Is An AAII Investor Pro Membership Worth It? I Test It!

The standard AAII membership offers good value for money, unbiased opinions, and model portfolios that claim to beat the market yet underperform.

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My analysis, research and testing stems from 25 years of trading experience and my Financial Technician Certification with the International Federation of Technical Analysts.

The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) is one of the most interesting investment information providers. AAII is an independent nonprofit corporation that makes money by selling membership dues or subscriptions.

The AAII offers many of the same services and digital products as online brokerages and investment apps. The difference is that the AAII does not sell investments; instead, it only provides investment information. Members pay a subscription to access its services and products.

The AAII claims its purpose is “assisting individuals in becoming effective managers of their assets through programs of education, information, and research.” Dr. James B. Cloonan founded the AAII in 1978 to provide investment information to ordinary people.

Pros

• It offers many investment tools at a low price.
• Good educational resources
• Includes basic stock screeners.
• Offers some professional-grade investing tools.
• Focus on value investing, dividends, and long-term wealth building.
• Few conflicts of interest. AAII does not sell investments or make money by selling investor data.
• Offers an investment community and a print journal.
• Offers model portfolios.

Cons

• It is not useful for speculators and short-term investors.
• Data that AAII provides is available free online from other sources.
• The AAII places too much emphasis on its custom portfolio and ignores other potentially more lucrative investing strategies.
• The AAII emphasizes the “Stock Superstars” and their trading strategies too much.
• The AAII’s investment advice is limited to value and dividend investing.
• AAII writers and experts ignore potentially more lucrative investment strategies like growth investing.
• The AAII makes questionable claims about its Model Shadow Stock Portfolio.
• AAII’s data and tools are USA-centric.

Compare to Similar Products

Our tests show that AAII is lagging behind TradingView, TrendSpider, MetaStock, and Trade Ideas. TrendSpider is better for automated stock chart analysis, backtesting, and automated bot trading. Stock Rover is better than AAII for long-term growth, dividend, and value investors. Trade Ideas is better for AI-driven robotic day trading. For trading real-time news, Benzinga Pro is a better alternative.

AAII Wealth Management

Today, one of AAII’s goals is to “provide a lifetime strategy for investing” for ordinary people. AAII provides many tools for investors, including model portfolios, investing ideas, reports, customized screening, market information, articles, data, and education.

A major focus at AAII is educating professionals and others about value investing and wealth management. One obvious goal of AAII is to offer the wealth management tools normally only available to high-net-worth individuals to the middle class.

AAII hopes that its wealth management tools will help middle-class households save for retirement or children’s college. Many of the digital tools it offers are wealth management mechanisms, including portfolios, stock and fund analyzers, and screeners.

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AAII Product Offerings

The main product the AAII offers investors is information. The AAII membership gives subscribers access to various information and digital products.

AAII’s information products are portfolios, news, and advice. Most of those products are delivered digitally through its website and app.

The main product offerings at AAII include The AAII Journal, the Top ETFs Guide, the Top Funds Guide, the AAII Investor Sentiment Survey, and free reports. Other products include classes, videos, and advice.

The AAII Journal is a monthly investment magazine that focuses on educational articles and features many market commentary pieces.

The AAII Journal often focuses on one aspect of investing. For example, the March 2021 issue contained two articles on bond ratings. There are also articles on insights, ETFs, dividends, and portfolios.

The AAII website offers daily market news, including articles and market summaries. It also offers investing ideas, including stock and Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) ideas.

An interesting site feature is Learn & Plan, a simple guide to the individual investor wealth-building process. The Learn & Plan web page features articles on investing and wealth-building, such as retirement.

 

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AAII Tools

 The great advantage of AAII is that it provides many investor tools without requiring users to make any investments.

The AAII investor tools include MyPortfolio+, Stock Screen Power Rankings, the A-F Stock Grades Screener, Stock Upgrades & Downgrades, Top & Bottom Performing Funds, and a Fund/EFT Screener. All of these tools are available in AAII’s My A+ Investor Toolkit.

MyPortolio+ allows AAII members to create customized portfolios with premium portfolio tracking features. The premium portfolio tracking features include a Stock Evaluator, Stock Grades, a Portfolio Insights Tool, Mutual Fund Screeners, ETF Screeners, Mutual Fund and ETF Evaluators, Mutual Fund and ETF Comparison Tools, Risk-Adjusted Performance Analysis, Lists of Hot and Cold Mutual Funds and ETFs, Benchmarks to help users understand recent and long-term market actions.

