What to use instead of MarketSurge

The product

MarketSurge is the stock research platform Investor's Business Daily sells to individual investors. Until March 2024 it was called MarketSmith; IBD announced the new name on its own LinkedIn page that month, and the App Store listing, published by Investor's Business Daily, Inc., still opens with "MarketSurge (formerly MarketSmith)". Nothing else changed hands: same publisher, same product line, same subscribers.

What it does, from IBD's sales page and its App Store listing, both read on 8 October 2026: a chart for stocks, indexes, mutual funds and industry groups, which since a January 2026 rebuild carries more than 100 indicators and candle, bar and other chart types; "over 70 key technical and fundamental stock data points" per stock, including earnings and sales histories, institutional ownership and IBD's own 1-99 ratings; industry group metrics; screens, including ones built on the published criteria of well-known investors; alerts; and iOS and Android apps. IBD's FAQ says the January 2026 rebuild moved the platform onto Dow Jones data infrastructure. Membership also includes free coaching sessions, live webinars and a library of 300-plus videos.

The price is the reason for this page. IBD's sales page lists 149.95 dollars a month or 1,499 a year, with a 30-day trial for 24.95 that renews at the monthly rate. The iPhone app sells the same subscription through Apple at 29.99 for the first month and 149.99 after. Third-party reviews also quote a figure near 250 dollars a month; it appears on neither vendor page, and this page does not use it.

One part of MarketSurge is deliberately left out of everything below: the 1-99 ratings such as the Composite and RS Ratings, house lists such as the Growth 250, and the Pattern Recognition zones that mark where to buy, take profits and cut losses on the chart. Those are IBD's views on which stocks to buy and when, this catalogue does not recommend products that sell signals, and nothing here was picked to reproduce them. What this page replaces is the rest: the chart, the screen and the data behind them.

What to use instead

Nothing here is MarketSurge with a different logo. MarketSurge's pitch is one screen where the price chart and the company's numbers sit together, and the catalogue sells those two halves mostly as separate products. Decide which half you actually opened it for.

The chart. TradingView is the widest single replacement — charts across markets, screeners, alerts that run on its servers with the tab closed, and apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, from a free plan to 59.95 a month billed annually. StockCharts is the plainer browser chart, with a screener that takes fundamental as well as technical filters; Extra at 29.95 is the first level with room for real use. TrendSpider detects trendlines and chart patterns automatically and scans in real time, from 82 dollars, US stocks only. TC2000 is the fast Windows chart with EasyScan at its centre, for US and Canadian stocks, at 49.99 for the tier that scans.

The screen. If what you used was the list of stocks that passed your criteria rather than the chart, this is the cheapest half to replace. Finviz Elite at 39.50 runs 87 fundamental and technical filters across NYSE, Nasdaq and Amex with your own ranges, real-time quotes, a 10-second refresh and CSV export. Stock Rover is deeper on the fundamental side — up to 800 metrics, ranked screening and a library of prebuilt screens — on North American stocks only. The stock screeners collection lists every card in the catalogue that filters a universe.

The numbers beside the chart. MarketSurge prints earnings and sales history on the chart itself. Elsewhere that is a research product: Koyfin for ten years of financials and consensus estimates across global equities from 49 a month, Stock Analysis for five years of statements free and without an account, and Stock Rover for up to twenty years on its Ultimate tier. Institutional ownership comes from 13F filings, and the trackers for those are their own category, insider and 13F trackers.

Alerts and the phone. MarketSurge alerts reach email, phone and tablet. TradingView, StockCharts, TrendSpider, Koyfin and Stock Analysis all ship iOS and Android apps; Finviz Elite is web only, and its alerts arrive by email and browser push.

What you give up

The single screen. MarketSurge's design is the chart and the fundamentals in one place, and that is exactly what the picks split. The charting tools here are thin on company financials; the fundamentals tools are thin on charts. StockCharts and Finviz Elite come nearest to covering both, StockCharts from the chart side and Finviz from the screen side, and neither is described on its card as printing years of earnings under the price. Expect two browser tabs where there was one.

Instruction tied to one product. A MarketSurge membership includes free coaching sessions, live webinars and a library of 300-plus videos, all built around MarketSurge and the approach IBD designed it for. Every pick has its own documentation, but none is built around that approach, and a screen you learned to build there will be rebuilt from first principles here.

Nothing on price. Splitting the bundle is cheaper, not dearer. TradingView Plus at 29.95 and Stock Rover Premium at 29, both billed annually, come to about 59 dollars a month against roughly 125 a month for MarketSurge's annual plan. If cost is why you are leaving, the saving is real; what you pay for it is the integration above.

Migration notes

The RS Rating is not RSI. IBD's RS Rating is one of its proprietary 1-99 ratings and exists only inside IBD's own products. The "relative strength" indicator on every charting platform is almost always RSI, a 0-100 oscillator computed from one stock's own gains and losses. Similar name, different number: a screen that used one cannot be rebuilt with the other.

Rebuild screens from their raw fields. A screen that filtered on IBD ratings or membership of an IBD list has nothing to map to. The parts written in ordinary fields — earnings or sales growth, margins, price against a moving average, volume — can be retyped into Finviz Elite, Stock Rover or StockCharts. Expect a different list even then: each product licenses its fundamentals from a different supplier and defines "earnings growth" its own way, which why two screeners disagree explains field by field.

Carry watchlists as symbols. We found no documented watchlist export on the vendor pages we read, so copy the tickers out as a list. Most picks take one: TC2000, for example, reads the symbols from a CSV, text or Excel file and ignores every other column.

Cancel where you were billed. A subscription bought on IBD's site is cancelled in MyIBD subscription settings or by phone, per IBD's sales page. One started in the iPhone app is an Apple subscription at 149.99 and is turned off in your Apple account settings, which IBD's own App Store listing says must happen at least 24 hours before the period ends.