VectorVest Reviews

Summary: After I learned about this problem with "earnings," I asked them to refund the remaining half-year in my subscription. They refused.

Positive: It's fairly easy to use, once you take the training.
The easy approach is to keep ideas in a "watchlist."
With a bit more effort, users can track their portfolio.

Negative: I’ve used VectorVest for several years, but am now stopping. It’s because I checked their data against another source (MSN.com), and found that it’s unreliable.
Upon consulting with their support folks, I learned a surprising fact: VectorVest does not report earnings, but only FORECASTS (or "estimates") of earnings. Even after the quarterly earnings reports come out, they will keep the forecast data in their history, even if it's wildly inaccurate.
EXAMPLE: Comparing Facebook from July 2019 to June 2020.
VectorVest shows revenue steadily increasing month by month. MSN shows that revenue peaked in December 2019.
VectorVest shows earnings stuttering for the first 3 months, then going steadily upwards from then on. MSN shows that earnings peaked in December and never recovered to the earlier level.

If you are a VectorVest user, even on a trial, you can see this for yourself.
1) Choose any stock, and open a graph for it.
2) Show at least the graph line for earnings.
3) Notice that it gives "earnings" right up until today. But no one will know the true earnings until they are reported, perhaps two or three months from now.
4) Furthermore, notice how the "earnings" line on the graph changes every day, sometimes with big changes up and down. All this is just estimates. A graph of true earnings will have just four data points each year, one for each quarter.
5) For Canadian stocks, I also notice that the dividends graph line often has movements up and down from day to day and week to week. This is pure speculation; it's not based on actual data.

VectorVest simply is not a trustworthy basis for investment decisions.