This Ziggma review shares the key findings from my rigorous testing of their portfolio management platform. As a former hedge fund manager who oversaw multiple portfolios at once, I understand the need for effective portfolio management tools and the hallmarks that underpin their utility.
I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the level of detail that Ziggma allows you to go into – particularly when you consider that most of its features are free.
The rest of this review will cover each of these features in more depth, the differences between the free and premium plans, as well as any free trials or discounts available.
What is Ziggma?
Ziggma provides a slick, affordable solution to portfolio management for individual investors. It allows you to aggregate portfolios from multiple brokerage accounts and perform portfolio analysis on them, as well as generate new investment ideas with their stock research platform.
This includes a basic stock screener, model portfolios, fundamental data, and a quantitative stock scoring system (Ziggma scores).
Ziggma Review Highlights
Features | Portfolio Tracking, Screening, Backtesting, Stock Research |
Operating System | Web Browser |
Subscription | Monthly, Yearly |
Regions | US |
Designed For | US Stock & ETF Investors |
Discount | -25% With Annual Subscription |
Free Trial | 7-day Free Trial |
Pros
- Free stock screener & portfolio management tools
- Unique climate impact metrics
- Guru & model portfolios assist with idea generation
- Data-driven stock scoring system
- Smart alerts and KPI tracking help you monitor positions
- User friendly
- Great value for money
Cons
- Limited stock screener filters
- Poor backtesting capabilities
Ziggma Pricing
Ziggma offers a free plan and a premium plan.
The free version gives you access to most of their portfolio analysis and stock research tools, including portfolio tracking, stock screening, stock scores, and financial data.
By upgrading to the premium plan, you gain full access to their Ziggma stock scores, top 50 lists, a portfolio simulator, smart alerts, guru & model portfolios, and backtesting – all for a very reasonable price.
In addition, if you choose the yearly subscription, you enjoy a 25% discount!
Free Trial
Ziggma offers a 7-day free trial for its premium plan. Click the link below to start your free trial.
Ziggma Features
Now we know a bit about the different plans and pricing, let’s dive into the features Ziggma offers…
Ziggma Stock Scores
Ziggma stock scores rank companies against their industry peers on a scale of 0-100. In turn, these consist of 4 separate sub-scores that capture distinct characteristics about a stock: growth, profitability, valuation, & financial health. Note, you need a premium subscription to see these individual category scores.
Each category score derives from a proprietary, algorithmic scoring system using data from 40+ financial metrics. Essentially, Ziggma scores consolidate key information regarding a stock’s overall attractiveness into 1 number.
While they don’t disclose the exact details of their model, it is based on rigorous quantitative research from their in-house financial experts, and uses millions of data points. Having worked in the hedge fund industry and read thousands of stock reports, I can tell you this is exactly the kind of analysis you get from institutional-grade research.
It turns out that Ziggma scores have an excellent track record for picking stocks. In a backtest from 2011-2020, a hypothetical portfolio owning the highest scoring 10% of stocks from each industry generated returns of 403.8% compared to 176% for the S&P 500!
Top 50 Lists
Ziggma scores also form the basis of another cool feature: Top 50 Lists.
Top 50 lists show you the current top 5 highest-scoring stocks in each of the 10 fastest-growing industries. Similar to the Guru & model portfolios mentioned below, this provides a great source of inspiration for new investment ideas.
Portfolio Management Tools
Ziggma’s main function is portfolio analysis, and I’m pleased to say that it delivers on this core feature.
You can create as many portfolios as you like within the platform, or import a virtual portfolio from almost any bank or broker. It does this using Plaid, which ensures secure account aggregation. You can also import watchlists from Yahoo Finance.
If you have a hard time tracking multiple investment accounts across different providers, Ziggma is an absolute godsend! Essentially, it simplifies the whole portfolio management process by providing a holistic view of all your investments in one place.
Once you’ve aggregated your portfolios in Ziggma, the portfolio overview tab consolidates all of their key information into one screen. For example, the Ziggma portfolio dashboard provides a quick summary of your aggregate:
- Ziggma Stock Score
- Portfolio Yield
- Portfolio Risk (beta)
- Return on Assets (ROA)
- Revenue Growth & Profit Growth
- Climate Score
The Overview section also shows the historical performance of your portfolio, news for individual stocks, and a table breaking down each stock’s weight, number of shares, P&L, and Ziggma scores.
Moving over to the “Diversification” tab, you can see how your portfolio risk is spread across individual companies, sectors, Ziggma score tiers, asset classes, and countries. For those interested, you should check out my StockMarketEye review to compare how this portfolio tracker stacks up against Ziggma.
The other tabs give you a top-level view of your key portfolio metrics, such as:
- Risk: Historical chart of aggregate portfolio beta, as well as each stock’s individual beta
- Fundamental: Dividend yield, P/E, ROE, margins, and growth at both a portfolio and individual stock level
- Technical: Historical price changes, RSI, and MACD for individual stocks
- Dividends: Aggregate portfolio yield and projected 12 month dividend income
- Climate: Portfolio climate score and emissions trends
Premium subscribers also have access to a portfolio simulator, which shows you how certain portfolio characteristics (e.g. P/E) would change if you executed a trade.
All in all, the Portfolio tools give you a thorough picture of where you currently stand with your investments. However, I would like to see more fundamental charts to help visualize how my portfolio’s valuation or profitability metrics have evolved over time.
