Research publisher vs registered adviser
Almost every investing app you can sign up for is one of two regulated shapes, and the shape decides what it is allowed to tell you. It is the most useful thing to understand about this category and almost nobody explains it, because explaining it means admitting what your own product cannot do.
The two shapes
| Research publisher (us) | Registered investment adviser | |
|---|---|---|
| Can tell you what a filing says | Yes | Yes |
| Can recommend a security to you personally | No — and does not | Yes, that is the product |
| Can draft a trade for your account and place it when you tap approve | No. We never place trades, and a trade drafted for you is advice however it is approved | Yes. Asking before each trade removes the discretion, not the recommendation |
| Can send alerts with a direction, a confidence and a price that would prove them wrong, timed to moves on your watchlist | No. Ours report a filing, a close against a line you drew, or the size of a day’s move, with no direction | Yes. That is personal advice, which is what an adviser registers to give |
| Owes you a fiduciary duty | No relationship exists | Yes |
| Can place trades in your account | No, never | Yes, with discretion |
| Regulatory filing you can read | None required | Form ADV + Form CRS, public |
| Typical cost | Free here; the data is public | A wrap fee or a % of assets |
| Who is accountable for the outcome | You are | They are, to a fiduciary standard |
The approve tap is not the line
The rows on drafted trades and timed alerts are recent, because the products are. Software can now draft a specific trade for your account, explain it, and place it when you tap approve. Kraken’s help-center article on its Kraken AI feature (updated 2026-08-27, read 2026-09-28) describes that sequence: it proposes actions such as buying, selling or converting, you approve, edit or skip each one, and nothing runs until you say so.
The same company describes the product in two ways. Its investing-with-AI landing page (read 2026-09-28) says investment advice on securities is provided by Kraken Adviser LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser, and the SEC’s adviser register lists that firm, CRD 337920, as registered since 2025-09-22 (read 2026-10-21). The help-center article says the same AI does not provide financial, investment, legal or tax advice. A reader cannot tell from the two pages which one describes the button they are pressing.
Our reading is that the tap is not the line; the recommendation is. A trade drafted for your account, with its reasons, is advice aimed at you, and approving it is consent, not a change in who recommended it. The same goes for alerts. Lowe v. SEC drew the publisher exclusion around impersonal publications and noted there was no indication the newsletters in that case were timed to specific market activity. An alert on your own watchlist that carries a direction, a confidence and a price that would prove it wrong, sent as the market moves, sits much nearer the other side of that line. That is how we read it and why we send neither. It is not a legal opinion about any firm.
What the adviser side actually costs
Two concrete examples, both from the firms’ own SEC filings, read 2026-08-01. Alinea Advisory Services is an SEC-registered adviser (CRD 311782) charging a $120-a-year wrap fee with no account minimum, custody at DriveWealth, per its Form ADV Part 2A. Autopilot Advisers is SEC-registered (firm 331749) with a free tier plus paid plans at $99.99 to $699.99 a year, per portfolio, a $500 minimum per portfolio, and an advisory fee its Form CRS describes as “currently 0.00%” while noting they expect to charge a percentage in future.
That money buys something real: a fiduciary, a custodian, and someone who will actually place the trades. If that is what you want, the fee is the price of the obligation, and reading the Form ADV before signing is the single most useful thing you can do.
What free buys you here
The filings underneath. Congressional disclosures, 13F holdings, insider Form 4s, registration statements and prospectus supplements are public records, and most of what these products charge for is packaging them. We publish the packaging free: the trades, the dilution picture, the offering calendar — plus the measurements that only a publisher has any incentive to run, like what disclosed trades did after you could see them and how often our own max-pain read was right.
That last point is the real asymmetry. A registered adviser has little reason to publish its own miss rate. A publisher can, and it costs us nothing to be wrong in public — which is exactly why our accuracy pages exist and why they show the misses.
Why we chose this side
Because the alternative changes what we are allowed to say, and we would rather keep saying “here is what the filing shows, decide for yourself” to everyone, identically, for free. It also keeps one promise simple: nothing here is personalised, so nothing here can be quietly optimised for what makes us money. What StockTools does not do spells out the rest.
Publisher vs adviser — FAQ
What is a registered investment adviser?
A firm registered with the SEC or a state that gives investment advice for compensation. Registration brings a fiduciary duty, a Form ADV disclosure brochure, and the ability to manage money — often with discretion, meaning they can place trades in your account without asking each time.
What is the publisher exclusion?
The Investment Advisers Act excludes bona fide publications of general and regular circulation from the definition of an adviser. The Supreme Court read it broadly in Lowe v. SEC (1985): impersonal commentary distributed to everyone is publishing, even when it names specific securities. What forfeits it is personalisation — advice aimed at your situation.
Does paying a publisher change anything?
Charging money does not by itself make a publisher an adviser; paid newsletters have existed for a century. What matters is whether the output is personalised and whether a relationship of trust and reliance forms. That is why we never gate a recommendation behind a paywall: it is not the payment that crosses the line, it is the personalisation.
Which do I need?
If you want someone to manage money for you and be accountable as a fiduciary, you want a registered adviser, and you should read their Form ADV and fee schedule. If you want the underlying facts so you can decide yourself, you want a publisher. They are different products, not better and worse versions of one.
General information about how this industry is regulated, not legal advice, and not a recommendation about any firm or security. Named firms are not affiliated with StockTools; their figures and statements come from their own public SEC filings and web pages on the dates stated and can change.
Keep going: what our plans cost · free vs fee on congress data · the AI answer ledger · reading a paid promotion disclosure · checking an AI trading bot offer