As a day trader, your chances of success are quite high when you get to use the right tools for the job. Talking about tools, Trade-Ideas and Benzinga are two of the most popular ones out there currently.
Each one of them promises to provide nothing but the best value for money. But as we all know, these premium services don’t come cheap.
So, before you commit your hard-earned money to any of them, take a moment to read this Trade Ideas vs Benzinga discussion. That way, you’ll be able to determine which one of them is better and why.
Trade Ideas
Overall Rating: 4.6/5
Benzinga
Overall Rating: 4.3/5
What Is Trade-Ideas?
Whenever you think of Trade-Ideas (TI), one thing should always come to mind i.e. artificial intelligence. TradeIdeas was created at the height of the dotcom bubble moment in 2003 and since then, the scanner has been growing steadily.
What we know so far is that Trade Ideas scanner has been beating the markets back-to-back. For instance, in 2016, it delivered gross returns of 74 per cent compared to S&P’s 9.6 per cent.
In 2018, it delivered peak gross returns of 94% this being a gradual rise from their 2017 returns of 85%.
The system kept winning against the markets and even won the “Best Machine Learning Development” award by Fund Technology & WSL.
So far, it’s one of the most sought-after scanners on the market. They particularly seem to be getting lots of love from people who prefer technical analysis over fundamental analysis (though actually, their scanner integrates both strategies behind the scenes).
Pros
Cons
What Is Benzinga?
TradeIdeas might be big on technical analysis but no one beats Benzinga when it comes to the art of fundamental analysis.
Created in 2010, this platform provides you with a helpful and customizable newsfeed. Here you get all the news that affects the stocks markets before everyone else.
We’re talking about business news, stock market news, trade ideas, and financial news. And since that’s quite a lot of information, they’ve provided some built-in tools to enable you to sort news according to your trading preferences.
Not much is known about Benzinga in terms of their gross returns. That’s purely because all they provide people with is news and unlike Trade-Ideas, they don’t auto-trade for people.
Pros
Cons
Similarities Between The Two
First things first, these two are platforms that come with premium features and that’s why you have to pay a subscription fee to access them.
They’re both pricey. The most basic package offered by Trade Ideas goes for $118 per month. As for Benzinga, you have to part with $99 per month to news and delayed Nasdaq quotes, yikes!
Fortunately, the two companies do provide free trial opportunities. So, if in doubt, you can sign-up and test-drive the systems for free to determine which one fits better within your trading strategy.
Another thing is that the two big boys do provide real-time trading signals. With Benzinga, you get real-time news alerts and also signal alerts drawing your attention to important news, sentiments, and even price spikes.
Trade-Ideas, on the other hand, provides you with access to a live trading room that you can conveniently use if you’re into copy-trading. Plus, there’s always a real-time stream of Trade Ideas for you to access (this stream is, however, delayed by 20-minutes if you’re on free-trial).
The Differences
And now we’re focusing on the differences between these two trading tools.
1. Analysis
Benzinga primarily focuses on news. So, it would be safe to say that it’s a tool mainly built for fundamental analysis.
Basically, fundamental analysis is the style of trading that involves drawing conclusions based on financial statements, competitors, and the markets. And as you know, news is pretty important when you want to get an idea of how companies are performing.
But then, to benefit from fundamental analysis you need to be a hands-on trader. If you’re too busy to keep up with the news and charts, this is not the tool for you.
Trade-Ideas is primarily a technical analysis tool though it does tap into fundamental analysis behind the scenes.
Technical analysis involves forecasting price direction by studying things like volume, price, and market data. One good thing with this approach is that it can be fully automated, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).
So, this is a really good approach if you’re extremely busy yet still want to make the most out of every opportunity available.
2. Backtesting
Backtesting is a really important tool when you want to test the viability of a trading strategy using historical data. It gives you the opportunity to play it safe.
Trade-Ideas provides you with all the backtesting tools you need to get things up and running. However, this feature is exclusively available under the Premium tier which is pretty pricey.
Benzinga doesn’t have any backtesting tools to offer. Past articles appearing on their blog recommend using third-party testing tools (which means spending more).
3. News
There isn’t much to do with news updates on Trade-Ideas. But if you like, you can activate the breaking news alerts so that you can keep up with any unusual happenings. This way, you can quickly enter or exit the markets before big moves happen.
For a detailed scoop of the latest news, Benzinga would be the best bet, though. Their newsfeeds are pretty detailed and activated in real-time. In fact, there’s always so much information coming in that you’re better off filtering e.g.
- Filtering by category
- Watchlists
- Or by source
Plus, just like with Trade-Ideas, you can get real-time alerts sent to you via either email or desktop notifications.
4. Auto-Trading
A good automated trading system is one that enables you to trade based on your preset parameters. This is an important tool for anyone looking for a hands-off approach to trading.
Another advantage of auto-trading is that it helps you trade without emotions. As you know, emotional trading can be quite tough especially if you’re a beginner.
The good news is that Trade-Ideas recently added this feature to their platform. The bad news is that it’s exclusively available in their premium plan which goes for $228 monthly.
Benzinga has nothing that comes close to automated trading although they often do recommend some of the best auto-trading software programs based on what their in-house experts think work best. Unfortunately, all the programs they recommend are third-party ones meaning you’d need to cough out more cash to access them.
5. Charting Tools
Again, this tool is conspicuously missing on the Benzinga platform. So, if you opt for Benzinga, you’ll need to be prepared to cough out some more to access dedicated charting tools.
On the contrary, Trade-Ideas provides you with basic charts at no extra cost. We’re calling them basic because they’re no match to the kind of stuff you’d find on TC2000 for instance.
The reason why the charts are pretty basic on Trade Ideas is that they believe they already have a good AI system in place. So, they basically want to keep things simple and straight to the point.
But if you’re strictly looking for a dedicated charting software program, you might want to look elsewhere as none of these two provide such.
Conclusion
Both platforms are of premium quality. Trade-Ideas excels in technical analysis and automated trading. Benzinga is the go-to platform for important news updates.
So, although we feel that Trade-Ideas provides a much better package, you should base your choice on your style of trading.
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