AAII MyPortfolio+ Tools:

• Daily Top and Bottom Stock Lists by Rating
• Daily Stock Ideas
• A Portfolio Diversification Analyzer
• Daily Stock Guru Screens
• Stock Guru Strategies
• Daily Stock Factor Screens
• Stock Rating Upgrade and Downgrade Alerts
• Stock Screen Power Rankings
• Interactive Price Charts
• Industry and Sector Reports
• Ratio Analysis
• Reports on Analyst Ratings and Recommendations
• Consensus Earnings Forecasts and Price Targets
• Records of Insider Purchases and Sales
• Customized Screens and Screeners
• Stock Factor Screens
• Detailed Quarterly and Annual Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements.

The screeners offer specific stock data. For instance, daily stock screens evaluate stocks for value, growth, momentum, EPS, and quality. The screeners can show an investor if a stock meets his or her criteria.

The My Stocks and My Screens allow investors to monitor customized lists of stocks. The Stock Grades Screener allows investors to grade “stocks” using the grading system used in most American schools. The system is the A to F grades, with A being the best and F the worst.

Screen Power Rankings ranks stocks by various criteria, including guru strategies. Other tools allow investors to identify Top and bottom ETFs and Consistent Performers.

The A+ Investor Toolkit is a package of premium investor tools from the AAII. The A+ Investors offer in-depth analysis and tracking of professional fund managers and evaluation of management teams.

The A+ Investor Toolkit’s idea is to give investors one place to monitor the performance of all their stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. It also offers fast access to most of AAII’s investing tools and screens.

AAII Portfolios

The AAII offers many popular tools, including the AAII Model Shadow Stock Portfolio.

They designed the Model Shadow Stock Portfolio to offer maximum gains from investments without a significant time or work commitment. The AAII claims it has outperformed market benchmarks by four to one for the last twenty years.

The AII Dividend Investing Portfolio is designed to maximize income and growth from a diversified portfolio of dividend-paying US companies. The Stock Superstars report Portfolios follow the suggestions and strategies of rockstar investors such as William O’Neil, Dreman, James O’Shaughnessy, and John Neff,

The VMQ (Value, Momentum, and Quality) Stocks Portfolio is a high-quality stock with low prices and high levels of momentum. AAII offers a model VMQ Stocks Portfolio and a VMQ Stock Analyzer Tool.

The portfolios are one of the most people-focused features at AAII because they simplify investing.

AAII Education and Community

One of the biggest advantages of AAII is education and community events. AAII’s education resources include Webinars, which are video classes about specific aspects of investing, such as dividends. The AAII offers Webinars, including The Individual Investor Show. Many Webinars focus on less appealing aspects of investing, such as taxes.

The AAII offers podcasts such as AAII audio in addition to Webinars. The podcasts appear to be audio versions of the Webinars.

In addition to video resources, the AAII offers a National Investor Conference and local chapters or groups. The Local Chapters are meetings where AAII members can gather and discuss.

All AAII chapters are described as grassroots organizations led by volunteer AAII members. The emphasis is on person-to-person outreach to individual investors. Details of these groups’ agendas are not available through the website.

The AAII offers Investment Education Groups (IEG) in areas without AAII local chapters. These groups offer investor education. There are also Special Interest Groups (SIG). These Groups focus on specific aspects of investing, such as dividends or value investing.

The AAII does not offer the Investment Education Groups’ curriculum details on its website. The IEG curriculum is probably a simpler version of the Webinar content.

AAII Pricing

For what it offers, AAII is incredible value for money. Standard memberships cost $49 per year. Gift memberships are available. However, the website does not reveal the price of the gift memberships.

The AAII offers all of its resources to members; however, you must purchase a membership to access most of them.

Is An AAII Investor Pro Membership Worth It?

This AAII review reveals that membership might be worth it if you seek curated stock portfolios or beginner education in stock market investing. However, advanced investors seeking to develop specific technical trading strategies should look elsewhere.

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Test Summary

The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) is a good resource for a well-educated person who knows little about investing or the markets.

For example, a school teacher or a doctor who wants to start investing or learn how the markets work. People who have never read financial news, studied the stock markets, or traded stocks could benefit from the AAII.

I think the AAII’s Investment Education Groups (IEG) could be valuable resources for people unfamiliar with computers or the internet. That could include older individuals or people who do not work in offices—for example, contractors or mechanics.

On the other hand, I think the AAII will do nothing for experienced investors and digitally literate people. I believe most people will find the information the AAII charges for free online with a short search.

You can learn most of the value and dividend investing strategies the AAII charges from great investing books.

Most of those books are available at low prices from Amazon in paper and on Kindle. People who do not want to pay Amazon can find many of those books free at public libraries.

AAII members could pay twice for the same information and digital tools. Online brokerages and investment apps offer many of the same resources as the AAII for free with subscriptions.

Investors will need to subscribe to a brokerage or investment app to trade, and they will also need to subscribe to the AAII.

AAII could be an excellent resource for beginning investors. I do not think the AAII offers much for experienced investors. The education, information, and resources this organization offers are available elsewhere.