complicated. We’re not saying that it can’t be interesting—but it will take up a lot of your time. Swing trading is even more complicated th an other investment strategies in this regard—to be a good swing trader, you’re going to need to do some serious fundamental analysis, as well as technical analysis.

Most traders don’t make a living from the stock market—instead, they use stocks as a supplemental source of income. This is because research takes a lot of time which most full-time workers and students simply don’t have.

Balancing work, other engagements and obligations, as well as family and social life is hard enough as it is—most people will struggle to set apart any significant amount of time for the purposes of researching stocks. But a good alert service can be a tremendous help in this regard.

Most stock picking services offer condensed, well-researched leads that drastically cut down on all parts of the researching process—from finding an interesting stock to analyzing it and determining a course of action.

Let’s look at it from a different perspective: Even if you enjoy stock research, and have already become a seasoned expert in this field—these services may employ dozens of researchers who do this stuff for a living, full time. You simply can’t compete with the volume of quality research that they can do—no one person can.

A good alert service will significantly cut down the time investment that you need to find a good opportunity—and it allows you to optimize the rest of the time you’ve decided to devote to stocks, so that you can focus much better on a single topic, instead of spreading yourself too thin.

How Alerts Can Provide Educational Value 👨‍🏫

The world of investing is much more accessible on the whole than it was a decade ago. The internet and social media have led to a proliferation of knowledge—it’s much easier to get your bearings and start investing than it was before.

But not all sources of information are credible—there’s a lot of ill-conceived content and bad advice out there. Don’t get us wrong—there’s also plenty of good educational material online (shameless self-promotion on our part), but telling good sources apart from bad ones is sometimes quite difficult. Presentation matters—but something that seems well put together and well-designed might just as easily be bogus.

The research and educational material that is offered by sources like stock brokerages and stock alert services have to pass rigorous quality controls. These people make a living from offering good, solid, actionable advice—if they don’t, they’ll get squashed by their competitors.

The educational tools that a good stock alert service will put at your disposal cannot be found on your own—no one, not even we, would offer that level of content for free. And education is key—it has to be a lifelong effort on your part, but it is worth it. This knowledge is the only way to become a competent, well-rounded trader that can keep up with an ever-changing market.

On top of that, one of the main benefits of getting your education from sources such as these that there is a good degree of variety in terms of media—most brokerages and alert services offer articles, yes, but also give you access to videos, tutorials, webinars, quizzes, and other sorts of media as well.

Increased Research Capabilities 🕵️‍♂️

Some of the most pronounced advantages of stock alert services have to do with research. Offloading some of the legwork needed for research on to professionals lightens your workload, and allows you to hone in and focus on small details—but there are also other benefits.

For one, access to a good stock screener allows you to focus specifically on stocks that meet your criteria. On top of that, plenty of swing trade alert services have their own ratings systems—which allow you to easily separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

A lot of these services also have a social element to them—either a message board or the ability for community members to contribute with their own analyses.

What Makes a Good Swing Trading Alert Service? 🤔

We’ve already covered the best swing trading services—but for the sake of brevity, we couldn’t cover absolutely everything. We’ve covered the most important stuff—but the devil is in the details, and when you’re choosing between alert services, everything should be taken into account.

This next section will function as a buyers’ guide—it will highlight the most important factors that you should take into consideration when picking a stock alert service.

Price and Affordability 💵

There’s no going around this issue—stock alert services cost a fair bit of money. They aren’t a small investment. They’re definitely worth it—but your budget will be a deciding factor when it comes to choosing a service.

Don’t go overboard—pick a service that is within your means. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with this stuff—if a more expensive alert service will cut down on the amount of money you can comfortably invest in the market, don’t purchase it. The point of alert services, after all, is to make you more money.

There’s also another thing that you should factor in that isn’t as obvious—the size of your account. Take a closer look at the methodology of the alert service’s stock picks, and a history of their previous picks, if possible. This will allow you to get a sense of how expensive the investments they recommend usually are.

A Proven Track Record 📜

As it is with many things in the world of finance, the proof is in the pudding. Whenever you’re considering an alert service or comparing a couple of them with each other, one of the first points to consider is their track record. All of the swing trade alert services that we’ve covered offer stellar returns—and have the track records to back it up. 

But keep in mind that in most cases, these track records show an idealized picture—what your returns would have looked like if you had bought and sold stocks at the perfect time. On top of that, these figures don’t factor in things such as trading costs, fees, and commissions—which you can mostly avoid by signing up with a free-trading broker.

When looking at a stock alert service’s track record, keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, what is the methodology used to calculate the average returns of the service? Second of all, do the results in question mesh with your trading style? 

Although this guide is focused on swing trading, some of the best stock alert services aren’t tailor-made for this approach. To put it in a real-world context, an average rate of return totaling 200% means little if it is based on value investing or growth investing—as a swing trader, those results are of no interest to you.

