finviz Stock Screener Field Report
- Von Thomas
Traders act in the short term and there are so many methodologies and sets of rules that hundreds of books could be filled with them. But despite all the differences, there are some things that all traders have in common. One of them is the search for good entry signals and for this purpose various screening tools are used, such as the finviz Stock Screener.
But finviz.com is much more than a screener, even though this app is probably the most used on this site.
At the outset, we would like to point out that the finviz database only contains information on shares traded on US stock exchanges.
Many options on the finiz website, such as this stock screener, are free of charge. Nevertheless, we would like to mention that finviz also offers a paid version (“Elite”), which offers some additional options. We will come to these options later and will also clarify the question whether the purchase of finviz Elite is worthwhile or not.
Furthermore, certain functions of finviz, such as the compilation of a sample portfolio, can only be performed with a registration, which, however, is not associated with any additional costs. Most of the functions, however, are completely free.
In this article you will find a detailed test as well as a field report on all functions of finviz, whereby the free stock screener will be the focus of our analysis.
What does finviz mean?
Finviz is an artificial word and is composed of the terms “fin” (for financial) and “viz” (for vizualization). Thus, the name finviz actually says very well what this site is about: the visualization of the performance of various financial instruments. And right from the start: finviz does this very well.
Finviz - the entry and the overview
Already on the start page there are no misunderstandings about what exactly this is all about. At finviz, they deliberately avoid a colorful first page with pretty but meaningless pictures. Instead, financial information and financial news right from the start.
We would like to point out that real-time quotes (incl. intraday push charting) are only offered in the Elite version. Without the paid version, the prices are displayed about 15 minutes late. Since finviz has its strength in market screening and you don’t necessarily need realtime quotes for this, the Elite version does not seem advisable, at least for this reason.
Good screening help - Charts
Right at the beginning we would like to point out a special feature of finviz, which has been solved very well and which helps the trader enormously in practice. The overlay charting. If you move the mouse over one of the many ticker symbols, a small chart of the stock appears on the website – without a mouse click and without opening a separate pop-up window.
This feature speeds up the information search and also makes the stock screening, which we will come to later, much easier.
What is a ticker symbol ?
Unlike in Germany or other european countries, the USA does not use security numbers but a practical ticker symbol for the designation of shares. This is a 1 to 5-digit letter combination behind which the corresponding security is hidden. This ticker symbol usually consists of letters of the company’s name (MCD = Mc Donalds) but sometimes also of the company name itself (MMM = 3M).
But back to the finviz start page. The search function at the top left of the homepage is very practical. If you enter a ticker symbol in the input field, you will quickly find the chart as well as all important information about the corresponding stock.
In addition, the following information can be found on the first page of finviz in a very clear form
Top 6 performers yesterday
Flop 6 performers yesterday
Stocks with new highs
Stocks with new lows
Oversold stocks
Overbought shares
Highest volatility
Upgrade
Downgrade
Upcoming quarterly reports
Insider Buying
Insider Sales
This means that the most important and up-to-date information about the US markets is already at hand without any further click and can be quickly read out from the finviz website. But that’s not all we find on page 1.
Technical analysis (some important indicators and their values are displayed here) as well as top current news and a graphical representation of the top 100 stocks (graph on the right) in terms of profit (green) and loss (red) complete the comprehensive but at the same time clear start page of finviz.
Let’s now talk about the individual menu items and start on the left.
Finviz News - Financial news at a glance
This news page is actually self-explanatory. On the left side you will find important company news or press releases. On the right side there are links to interesting partner blogs.
Stock Screener
In second place is the already mentioned highlight of the finviz website. The free stock screener.
The first time you visit the stock screener, you may be overwhelmed by the range of stocks and the selection options. But after a few minutes you get the hang of it and can select stocks according to many criteria.
The preparation of the information is divided into 3 different tabs, which are: Descriptive, Fundamental, Technical – or in German: Beschreibend, Fundamental, Technisch.
Screener Descriptive
On the first tab, there are practical choices such as the stock exchange, the index, sectors or industries, country or market capitalization, just to name a few.
Why is there a “Country” selection option when the screener only contains US stocks?
Companies can choose on which stock exchanges they are listed – i.e. where their shares can be traded. For example, if a German company meets the criteria to be traded on Nasdaq or NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), then this is possible in the form of an ADR (American Depositary Receipt). We do not want to go into the differences between an ADR and a share, because that would go beyond the scope of this experience report about the finviz share screener.
More information about ADRs can be found here
You can choose between the following stock exchanges
AMEX
NYSE
NASDAQ
individual (Elite version only)
Sectors and industry - what's it all about?