Ziggma Stock Screener
Ziggma also has a stock screener, however it is quite rudimentary. There are only 36 metrics for you to filter stocks by, including:
- Valuation: Market Cap, P/E, P/B, D/Y, EV/EBITDA
- Growth: Revenue & EPS Growth (Current, 5-Year CAGR, Forward)
- Profitability: ROE & Net Margin (Current, 5-Year Average)
- Financial Position: Debt/Assets, Net Debt/EBITDA, Current Ratio, EBIT/Interest Expense
- Climate/Technical: Climate Score, Carbon Intensity, RSI, 52w High/Low, Beta
- Ziggma Score: A proprietary scoring system based on 40+ KPIs and only available to premium subscribers
If you need some inspiration for screening criteria, Ziggma provides a sample of pre-configured screens, which target stocks in different sectors and growth buckets.
If you want to run sector and industry-specific screens yourself, you can use the drop-down menus to narrow your focus to certain sectors.
Ziggma also has a separate ETF screener, which lets you apply filters to an extensive database of 3000+ ETFs, spanning across multiple asset classes, issuers, and sectors.
Again, the range of screening filters is quite limited, with a grand total of 4:
- Yield
- Expense Ratio
- Beta
- Assets
As you can see, the stock screener is relatively basic, however it is really just there to complement the core portfolio management tools in my view.
It’s main differentiating factor is the Ziggma scoring system. Therefore, if you believe in their Big Data approach to fundamental analysis, it can definitely add value to your stock selection process.
Stock Research
While stock screening and portfolio management are great for top-down analysis, any investment process is incomplete without effective bottom-up stock research. Thankfully, Ziggma caters for this.
Each company has its own profile page, which gives you all the information you need to drill down into their prospects at a more granular level. These include:
- Ziggma score overview
- Stock price chart from TradingView
- List of strengths and weaknesses
- Expected revenue & EPS growth for current and next fiscal years
- Valuation, growth, and profitability ratio trends & charts
- Industry-specific KPIs
- Latest news
- Peer comparison
- Previous 5 years’ financial statements including latest SEC filings
- Insider transactions
- Carbon footprint metrics
The strengths and weaknesses section gives a succinct overview of a stock’s virtues and challenges, which provides a useful starting point for your research. You can also see recent trends in industry-specific financial ratios and accounting measures, with the ability to switch between annual or quarterly data.
If you like to see how a company stacks up against its peers, then the Peer Comparison tool is a great way to compare its recent performance, P/E, EPS growth, and other industry-relevant metrics with that of its peer group.
The stock research tools remind me very much of Finviz, so if you want to check out an alternative research platform read my Finviz review.
Guru & Model Portfolios
If you need some inspiration for new investment ideas, then Ziggma’s Guru & Model portfolios are the places to look.
Guru portfolios show the top 10 holdings from 13 of the world’s most renowned investors.
While not on this list, you can learn more about these guru’s strategies in the following articles: Martin Zweig, Peter Lynch, and William O’Neil’s CANSLIM strategy.
Model portfolios, on the other hand, are custom portfolios created by Ziggma’s in-house analysts. There are 12 to choose from, all targeting different investment themes, such as:
- Sustainability
- Profitable Growth
- High Yield
- Low Beta
- Best in Class REITS
- And More
When you click on any of the portfolios, you will see a list of all the stocks in that portfolio, as well as all the portfolio tools mentioned earlier.
Ziggma Smart Alerts
Smart Alerts let you know when a metric hits a certain threshold. Simply define the event to trigger an alert, and let the buy and sell signals come to you.
You can set alerts for:
- Price
- P/E
- Dividend Yield
- Beta
- Volatility
- RSI
- MACD
For instance, you could set a price target that you wish to sell a stock for. Or, if there’s a stock on your watchlist that’s too expensive for your liking right now, simply set a P/E or dividend yield target that you’d be happy to purchase at. When its valuation becomes reasonable, you’ll be the first to know.
KPI Trends
Another useful way to track KPI trends is by going to the “Fundamental” tab of any portfolio. Here, you will see a table of key performance indicators, with their current values displayed alongside their original values when you first purchased the stock.
The original KPIs are shown as grey numbers underneath the current KPI values. Red numbers indicate where KPIs have deteriorated since purchase, white numbers haven’t changed, and green numbers indicate improvements.
Needless to say, this is a great way to visualize which of your stocks are heading in the right direction and which aren’t. This is especially valuable for those of you running large portfolios, where manual tracking is near enough impossible.
Backtesting
Ziggma offers a backtesting function for premium members, however I found it slightly disappointing.
Essentially, all it does is simulate the historical performance of a current portfolio.
Unlike most backtesters, it doesn’t let you define buy and sell rules for periodic rebalancing. This means you can’t actually test whether a certain investment strategy works or not.
As such, I think it’s a stretch to call this a backtester. It is really just a performance chart for a group of stocks.
Broker Integrations
Ziggma integrates with thousands of banks and brokers in the US through their partnership with Plaid. This means you’ll more than likely be able to import your 401k, IRA, or any other portfolio you have, wherever its held.
These include:
- Robinhood
- Charles Schwab
- TD Ameritrade
- Chase
- Fidelity
- Interactive Brokers
- And Many More
You should be aware that Ziggma is not a broker or trading platform itself. In other words, you can’t place orders within Ziggma.
Ziggma Review Summary
This Ziggma review showcased the core features behind this user-friendly, yet highly effective portfolio management platform. The portfolio tracking tools help consolidate your investments in one location, giving you a 360-degree view of your entire financial situation.
Moreover, the numerous research tools help with idea generation and bottom-up analysis of individual stocks. The Ziggma stock scores are particularly unique, providing users with institutional-grade quantitative analysis.
Where Ziggma slightly disappoints is on stock screening and backtesting. However, given these are ancillary features to the core portfolio management tools, it doesn’t take away from the overall experience in my view.