Hello everyone,
I am a full time investor and am looking to subscribe to a few paid subscriptions to generate stock ideas. I think one way to screen ideas would be to get subscribed to a few paid services who already have a team in place and would be doing decent quality research on stock ideas. I have tried to collate a few of them but i would look for suggestions from existing folks who would have tried some or any of the services.
I have detailed a few here. Comments/suggestions welcome.
Kamakya- Rs 15,000 /year —Focuses on SME + small caps. 1-2 new stocks monthly
Katalyst Wealth–Rs 18,500/year–Includes special situation stocks
Intelsense - Quantamental— Rs 17,700/year—75% small caps and 25% large and mid caps- 20 stocks|
In my opinion, using such Paid services may not give optimum ideas, as they will suggest you at least 1-2 stocks per month i.e. 12-24 stocks per year. This is minimum.
If you will subscribe to 2 services, number of ideas will go up to 30-40 as well.
My experience is that, you tend to spend lot of time in analyzing these ideas and finally will end up a stock portfolio of 20-30-35 stocks with sub optimal returns.
Also, as soon as Next Year starts, they will churn another 20-30 ideas and this goes on. Since they have to recommend stock every month, they often end up recommending at higher valuations in some cases.
If possible, see if you can select only Single service which recommends only 12 ideas per year, use it for minimum 6 to 9 Months and then look for more services.
Otherwise, some of the services listed by you are good if you have decided to use the paid service.
You should do your own analysis and due diligence and invest only in stocks where you have your own conviction, and try to buy below recommended price, as it generally spikes after such recommendation by any paid service.
I use them as a one source for ideas, among other avenues. If the recommended stock fits into my process and circle of competence I dig deeper and take action only if I am convinced.
The paid research advisory is a good medium to generate ideas to work on them. I prefer to only use them as a starting point to scout ideas. Few ones that has been helpful
Intelsense ( Garp ) - Long term advisory
niveshaay ( was amazing now moved to AIF no more advisory )
RC capital ( value )
I have tried a couple.of theres but havent found them useful to me.
Raghav does the front running of all the recommenations he provides. I subscribed his service once and noticed it, and when i sent a message to his associate he immediately called me and his justification was that everyone does it. So better to avoid him.
I would never be able to trust them. I am even chary of listening to the ‘relationship managers’. In fact, ICICIDirect people keep giving me tips, and I respectfully acknowledge them. When one of their executives wanted to visit us, I told him, “See, if you have to visit as part of their duty, you are welcome to come and have a cup of tea. Otherwise I do my own selection.”
I make lots of mistakes, but I don’t have any regret that I was misled by somebody.
You will find on time of recommendations, recommended stocks will open gap up, going above their max recommended buy price soon and you will end up chasing them.
in my opinion and experience, intelsense is the best one.
i’ve tried several different subscriptions in last 3 years.
out of all of them, zeroed on to intelsense, which i am continuing.
they dont give too many recommendations too frequently.
for passive investors, who want to hold good scripts for a few years patiently, their long term picks is the best choice.
Stock recommendations are easy to get - they are available everywhere including public and private services. The ability to buy and hold is hard. I wonder how many of these recommendation services actually handhold you over a 5 - 10 year term where the recommendations would make real returns. For real returns you need a concentrated portfolio of perhaps < 10 stocks. How many here have held a concentrated portfolio over a 10 year term.
Sadly, I havent. Giving some examples that I saw but did not go like 30% PF in them - Gulf Oil Lubricants and Gillete - I saw them both a undervalued but only invested < 5% PF in them and exited when I got 40% returns. Gulf Oil is now ~4x and Gillete is now ~3x.
What most folks here need is experience - a decade of bulls and bears and hopefully if you live through it, your next decade is where you might beat the market and generate real returns.
Edit - I have seen only few folks do concentrated PF - the ones that have bare minimum to start with - aka sub 30-50 lac PF’s and the ones that have > 50 Cr PF’s. Most of the rest are too worried losing their life savings for the next 20-30 years in < 10 stocks.
Why you are so much focused on concentrated portfolio of less than 10 stocks? Thats not heroic. There are so many examples where people invest in many stocks and still earn very good CAGR… Being concentrated doesnt equal to being great or being smart or being courageous…
I wanted to comment something on the same lines, but then it would be extending an off-topic subject. There should be many threads on investing and capital allocation on VP which would be a better place for such a discussion.
Hi Bhavesh, My experience is that subscribing to any paid service is futile, unless you follow their portfolio blindly without questioning and keep investing. Your returns will obviously depend on the skills of service provider. Choose a mutual fund/Index fund instead and save your precious time. Since you are full time and really want to learn direct investing then do it yourself, read annual reports, read con-calls and start with small money to develop your own process. Even if you loose money, you will learn great lessons. Discover your area of competence and style. You can never be invested for long term with borrowed/ paid ideas. Conviction is the key. You may keep major equity allocation in Nifty 50 index fund/ETF and start building slowly you own portfolio. keep reallocating to it from Nifty 50 once you gain confidence. Start slow and with few companies. For ideas, scan this forum, see portfolios of proven fund managers/mutual funds, use screeners etc. and start making mistakes. Utilize subscription money(you allocated) for experimenting with your own ideas. I am now 59+, have tried various subscriptions in the past but either lost money or could not stay invested for long, I got confused by so many ideas, I made money on my own ideas because my conviction was the highest in those stocks. I am holding some of my own ideas, a few for last 20 years, some of them for last10 years, they are regularly beating the Index and compounding. If I don’t get new ideas I park my money in Nifty 50 Index and wait for the right opportunity. These subscriptions usually give trending ideas or stocks in flavor, usually when valuations are not so attractive. You make most money when you enter at the right price even if the idea is not so great.
**Disclosure:**My views are biased and my knowledge is limited. I am not an expert nor a SEBI registered advisor. I can be completely wrong in my assessment, I have been wrong many times. This is just my opinion.
If you have made up your mind to learn direct equity investing and want to take help from advisory, then consider these aspects.
If you select more than one of these advisors and divide your money among them to follow all their picks and allocation. Then soon you will end will up with a zoo of stocks (as each will have an independent PF consisting of mupltiple picks) and the returns can only be average of their performances. Also your resources (both money and time) will be spread too thin to learn from all this chaos. Also subscribing too many of these advisories may become a burden on your finances in early stage of investing and reduce your return unless you are managing a PF where the fees all put together are a very miniscule %age of your PF.
It’s not just about stock picks. Most investors evolve over a period of time to chose a style of investing that suits their temperament. So imagine, even the best of investing styles which involves say, lot of waiting after buying right might bore you (hence early sell), or if the style involves buying aggressive growth business and then watching the execution like hawk and changing position when things don’t fall in place may scare you out of the position. All sort of crazy permutations and combinations might happen in this field.
I went down this route in my initial years, based on my learnings, my suggestion would be
Chose 1 (or max 2) advisory whose past picks and rationale appeals to you the most and seems to have generated decent returns. Follow all fundamental development on their picks yourself. Try to rationalize by yourself, what you would do with them over next few qtrs/years
Change to another 1-2 advisories over next few years and thereby experiment with some of those desirable advisories over next 2-4 years. Then over next 3-5 yrs you would have made up your mind, whose style suits you the best or if you even need any of them anymore.
Thanks Surya for the heads up. Are you on their paid plan? If yes, for how many years you have been a member with them? What are the average recommendations per month/year by them? Have you got the returns on their recommendations on average?
