Zacks Investment ResearchReviews 176

This so-called "stock research company" has revised its ratings as many as 5 times within one week on several stocks that I own. If they are at all knowledgeable about the companies that they are rating, why do they change their ratings so many times in such a short period of time? What events or trends have occurred that compel them to change their ratings so frequently? As is the case with all of these so-called "stock research" companies, they are not required to explain the actual reasons for their change in rating. I am not a subscriber and have no intention of being one. There is something very fishy here. I just looked at the other reviews here, including those of subscribers, and almost all of them are "poor". How does a company like this remain in business when they have such a terrible reputation?

I am a paid subscriber to Zacks' services. Every business day, they send a summary purporting to show the prior day's performance of the five "Top Movers" in the various portfolios they manage. Today's report of yesterday's performance looks like this:

Zacks Top Movers for Oct 24,2019
Symbol %Chg Portfolio
ALGN 14.70% HCare Innovators
SMAR 10.80% Counterstrike
QURE 8.28% HCare Innovators
TLRY 7.73% Marij Innovators
AEM 6.40% Surprise Trader
S&P 500 0.19%

Zacks selects from the hundreds of positions in their portfolios ONLY those that have advanced; they NEVER EVER show a losing position, even when the vast preponderance of their positions on some days is negative. Then they shamelessly compare their "Top Movers" on any particular day with the S&P500 Index for that day, which of course recognizes both advances and declines of all of the positions in the Index.

Zacks practice of recognizing ONLY their winning positions and totally ignoring their losing ones guarantees them a claim of superior performance -- no matter how bad their actual performance might be. In the real world, anyone who could do that would become a millionaire in short order, with no chance of bankruptcy. When I have asked (repeatedly) that they justify this kind of analysis, they stonewall.

There is more to this story, to be presented on another day.

As far as I am concerned, all of their wild claims for useful guidance in the markets is pure hogwash.

I signed up for a lifetime subscription to their nonsense many years ago. Within the first few months I started losing money and noticed some of the following comments with their sell recommendations:
- the bounce that I was hoping for did not happen
- my gut feel on this stock was not right
Their recommendation philosophy it seems like is based on hope and gut feel and it does not get any worse than that.
Since then, because I could not get rid of my lifetime subscription, I started watching their recommendations (and I get all of them as a lifetime member). This is purely for entertainment purposes. I can see that they have atleast 2 to 3 times more losing trades than winning trades and the losing trades lose by a much much higher percentage points than their winning trades.
I can't understand how these folks are allowed to stay in business and continue.
I honestly cannot recommend them to anyone.

I joined Zacks thinking It was $300 a year. Which is way more than I wanted to pay or could afford. The next month there was another $300 charge. Its apparently $300 a month. I bet there is very few people that actually pay the $300 a month. Bet they get 90% of their millions by hiding important information in the fine print. So unsuspecting $#*!s like me pay 300 two times before they realize Mr. Big $#*! Zack just broke it off in your ash. They can suck the back of my d twice.