How we review investor communities & trading brokers

Carrie Sanders

Carrie Sanders

Site Editor

We always put each and every investing club, community and blog through an impartial review process, analyzing factors such as quality of the published investment cases, historical track record, and overall caliber of the members behind the investing community. All of these factors are critically important.

The key aspect for us is the historical performance of published investment cases. Current situation with the investment research services is such, that most of them generate a combined return that either barely matches the average market returns, or even underperforms it. Obviously, such services are not worth your time and money. However, the top 10 services we've handpicked offer a materially better track record and have outperformed the market consistently (e.g. Special Situation Investments tracking portfolio generated 72% returns in 2020 and almost 5x since 2017).

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Assessing the quality of the published ideas and other content is a somewhat subjective. The aspects we judged include actionability, size of the potential upside and likelihood of it materializing. We also look at clarity and coherence of the investment thesis. In most cases investor club portals have a mixture of both - very high as well as very low quality of ideas - however, the ratio of the two might be skewed to one side or the other.​

Assessing the quality of the published ideas and other content is a somewhat subjective. The aspects we judged include actionability, size of the potential upside and likelihood of it materializing. We also look at clarity and coherence of the investment thesis. In most cases investor club portals have a mixture of both - very high as well as very low quality of ideas - however, the ratio of the two might be skewed to one side or the other.​​

The caliber, experience, and professionalism of the members is one of the key points for our selection. Very often we find that member discussions on published investment cases might be more beneficial than the investment thesis itself and can provide additional information and background on the situation, challenge authors’ views, raise important questions or even throw in some educational bits. Therefore, the higher the quality and investment acumen of the other members in the club, the better the overall experience and the benefits one is going to get from the service.

So to sum up, our top-rated investor clubs and communities offer exceptional idea quality, historical track record of profit generation, and a very high caliber of fellow members.