How to compare stocks & ETFs in Moomoo — side by side (screenshots of every screen)

Find the first symbol you want to compare. In this example, we type VOO in the search bar and open Vanguard S&P 500 ETF.

At the very bottom of the page there’s a row of buttons: Trade · Options on the left, and a few small icons on the right. Tap the ⋯ icon (three dots) at the far right.

A menu slides up from the bottom with eight options. Compare is the first one, top left — its icon is a small box that says VS.

This same menu also has Papertrade and RSP, so if you’ve already read the paper trading tutorial, you’ve seen this screen before.

The Compare screen opens with VOO already added as the first symbol. You’ll see a performance chart for VOO on its own, and below it a Symbol row with a few empty orange + marks.

Each + is an empty slot. Tap the first one to add a second symbol.

The Add Symbol screen opens. There’s a search box at the top, and below it a list of suggestions — market indexes (Dow Jones, S&P 500, KLCI) and stocks from your watchlist.

Tap the search box and type the next symbol’s code. We’ll type SPY.

Notice Selected(1) below the search box. That number counts how many symbols you’ve already picked — it goes up every time you add one.

The search results appear. Tap + at the right end of the row you want, and it turns into a −. Selected(1) goes up to Selected(2).

But look closely first: there are two rows named SPY. The first has a blue US badge — that’s the SPDR S&P 500 ETF traded in America. The second has a different badge and the name “Stt Strt SPDR S&P 500 ETF” — that’s a listing on another exchange, not the one you’re looking for.

This is the same trap as warrants on Bursa: same code, different product. Check the market badge and the full name before you tap +.

Tap ✕ in the search box to clear it, type the next symbol, and tap +. We repeat this for SPUS and IVV.

Tap the arrow next to Selected(4) to open the full list of what you’ve picked. If you added the wrong one, tap − next to it to remove it.

Once the list is right, tap the orange Confirm button in the top right. You can pick up to 6 symbols at once.

The Performance section holds the most important numbers on this screen. There are two types of return here, and both are commonly misread:

• Annualized — the average return per year over that period. “5Y Annualized +12.66%” means VOO grew by an average of 12.66% every year over 5 years.
• Cumulative — the total return over the whole period. “5Y Cumulative +81.52%” means USD100 invested five years ago has become USD181.52 today.

SPUS shows – for the 10-year period because it only launched in December 2019, so it hasn’t been around for 10 years yet. – means no data, not zero.

Scroll a bit further in the same section and you’ll find two more rows:

• Earnings Per 10K Units — how much profit a USD10,000 investment would have made. For example, “5Y 8.15K” for VOO means USD10,000 invested five years ago has gained USD8,150.
• Morningstar — a star rating from Morningstar, a fund research company. It’s rated against past performance compared to similar funds. It isn’t a prediction.

In this screenshot, the Quotes section has been collapsed so Performance fits on one screen.

The Basics section rarely gets read, yet it answers half of the “why is SPUS different” question:

Three rows in this table are the key ones:

• Expense Ratio is the fund’s annual feeExpense ratioA fund's annual management fee, shown as a percentage.See it in the glossary →. SPUS charges 0.45% a year, 15 times VOO’s fee.
• Holdings is how many companies the fund holds. SPUS holds only 214 companies, while the other three hold about 475. That means SPUS isn’t the full S&P 500.
• Equity Style Box shows the fund’s investing style. The other three are “Large Blend,” a mix of large companies of various types. SPUS is “Large Growth,” which leans toward large companies growing fast. Different style, different price behavior.

This is a feature almost nobody discovers. Tap a number row like Expense Ratio, and the chart at the top turns into a bar chart for that number. The chart title changes to match the row’s name, and the selected row is highlighted in gray.

In the table, 0.03% and 0.45% look like small, close numbers. In the bar chart, you instantly see how far apart they really are: one bar towers, the other three are almost flat.

Tap a different row, say Div Yield (TTM), and the bar chart switches to that row instead.

So how do you get the line chart back? Tapping the same row again does nothing. Instead, tap the Prev Close row, the first row in the Quotes section. That row is selected by default, which is why the chart starts out as a performance line chart. If Quotes is collapsed, open it first with the arrow at the right end of its title.

The Dividends section shows two main things:

• Div Yield (TTM) is the dividend yieldDividend yieldAnnual dividend shown as a percentage of the stock's current price.See it in the glossary → for the last 12 months. VOO 1.06%, SPY 1.00%, SPUS 0.53% and IVV 1.11%.
• Frequency is how often dividends get paid. VOO, SPY and IVV pay Quarterly, every 3 months. SPUS pays Monthly, every month.

