How to evaluate a stock alert service

Search "best stock alert service" and you'll find ten roundup pages, all affiliate-driven, all ranking the same handful of services in slightly different orders. None of them tell you how to actually evaluate a service. This is that checklist.

We are not going to name competitors. The point is to give you the questions to ask before you hand over a monthly fee — to anyone, including to a creator on Artha.

1. Can you verify the track record?

Screenshots are not verification. A real track record is timestamped trade data — entries, exits, position sizes — from an actual brokerage, not a spreadsheet maintained by the seller. Ask: "How do I know these trades actually happened?" If the answer is "trust me," walk away.

2. What's the latency?

A signal that arrives 30 seconds after the trader fills is useful. A signal that arrives in Discord 10 minutes later, after you've stepped away from your screen, is decoration. Ask how alerts are delivered (push, SMS, email, broker integration) and what the typical lag is.

3. How is the trader compensated?

If the trader makes more money from your subscription than from their own trading, that's a flag. It doesn't disqualify them, but it changes their incentives. You want someone whose trading P&L is meaningful compared with their subscription income.

4. What instruments do they trade?

A trader running options 0DTE on weeklies is offering a very different product from someone trading swing positions in large-cap equities. Match the instrument to your account, risk tolerance, and the time you can actually be at a screen.

5. What's the worst drawdown they've had?

Anyone can show a chart that goes up and to the right. Ask about the worst month, the worst quarter, the deepest peak-to-trough drawdown. A trader who won't or can't answer this is hiding something.

6. How many subscribers do they have?

Scale matters for illiquid trades. If 500 people try to buy the same small-cap stock in the seconds after a signal, you will not get the same fill the trader got. Reputable services are transparent about subscriber count; some cap it deliberately for this reason.

7. Is the pricing simple and the cancel button visible?

Multi-tier pricing with hidden upsells, "founder rates" you have to re-qualify for, or cancellation flows that require an email are warning signs. Real businesses bill cleanly through Stripe with a one-click cancel.

8. Does the service let you size your own trades?

A good copy-trading product respects that your account is different from the trader's. Look for per-trade safety caps, per-day exposure limits, and the ability to skip individual trades. A "blindly mirror everything" mode with no override is risky for accounts much smaller or larger than the creator's.

9. What's the refund policy?

A 7-day or 14-day money-back guarantee is reasonable. No-questions-asked refunds for "I had a losing month" are not — those services are insuring against trading risk and will either stop offering the guarantee or go out of business.

10. Are the disclaimers clear?

A trustworthy service tells you up front: not investment advice, past performance is not predictive, you are responsible for your own account. Services that promise specific returns ("$10K/month guaranteed") are marketing first and trading second.

How Artha approaches each of these

On Artha specifically: trades come from the creator's connected brokerage through SnapTrade, so the record is verifiable. Notifications are push-first with low latency. Pricing is set by the creator, billed through Stripe, one-click cancel. The Pro desk tier prepares each order with proportional sizing and requires per-trade approval before it routes to your brokerage. Per-trade and per-day safety limits are baked in. Risk disclosure is mandatory before the first copy trade.

None of that guarantees the trader you pick is good. It guarantees the infrastructure is honest. The trader-picking part is on you. See our guide on the honest risks of copy trading.