Disclosure: Investor’s Business Daily has provided ValueWalk with a subscription to IBD Digital for this review.
One of the big trends in news coverage these days is to put up a paywall in front of articles, which can be attributed to several factors. Investor’s Business Daily is no different, as it offers a variety of news articles on various topics aimed at the do-it-yourself investor, some of which are paid, while others are free without a subscription. The articles that are behind a paywall are free as part of an IBD Digital subscription, which is nice because it brings you not only access to those articles, but also to a host of other premium IBD features as well.
Premium news coverage through IBD Digital
Most of the articles on IBD’s News tab seem to be accessible without a subscription to IBD Digital, but it’s a different story when you look at the Research tab. Many of the sections do contain content that’s free without an IBD Digital subscription, but there were quite a few articles that did require a subscription in order to read them. In general, I don’t really feel that the articles which are available on the Research tab in IBD Digital are really worth paying for because they generally contain information that’s widely circulated elsewhere through free, ad-supported news sources.
You can find a small selection of earnings previews in IBD Digital, but they’re published only once per week and focus on earnings-related options trades. Lest you think this review of IBD Digital is all negative, it’s important to point out that the articles listed under the Research tab aren’t really the centerpiece of it.
However, those who subscribe to IBD Digital mainly because they’re expecting more analyst reports on stocks will be disappointed. This premium product is really better for those who prefer to conduct their own research rather than read research carried out by analysts.
High marks for the charts on IBD Digital
One of the best features IBD offers is the charts, which can also be accessed via the Research tab. IBD has certainly made a name for itself with its several premium charting products, and it’s easy to see why. IBD’s charts are much more than the standard stock charts you get from other sources.
Although the charts that are available via the Research tab are free without a subscription, they offer just enough of a peek at what can be done with IBD’s premium charting products that you may very well end up subscribing to IBD Digital or one of the other premium products that come loaded with stock charts. In fact, searching for any ticker symbol through the charts brings up not only the chart for the stock you wanted to look up, but also links to that stock’s IBD Stock Checkup, MarketSmith listing, and Leaderboard listing, all of which are premium products that require a subscription.
IBD does a nice job of whetting the user’s appetite by offering just enough details on the free charts to see that a paid subscription will bring loads of additional useful information. Many other platforms get this point wrong by offering too much or not enough information, leading subscribers to feel cheated after paying for a subscription to something that they were forced to take a chance on because it was unclear just how helpful a paid subscription might be.
Come for a free chart search, subscribe for a plethora of extra details
At first glance after clicking on “IBD Charts,” it looks like only the NASDAQ Composite chart is available, but you can type any ticker symbol into the dropdown box in place of “NASDAQ Composite,” and IBD will bring up the stock chart, including all the details that make the charts available in IBD Digital superb. The charts do take a little bit of getting used to and learning how to read them, but that’s purely because of the wealth of information that’s available on them.
In addition to the movement of the stock in question, the chart also plots the Relative Strength rating versus the S&P 500, the 50-day moving average, and the 200-day moving average. Additionally, you can click anywhere on the chart to bring up additional information at any point in the daily or weekly chart. It will show you not only the stock price at that particular moment, but also the volume, the day’s high and low, and change percentages.
Creating your own stock list
One of the best things about being able to click on the chart and bring up these additional data points is the fact that the charts offer data with extreme precision that you can’t get on the many free stock charts that are available online. You can see precisely when the volume on the stock you’re looking at suddenly shifted higher, so you can pinpoint the exact time when a stock reacted to some bit of news within the market.
What makes the IBD Digital charts even better is how easy it is to build your own stock lists from the charts. If you’re looking at the free chart for any stock, you can click the button to add it to your stock list, and that will bring up a page asking you to subscribe to IBD Digital. If you’re already logged in to your paid subscription, it will simply add that stock to your stock list. You can create multiple stock lists through IBD Digital, so if you have already created more than one list, the chart will ask you to choose which list you want to add it to.
Other features in IBD Digital
While the charts may be the highlight in IBD Digital, there is a lot of other information that can be had through this platform. For example, if you’re looking for a primer on short selling along with a bit of research on stocks that could make for potentially good short positions, you’ll find just enough here to decide whether you want to learn even more about short selling.
There’s even a section on funds, although much of that content seems to be free without a subscription to IBD Digital. However, the few articles that were there greatly piqued my interest and caused me to wish for an expanded selection of content on mutual funds and ETFs to be available through IBD Digital.
You could spend hours and hours looking through the articles and information available in IBD Digital and still not have time to review all of it, but I think this is a sign of a great value when it comes to online subscriptions. The greatest risk here is information overload, but after you’ve taken time to explore the platform, you’ll easily get into a rhythm of checking the features that are most helpful to your investing process.
Check out IBD Digital right here
IBD has some other interesting products
