Simply Wall St was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2014 by Al Bentley. The goal of Simply Wall St is to help investors choose stocks to include in their portfolios based on fundamental analysis. Hardbacon was founded by Julien Brault in Montreal in 2017 with the goal of helping Canadians make better financial decisions in terms of planning by financial goals, budget management and investing. As we will see, it is in the area of investing that the two applications are similar.
Simply Wall St: the advantages
The main advantage of Simply Wall St is that it offers many tools to help you analyze the companies you want to add to your portfolio.
You can search stocks by country and industry, while with Hardbacon, the search engine can only search by company name or ticker symbol.
In addition to this search tool, Simply Wall St provides a 10-point company analysis, consisting of an executive summary, the share value, the company’s financial news, future growth, past performance, financial health, dividends, the management team, majority shareholders, and recent information about the company. These company analysis tools also include an analysis of the financial health of companies, including analyzing their debt and equity.
Hardbacon, for its part, provides more than 20 indicators on each stock or fund, but is limited to the most commonly-used ratios and indicators in the industry.
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Simply Wall St, like Hardbacon, provides you with news about the company in question, as well as stock price developments. You also get access to significant events such as the payment of dividends or the publication of the latest quarterly results, a feature that is not available in Hardbacon.
Simply Wall St also offers a comparison, for a desired security, of its returns over several periods against the industry average. This is very handy, as you can quickly see which stocks have experienced strong growth in their industry.
Simply Wall St: the disadvantages
We have seen that this application offers advanced tools for stock research and analysis. On the other hand, this application has several disadvantages compared to Hardbacon.
The biggest disadvantage of Simply Wall St is that most Canadian investment accounts cannot be linked to it. Conversely, Hardbacon is compatible with many Canadian institutions. Note that with Simply Wall St you can create your wallet manually, entering your transactions one by one, even if this quickly becomes tiresome. This feature is automated with Hardbacon.
Unlike Hardbacon, Simply Wall St also does not include budget management or the ability to set financial goals. In fact, Hardbacon allows you to track your cash inflows and outflows. You can also configure alerts when you exceed your budget for a specific expense category.
Hardbacon also stands out with its diagnostic, which analyzes many parameters of your investment portfolio, including its sensitivity to market variations (beta), asset allocation, costs, exposure to foreign currencies and different industries.
Another disadvantages of this app, it does not provide notifications about your portfolio or desired securities, as Hardbacon does. Simply Wall St also does not provide a portfolio score, to enable users to assess the quality of their portfolios, as Hardbacon does.
Simply Wall St is thus inferior to Hardbacon in terms of portfolio management, but superior in terms of finding new securities.
With Hardbacon, you will therefore be able to better manage your investments while taking into account other aspects of your personal finances, which is not the case with Simply Wall St.
How much does it cost ?
Hardbacon has a free version of its app as well as a Premium version at $12.99/month or $99.99 per year. The free version includes linking to accounts as well as the budgeting module and the planning module by financial objectives. The Premium version, obviously, includes all the functionality of the free account, as well as the functions of portfolio analysis and advanced stock market data. The Premium version includes the portfolio score, diagnostics, reporting, and the stock and fund exploration and search module.
Simply Wall St’s free version includes limited access to financial data. With the free version, you are limited to 10 company reports and an investment portfolio with a maximum of 6 stocks. The paid versions allow you to get unlimited reports and add as many stocks as you want to your portfolio. Also, the premium version provides your downloadable data in CSV or PDF format. Premium versions of Simply Wall St cost between $115 USD ($161 CAD) and $305 USD ($ 427 CAD).
Is Simply Wall St available in Canada?
Simply Wall St is available on the App Store and the Google Play Store in Canada. However, you will not be able to link the app to your accounts with major Canadian securities dealers, except Interactive Brokers and Questrade.
Simply Wall St or Hardbacon?
Hardbacon and Simply Wall St are ultimately two investment applications, but quite different from one another. Simply Wall St has a better offering when it comes to stock research, while Hardbacon is better at analyzing your current investments. However, the absence of major Canadian brokers to connect your account to Simply Wall St is a big weakness. Hardbacon, on the other hand, helps you understand your budget as well as your investments, covering many aspects of your finances.
If you liked this article, you'll definitely like Hardbacon's mobile app, which links to your banking and investing accounts, helps you plan your financial goals, budget, and invest better. The basic version of the app is free, but you can do more with Hardbacon Premium. As a loyal reader of our blog, you can get 10% off any Hardbacon Premium subscription. To take advantage of this promotion, use promo code BLOG10 when subscribing through our website.
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About The Author: Edouard
Edouard is a financial analyst at Hardbacon. He is responsible for compiling lists of securities that our users can find in the "Explore" section of the application.
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