And last but not least—take a look at what other traders are saying. Reviews such as this one can be informative—but nothing can give you as accurate a picture of what a service is like as a first-hand account from clients that have used the service.

Frequency of Alerts ⏰

A good track record can tell us if a service recommends winning trades, and whether or not the alert system does a good job of quickly letting clients know when it is time to buy or sell. But that’s only half the picture—quality does matter, but in the world of swing trading, so does quantity.

Seeing as how swing trading is a middle ground between day trading and other, long-term approaches, you’ll want to find a service that offers you plenty of alerts and trading ideas. A couple per week just won’t do it—for the purposes of swing trading, an ideal number would be anywhere between 5 to 10 alerts per week. This is a reasonable middle ground—not too much so as to lead to analysis paralysis, and not too little to miss any significant moves in the market.

Frequent alerts go a long way in helping you form a solid, successful strategy to secure gains. With more alerts, you can afford to be more conservative with your price targets—and when losing trades do happen, you’ll have more opportunities to make up for your losses.

Accessibility and User Experience 🌟

When it comes to accessibility, the most important point of order is the way that the alerts are actually sent to you. Alerts can be sent in a variety of ways—via email, text message, proprietary apps, and plenty of others.

When all is said and done, we prefer text messages—they’re pretty hard to beat as far as immediacy goes. E-mails are slightly antiquated—sure, push notifications exist, but we wouldn’t risk something as time sensitive as swing trades on the off chance that your phone is too cluttered.

For some services, alerts are received when you log in to their website or app. We’d consider this the worst approach out of all. Thankfully, almost all serious swing trading alert services offer you a choice as to how you’d prefer to receive your alerts.

Next to that, the most important factor to consider in this regard is how accessible or easy to understand the alerts themselves are. When it comes to swing trading, an alert that offers you buy an entry price and exit price, as well as a time limit, is superior to one that lacks a time limit. The more detailed the alert is—the better, as it signals a clear idea and investment thesis.

There’s also one additional factor to consider when it comes to accessibility—and that is whether or not a service offers a demo account. Although most demos are short, lasting for two weeks at most, this is still enough time to get acquainted with the service and figure out whether or not it is a good fit for you.

Educational Materials 📙

Alert services have started to offer quite a lot in the way of educational material in the last couple of years. The most notable benefit that can be seen industry-wide is variety—these services offer a plethora of ways to learn about the stock market.

Whereas we, for example, focus primarily on written content and news from the world of finance, a lot of these alert services offer educational videos, quizzes, webinars, courses, and various other forms of media.

And to be frank, there’s no account for personal preference—some people will simply prefer the more interactive or visual teaching tools. When comparing alert services, try to do a side-by-side of their educational offerings.

First and foremost—what does their educational material focus on? An alert service can have fantastic educational tools—but if its content isn’t what you’re interested in or what you need, then it is completely irrelevant in your case. When it comes to swing trading, we’d urge you to focus primarily on technical analysis, learning how to read stock charts and similar topics.

Be that as it may—the more the merrier. Even if you’re not currently interested in, for example, ETFs or options, having access to a reliable source of knowledge on those topics might very well come in handy in the future.

Research and Analysis Tools 🛠

Stock alert services and stock picking services are nigh-indistinguishable nowadays. Let’s not mince words—simply offering an alert tool isn’t enough to survive in today’s investment circles. And we can see why—the very concepts of a “buy alert” and stock pick basically set out to achieve the same goal.

When we talk about research, we’re actually talking about two things here. First, the actual rationale behind stock picks and the methodology used by the service’s researchers, and second, the research tools that are available to you, for a more DIY approach.

Plenty of swing trading alert services offer in-depth research, which allows you to get acquainted with the thought process of the professionals who do this stuff full-time. However, that isn’t always the case—particularly today, when a lot of these services use data-driven solutions. To put it in plain English, there’s no way to explain the rationale behind an algorithm or machine learning software—at least not briefly and efficiently.

As far as research tools go, swing trade alert services usually put one tool front and center—the stock screener. Stock screeners offer a great way to narrow down your search using a variety of factors, such as market cap, trading volume, and other factors. However, you’ll need at least some level of knowledge to use them.

In the end, both of these types of research work best in tandem—tools like screeners offer a lot of utility, but you’ll need the know-how from detailed research reports to figure out how best to use the tools at your disposal.

Conclusion 🏁

We’ve made it to the end—thank you for your time and patience. Swing trading is a great, middle-of-the-road approach that we believe most investors would find to be a good fit—but it is still sorely underappreciated and underutilized.

A good alert service will allow you to immediately increase your returns, your range as an investor, and it will help make the process of investing a lot easier and less stressful. We sincerely hope that one of the services we’ve chosen will prove to be a good fit for you.