Our economy is diverse and colorful. Accordingly, there are many business sectors to which a company can belong. And in many cases it can make sense for a trader to select or exclude companies from a very specific industry, and with finviz’s stock screener this is child’s play.
Sector
finviz separates or classifies companies into 7 basic sectors.
- Basic Materials (raw and basic materials)
- Conglomerates (conglomerates)
- Consumer Goods
- Financial (Finance)
Health Care - Industrial Goods
- Services (Service & Services)
- Utilities
For trading, sector selection can be useful, among other things, to reduce cluster risk. As we know, there is a strong correlation within the stock markets.
Especially at higher volatilities, which is expressed in strongly rising or even more frequently in strongly falling stock markets, one often notices that either all stocks fall strongly or all stocks rise. Exceptions prove the rule but the more fear and greed are in the market the stronger is this correlation.
And it is even stronger within each of the seven sectors. Therefore, it might not be a bad idea for a trader to not only start trades from one sector but to diversify when acting as a position trader. Here one avoids unnecessary cluster risk and can better control drawdowns when trading.
Industry
There are significantly more options for this selection than for the sectors. There must be about 100 screening options available in total. Making a selection is certainly not uninteresting, however, in our experience it should be enough for a trader to select in terms of sectors.
Long-term investors, on the other hand, will also find some interesting options in the selection industry to narrow down their selection meaningfully and thus find the suitable stocks.
Earnings Date
Since we cannot discuss all of the screener’s selection options in detail for reasons of readability, we will pick out the most interesting ones. One of them is undoubtedly the selection “Earnings Date”, which means “Date of the quarterly report”.
As may be known, companies issue such a quarterly report four times a year. The figures, data and facts of the past quarter are thus presented to the public by the company’s management on a previously known and announced date. In addition, an outlook on the further development of the business is given.
And of course, these figures are eagerly awaited, which can still lead to large price fluctuations or price gaps (“gaps”). A trader who holds stocks overnight is therefore well advised to keep an eye on these quarterly reports so that he can position himself accordingly.
For this purpose, one can, for example, select the setting “next 5 days” (i.e. in the next 5 days) on finviz in order to be prepared for the next trading week. Of course, other selection options are available for the date.
Market Cap
The market cap tells us something about the size of a company. It is calculated by multiplying the current share price by the number of shares issued.
The market cap therefore changes daily (to be precise, it changes every second during stock exchange trading) and it is of interest to traders and investors alike.
The trader should pay attention to the fact that he sometimes has to make quick decisions. Therefore, he must have the possibility to buy or sell quickly. This works better the higher the market capitalization is, because this in turn usually determines the daily trading volume.
The more shares are traded daily, the easier it is for the trader to build up or reduce positions. And the smaller the spread – the spread between the buy and sell price. In short, the trader gets a better fill (price) and therefore does well to trade stocks with a high market capitalization.
Investors pay equal attention to market capitalization. This is because some buy only blue chips (large companies) while others specialize in small caps (small companies) and their growth story. With the Screener selection Market Cap this screening option can be done easily and quickly.
Note: at this point we would like to point out that the result table of the screener can be sorted by the respective columns.
For example, if you click on the Market Cap column in the results table, the list will be sorted in ascending or descending order of market capitalization.
Screener Fundamental
On the screener subpage Fundamental you can find various selection options regarding the fundamental data.
In addition to P/E (Price/Earnings) = P/E ratio (price/earnings ratio) or Forward P/E, you can also easily read out certain growth data. Earnings per share in the next 5 years or sales growth in the next 5 years are among the information offered.
Return on assets or return on equity are certainly also interesting.
Both are particularly suitable for investors who are more concerned with the topic of balance sheet analysis.
For all investors and traders insider transactions could be interesting. Insider transactions are purchases and sales of persons who are (more closely) connected to a company. This includes, for example, senior executives.
Of course, it is interesting to know whether the board of directors of one’s own company buys or sells its shares. This can be an indication of whether the future prospects are good or bad and therefore this information is closely scrutinized by many investors. With finviz’s screener they can see this data at a glance or better said with one click.
Screener Technical
The technical sub-section of the screener is more likely to be used by traders who want to improve their trading with this information.
Many technical indicators are available for this purpose. For example, an RSI, moving averages, ATR or various multi-day highs or lows.
Of particular interest here is the beta. A beta smaller than 1 means that a stock fluctuates less than its benchmark (usually the index in which the stock is included). A beta greater than 1 means more fluctuation than the index. This is an excellent way to determine volatilities and let us reveal that vola is of crucial importance in trading systems.
Unfortunately an important screener feature is missing – no export
Until a few years ago, you could compile a wonderful selection with all these options at finviz and then export it to an Excel or another database.
