How MarketSnap works

MarketSnap is a research workspace for individual stock pickers. It helps you find companies worth studying, value them with your own assumptions, build an investment case, record your decision and revisit that case as the company changes.

It is built for people who want to understand what they own, not for people looking for tips.

No. MarketSnap gives you research, models and tools so you can make your own decision. A valuation is not a price target, and a company in Stock Picks is not an instruction to buy.

The decision, and the reasoning behind it, stays yours. MarketSnap’s job is to make that reasoning faster to build and easier to check later.

Because a valuation is only as useful as the assumptions behind it. Two careful investors can value the same business differently, because they expect different growth, margins or risks.

MarketSnap shows you those assumptions, lets you change them, helps you test the investment case built on them, and keeps a record of why you decided what you did. A single number without that reasoning tends to be read as a price target, which is exactly what it is not.

Start with Learn: the key investing concepts, such as free cash flow, return on invested capital, margin of safety and discount rates, with interactive lessons and worked examples. The Investor Dictionary explains terms in plain words.

Then pick a company you know and value it yourself in the Intrinsic Value Calculator. Watching the result move when you change one assumption teaches more than any definition.

If you want a structured path from the beginning, the Independent Investor course covers the whole process in order, and its first lesson is free.

Search for its name or ticker at the top of any page and open its stock page. From there, Analyze Stock walks you through the business, the valuation, the Investment Case and the decision, in that order.

Add it to My Portfolio, write down why you own it in your Investment Journal, and set price alerts for the levels that matter to you. When the company reports results, revisit the case: did the assumptions you wrote down hold?

The Independent Investor course takes you through the whole process in order: how to think about price and value, how to read a business, how to value it, how to build and test an investment case, and how to decide, record and monitor. It is a paid course with a free first lesson, so you can see the style before you enrol.

Learn is the free layer around it: the key concepts (free cash flow, return on invested capital, forward P/E, margin of safety, earnings quality and discount rates), interactive lessons, worked examples and the Investor Dictionary.

To practise on a real company, use Analyze Stock: it takes you through finding, valuing, building the case and deciding, with the actual tools.

Stock Picks ranks companies that MarketSnap has valued recently, under different strategies: Long-Term Compounders, Momentum Leaders, Reversal Opportunities and Imminent Profitability. You can narrow the list by company size, sector, industry and other filters to the kind of business you want to research.

MarketSnap does not publish the scoring details. The ranking is where research starts, not where it ends.

No. A company in Stock Picks is a company worth looking at more closely, not a company to buy. Whether it belongs in your portfolio depends on your own valuation, your case and the price you would pay.

A company appears only when MarketSnap has a current valuation for it that passed its checks. If a company has reported new results since its last valuation, it leaves the ranking until it has been valued again. Companies without a MarketSnap stock page are left out too.

Prices move through the trading day. The valuations behind the ranking are refreshed in batches: every week for the most followed companies and less often for the rest. A company that reports new results waits for a fresh valuation before it returns.

Open its stock page. You will find the price history, key figures, financial statements, where its revenue comes from, earnings and forward valuation measures, and its strengths and risks. With Research Access you also get earnings summaries and the full research behind the numbers.

The Intrinsic Value Calculator estimates what a business may be worth from the earnings and cash it could produce in the future, brought back to today at the return you require. You set the assumptions: growth, margins, your required return and how the market may value the business at the end of your horizon.

MarketSnap fills in starting points from the company’s history (and, with Research Access, analysts’ forecasts). Change anything you disagree with.

Yes, every one of them. The numbers MarketSnap fills in are starting points, not answers. Save your valuation and it becomes part of your own research, ready to build an Investment Case on.

Three versions of the future for the same business. Base is what you think is most likely; Bear is a disappointing but plausible path; Bull is a strong but plausible one. Looking at all three shows how much the result depends on things going right.

Your valuation uses your assumptions in the Calculator. Outlook is MarketSnap’s own view of a stock over the next five years, shown with the assumptions behind it, so you can compare your thinking with a second, independent one. MarketSnap’s AI-reviewed Outlook is part of Full Access.

Because they look at the business from different angles. One may start from the cash the company generates, another from its earnings and the multiple the market might pay for them. Different answers are a useful signal: they show which assumption is doing the work.

Your written reason for owning a company. It starts with a Pre-Buy Check of your own judgment (do you understand the industry and the business model, how durable is its advantage, how solid are its earnings and balance sheet, how well does management use the cash, and is your price low enough to allow for being wrong), then your thesis, the claims that must stay true, the risks, what would break the case, your valuation and your decision.

With Research Access, the case starts with the company’s research already gathered, so you spend your time thinking rather than collecting.

It reads your complete Investment Case together with the company’s figures and research, and works through it stage by stage: the business, the evidence for each claim, the risks, the valuation and the Pre-Buy Check, ending with a reasoned decision you can compare with your own. It is part of Full Access, or uses MS Credits.

No. AI helps you check your work: it points out weak evidence, untested assumptions and risks you have not addressed. The judgment, and the decision, are yours.