So SPUS pays more often, but the yearly total is only about half. That makes sense — a company that’s still growing usually reinvests profit to expand the business, rather than paying out big dividends.

One important thing for Malaysian investors: dividends from US ETFs get a 30% withholding tax deducted before they reach your account. The 1.06% yield in this table is the pre-tax figure.

This section also shows Ex-Date and Pay Date — the last date to qualify for a dividend, and the date it actually gets paid.

The Risk section is the most honest part of this screen. It shows what you have to put up with to get that higher return:

Read these rows together:

• Over the last 3 years, SPUS has dropped as much as 22% from its peak, while VOO dropped 17%. If you invested USD10,000, that’s the difference between watching your balance fall to USD7,800 and falling to USD8,300.
• Beta 1.15 means when the market moves 10%, SPUS tends to move about 11.5%.
• SPUS’s Sharpe Ratio is lower. Even though its return is higher, the return you get per unit of risk is actually a bit less than VOO’s.

There’s an interesting small detail here. VOO’s alpha is −0.030%, matching its 0.03% annual fee exactly. SPY’s alpha is −0.090%, also matching its 0.09% fee. That means both ETFs track the S&P 500 almost perfectly, and the only thing making them lag the index slightly is the fee itself.

The Valuation section calculates ratios for the whole basket of companies in each ETF. The easiest row to understand is P/EP/E ratioA stock's price compared to the company's earnings — how much you pay for each ringgit of profit.See it in the glossary →.

SPUS has a P/E of 29.74, versus VOO’s 24.80. That means for every USD1 of profit made by companies in the basket, you’re paying roughly USD29.74 in SPUS and USD24.80 in VOO. That’s normal for a basket weighted toward growing companies, since the market is willing to pay more for expected future profit.

At the bottom of the screen, Moomoo itself states that all this data is for reference only and not investment advice.

Open the 1155 MAYBANK page, tap the ⋯ icon at the far right of the bottom bar, and pick Compare. It’s the same process as steps 1 and 2 above.

The difference is that when you tap +, the screen that opens is called Add Stock, not Add Symbol. Search for and add pbbank, cimb and rhbbank. Bursa Malaysia stocks carry a blue MY badge next to their code.

After you tap Confirm, the screen that opens is called Stock Compare. The chart at the top is now titled Price Trend, and the sections below it are different from the ETF screen:

• Key Data — closing price, Market Cap, Float, Volume, Turnover, and the highest and lowest prices over a year
• Valuation Indicators — EPS, P/E, BVPS, P/B, P/S and Div Yield
• Analyst Indicators — analyst rating, target price and institutional holdings
• Financial Indicators — ROE, ROA, Net Margin, Debt to Assets and other financial ratios

Over 1 year, the yellow line, RHBBANK, rose the most among these four banks.

Three small things on this screen are worth knowing:

• The ⓘ icon at the top right opens a Tips box that explains every row in plain English. Swipe the tabs above it to switch between Key Data, Valuation Indicators, Analyst Indicators and the other sections.
• The Currency ▾ row above the table changes the currency of the numbers, for example from MYR to USD. Handy when you compare stocks from different markets.
• The Period ▾ row picks which financial reporting period to compare: Latest, FY (full financial year), H1 (first half of the year), or a specific quarter such as Q1.

P/E and P/B show how much the market is willing to pay for every ringgit of a company’s profit or assets. A lower P/E doesn’t automatically mean a stock is the better pick. Sometimes the market prices something low for a specific reason. These numbers are just a starting point for your next question.

Div Yield on these banks is far higher than the US ETFs earlier. On top of that, dividends from Malaysian stocks don’t get the 30% withholding tax that US ETF dividends do. That’s one reason a lot of local investors like holding bank stocks.

The Analyst Indicators section below is empty (–) for analyst ratings on all four of these banks, but the institutional holdings row still has numbers.

Look at the Debt to Assets Ratio row: MAYBANK 91.06%, PBBANK 88.91%, CIMB 90.98% and RHBBANK 91.01%.

If you saw this number for a factory or a retailer, it would be a huge red flag, since 91% of the company’s assets are financed by debt. But for a bank, this is normal. A bank’s whole business is taking deposits from the public, and those deposits are counted as the bank’s liabilities. The bank then lends out that money. That’s why all four banks land at nearly the same number.

This is exactly why comparing companies in the same industry matters most. A number that looks terrifying in one industry can be completely normal in another. When you compare four banks at once, you learn what “normal” looks like for banks. From there, it’s much easier to spot a bank that’s straying from the pattern.

The Net Margin row shows how many cents of net profit come from every RM1 of revenue. PBBANK sits at 24.48%, lower than the other three banks which are around 36% to 38%.