Even today you can find the hint “export” at the bottom right of the screening results. But if you click on it, you will be redirected to the elite version of finviz. So you have to pay for it.
However, one must have understanding for this measure, because finviz offers anyway or nevertheless very much free possibilities, which facilitate traders and investors the life enormously. A free data export is probably too much of a good thing and therefore you have to switch to the paid version (finviz Elite) if you want to use this function.
finviz Maps
In the Maps section of finviz you can visualize the performance of stocks according to certain criteria.
The basic principle of the graphical presentation is always the same. Red are losses, green are gains. In addition, the shares are displayed in boxes based on their ticker symbols. The larger the box, the higher the market capitalization. Furthermore, the whole thing is divided into the 7 sectors, which we have already discussed earlier.
With the help of this type of display, you can, for example, see the performance of the individual stocks/sectors, etc. of the previous day at a glance.
finviz Groups
Here, further visualizations are offered and, for example, the development of the 7 sectors on the previous trading day is placed at the top.
This allows you to observe the already mentioned correlations very well and to derive conclusions for your own trading.
As usual with finviz, this setting can be changed by a manual selection at the top from sectors to industries, countries or market capitalization. This allows you to see, for example, whether large or small caps perform better. Here, too, there are correlations that should be taken into account.
If you scroll down, you can read out different observation periods (day, week, month, year, etc.) based on the selected basic setting.
Portfolio
On this page there is a possibility to create sample portfolios.
However, as mentioned above, this requires a free registration.
Insider
Insider buying and selling is the topic of this subpage.
We have already discussed in detail why this can be of interest in the Screener/Descriptive item.
Futures
On Futures you can get a quick overview of the current development of the most important asset classes (stocks, commodities, currencies or new: crypotcurrencies).
This overview is handy if you want to take a look at the global capital markets in between. At this point, it should be mentioned again that the prices are shown here with a delay of about 15 minutes.
Forex
On this page the most important currency pairs – similar to futures – are summarized and clearly displayed.
Cryptocurrencies
Similar to futures or forex. An overview regarding the development of the largest and most significant cryptocurrencies.
Backtest
To backtest with finviz, it requires the purchase of the finviz Elite version. We put the finviz backtesting tool to the test and tried the Elite version for a month. Our conclusion?
Backtesting with finviz is very easy. About 100 indicators are offered. The historical stock prices go back 16 years, which should be (just) enough to get statistically relevant results. 100 indicators are also enough, however, some indicators from the price action are missing, which, according to experience, show particularly good results in backtests. Here finviz should improve and add these indicators.
Furthermore, the handling of the backtesting is somewhat cumbersome. It requires some skill to combine indicators and save strategies. You should actually expect better usability here.
Our experience report of the backtesting tool is therefore mixed with a positive overhang. If you buy finviz Elite to get real time quotes, to export portfolios from the screener or to get additional options with the screener, you can also try out the backtesting with finviz.
Since the tool can only be purchased as a bundle in the Elite package anyway, the interested user has no other option beyond that. If you only want to do backtesting, you should purchase the corresponding software.
Finviz Elite
Now let’s come to a conclusion of our Finviz experience report and take this opportunity to talk about whether the investment in finviz Elite (prices – as of February 2020: USD 39.50/month or USD 24.96/month for annual subscription) is worth it. (Note: a 30-day money back guarantee is offered).
The answer is not entirely clear.
If you are looking for a solution for backtests, the purchase of finviz Elite is not necessarily worthwhile from our point of view. There are better solutions on the market to perform quantitative analysis on stocks. But since we think that nobody comes to finviz for backtesting anyway, the Elite version might be interesting after all.
On the one hand, with the purchase of finviz Elite the whole offer will be completely ad-free. If you are bothered by the ad overlays, you can also install a free adblocker. Then this problem should be solved.
Furthermore, finviz Elite offers Real Time Push Charting, extended stock screening as well as an export function, which might be interesting for traders who work with portolio tests and want to compile various sample portfolios for backtesting.
An overview of the features of finviz Elite at a glance:
Finviz Stock Screener - Conclusion and Summary
One must pay a big compliment to the developers of finviz. The website is clear, useful and easy to use. And with the stock screener, they have set themselves a monument anyway. The tool is simple and practical and requires only a few minutes of training.
We can therefore recommend finviz without reservation. It is certainly one of the best and most comprehensive financial information sites.
- Clear structure
- Clearly arranged
- Top stock screener
- Many features can be used free of charge without registration
Contra
- No screener export functions
- Backtesting tool only average
- Advertising without Ad Blocker very intrusive
Thomas Vittner Rating: 9/10
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