Yes, and you should whenever your own evidence says otherwise. Every figure MarketSnap fills in can be changed, and every AI review is a second opinion to argue with, not a verdict.

They are the four ways to finish an analysis. Investable: the business and the case meet your standard. Interesting, revisit later: worth following, but not ready. Pass: you have looked and decided against it. Too Hard: you cannot judge it well enough, so it goes to your Too Hard pile, which is a respectable place to put most companies.

No. It records your own conclusion that the business and the case meet your standard. Whether and when to buy, and at what price, remains your decision; the price you pay still matters.

Because a valuation answers “what might it be worth”, while a decision answers “do I understand this business, does the case hold, and is it for me”. Mixing them leads to buying whatever looks cheap. Keeping them apart makes each one clearer.

Memory flatters. A journal shows you what you actually believed when you decided, so later you can tell a broken thesis from a falling price, and learn from both good and bad decisions.

Why the business is good, what has to stay true for the case to work, what would prove you wrong, and the price you are willing to pay. The Investment Case asks for exactly these, in that order.

Yes. A review is added as a new entry in your journal and your original reasoning is kept, so you can see how your view changed and why.

Yes. Your journal and your Investment Cases are private to your account. They are not shown to other members, not posted to Nexus and not published anywhere. You can export or delete them with the rest of your account data.

Add the company to My Portfolio and keep your Investment Case up to date. Set price alerts for the levels that matter to you. When results come in, revisit the case: check the claims you said must stay true, and record a review in your journal.

With Full Access, MarketSnap’s AI also keeps your portfolio’s valuations up to date as new results arrive.

An alert tells you once when a stock rises above or falls below a price you set. Set one from any stock page, your watchlist or your portfolio. Alerts arrive in your MarketSnap notifications and the app, and by email if you turn that on. The free plan watches three alerts at a time.

Not automatically yet. Today you can set price alerts, and with Full Access MarketSnap’s AI keeps your portfolio’s valuations up to date as new results come in. Alerts for new results and for changes that matter to your case are being worked on.

MarketSnap updates its data and, in time, its own valuation of the company; until then the company steps out of Stock Picks. With Research Access you get an earnings summary. It is also the natural moment to revisit your own case and add a review to your journal.

Not yet: Broker Sync is coming soon. For now, add holdings by hand or upload a CSV export from your broker in My Portfolio.

Company financial statements, market prices and analysts’ estimates come from a professional financial-data provider. MarketSnap stores and checks them, then builds its own valuations, rankings and research on top.

AI interprets and organises research: it summarises earnings, sets out a company’s strengths and risks, reviews your valuation assumptions and analyses your Investment Case. It is not the source of company financial statements or market prices; those come from financial data.

MarketSnap is designed to show you the underlying figures and assumptions rather than ask you to trust a generated conclusion.

Yes. AI analysis can misread a situation or weigh something wrongly. That is why MarketSnap shows the figures and assumptions behind every conclusion, and why the final decision is always yours.

It is given the company’s actual figures and told to use only those. Mistakes are still possible, so important numbers are shown from the data itself, where you can check them.

US share prices update about every 15 minutes during market hours (other exchanges on their own schedules), and stock pages say when data is delayed. Financial statements update after companies file them. MarketSnap’s own valuations are refreshed in batches, weekly for the most followed companies.

Sites use different data timing, different definitions (for example trailing twelve months versus the last fiscal year) and different adjustments. MarketSnap’s valuations also depend on assumptions you can see and change. When numbers differ, check the period and the definition first.

Value stocks with your own assumptions, build Investment Cases, keep your own investment journal, preview MarketSnap Stock Picks, track stocks, join the community in Nexus, and set up to three price alerts.

Everything free, plus: valuations that start with analysts’ forecasts already filled in, earnings summaries, five-year forecasts and company research ready to use, Investment Cases that start with the research already gathered, the full Stock Picks rankings and unlimited price alerts.

Everything in Research Access, plus AI that reviews your valuations and challenges your assumptions, AI analysis of your complete Investment Case, MarketSnap’s ready-made analysis and outlook for stocks, AI that keeps your portfolio’s valuations up to date as new results come in, unlimited AI use and no ads.

On Free and Research Access, AI tools such as the Value AI Lens and the AI Case Engine use MS Credits. New members get one free credit, and credit packs are one-off purchases, not a subscription. Full Access includes unlimited AI use.

Yes. Manage or cancel your plan from My MarketSnap, Settings, Billing and Credits, through the secure Stripe portal.

Open “Chat with us” from the Contact page or from Settings → Help & Support. It is MarketSnap’s support assistant: it answers questions about plans, access, MS Credits, settings and where things are, and when you are signed in it can read your own plan, credits, alerts and journal and take you straight to the right page. A conversation you start stays with you while you move around MarketSnap, until you end it.

Anything it cannot see or fix, such as a payment question or a bug, it sends to the MarketSnap team with your conversation; we reply by e-mail, usually within one business day. You can also write to us through the contact form.