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In this Finviz review, I am going to share with you exactly how to use Finviz as a stock screener to help you scan stocks, research stocks, and find good stock ideas for trading and investing.
Also, I will compare Finviz free version with the paid version Finviz Elite in terms of features and benefits.
So, you will have all the information you need to make an informed decision on whether or not Finviz Elite is worth buying.
Lastly, I will also compare Finviz with other alternatives such as Stock Rover.
How To Use Finviz
So, how do you use Finviz to screen stocks, analyze stocks, and find good trading or investment ideas?
Stock Screener
The most used tool on Finviz is the stock screening tool.
If you are a registered user, you can use the “screen preset” to save all your searches.
So next time, you don’t have to set your filters all over again just to narrow down the list of stocks.
There are three main types of filters:
- Descriptive (e.g. capitalization, stock exchange, country, industry, etc)
- Fundamental (e.g. P/E ratio, Debt equity ratio, dividend yield, etc)
- Technical (e.g. above 200-day moving average, etc)
When you break it down, there is a combined total of over 60 filters for you to play with.
What I love about Finviz is that it makes it so easy and quick to filter stocks based on my own stock selection criteria and helps me save so much time in the process.
So, here’s how you can use the stock filters and also the screen presets.
For example, if you are interested to build a custom scan for dividend stocks, you can define your criteria using the available filtering options.
Let’s say you are only interested in dividend stocks in the US that pay a dividend yield of 3% and above, then you can add a filter for dividend yield and a filter for the country.
The more filters you add, the more you narrow down to a list of stocks that meet your exact criteria.
To save your searches as a “preset”, you must first register with Finviz using just your email address. (it’s free to register)
I have a lot of “presets” saved, so I don’t have to set the filters every time I want to check on the stocks.
You can have up to 50 “presets” as a free registered member and up to 100 “presets” as a paid member.
For example, you can create a “preset” for technology stocks or a “preset” for defensive stocks.
With these presets, you can easily retrieve the list of stocks every time you sign in to your Finviz account.
Now, how do you actually use Finviz to find good stocks that you can buy?
That pretty much depends on your investment strategy or trading strategy.
Let’s say you are a value investor who only wants to invest in good businesses that are fairly valued.
Then, what you can do is to use fundamentals filters such as PE ratio, EPS Growth over the past 5 years, Debt Equity Ratio and Net profit margin to find a list of quality stocks that are also reasonably priced.
But, if you are looking for a stock analysis software for fundamental analysis, then I would recommend Stock Rover which not only offers the most number of financial data and fundamental filters but also gives you access to detailed stock research report.
Let’ say you are a trader who buys and sells stocks for short term profit.
Then, you can use technical filters such as pattern to find a list of stocks that are showing a double top or double bottom in the price chart.
Having said that, if you are a serious trader, there are much better day trading software with more powerful stock scanning and charting tools.
SP 500 Map
Finviz is one of the best stock research tools that use visualization to help you gain a good understanding of a stock in relation to its peers.
With the “Map”, everything is put into perspective.
It’s also so much clearer than just looking at every stock individually.
As you can see from the picture above, S&P 500 index stocks are categorized by sectors (e.g. financials, technology, healthcare) with the size representing its market capitalization.
There are quite a number of Map filters you can choose from such as:
- 1-day performance
- 1-week performance
- 1-month performance
- Year to date performance
- P/E
- P/B
- Float short
- Analyst Recommendation
For example, if you are into technology stocks, you will see that Google is the single biggest tech stock followed by Facebook.
When you mouse over it, it will give you a brief overview of all the technology stocks with a line price chart, stock market price as well as your chosen Map filter.
Stock Market News
Finviz aggregates all the important stock market news from major financial news sites such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, MarketWatch and Wall Street Journal.
So, you don’t have to go to each one of these financial websites to check on the latest news.
On top of that, it also aggregates articles from popular investment and trading blogs such as Seeking Alpha, ZeroHedge and The Street.
So, you are getting the stock market news and insights all from one place.
Overview of Stock Market
I used to use Finviz almost every day to check how the market is doing for the day.
However, I have since switched to Stock Rover to do all my fundamental analysis on US stocks.
Finviz VS Finviz Elite
With Finviz Elite, all the stock quotes, charts, screening and heat maps are real-time.
When it comes to charts, you will get access to intraday charts, advanced charts (i.e. overlays & indicators) and technical studies.
All the real-time stock quotes and charts are very useful if you are trading stocks (i.e. day trade or swing trade) based on technical analysis.
But, if you are a stock investor who invests for the long term and doesn’t trade so frequently, then you might not find real-time stock quotes necessary.
Having said that, that does not mean that Finviz Elite is not at all useful if you are an investor.
If you upgrade to Finviz Elite, you will get access to the fundamental charts as well as email alerts.
So, how can these tools help you?
Fundamental charts are charts based on fundamental data such as EPS and Sales.
With fundamental charts, you will easily see what is the trend in some of the important fundamental data that you are watching for.
For example, has the company’s EPS been rising for the past 10 years?
Or has the company’s EPS been declining for the past 10 years?
Without the chart, you will find it very difficult to visualize the trend with just a bunch of numbers, unless you want to spend time plotting the graph yourself.
What about email alerts?
With email alerts, you can get instant e-mail notifications for individual stocks and portfolios, so that you don’t miss any important events.
Alerts can be triggered by these events:
- News & ratings
- Insider
- Price
- New ticker that fits Screener criteria
For example, if you have a stock that you want to invest in but the price is simply too high right now, you can set a price alert to let you know the moment the stock price reaches your desired entry price.
As stock prices usually move very fast, you don’t want to miss out on a great buying opportunity just because you don’t have any alerts set up to remind you.
Also, when you are a Finviz Elite user, you have the enhanced Stock Screener which offers additional options for the analysis of filtered stocks:
- Data export
- Customized filters (e.g. you can set a specified range for PE ratio or stock price, trading volume, dividend yield, etc)
- Statistics view
How Much Does Finviz Cost?
So how much does Finviz cost?
It’s free to use most of the features on Finviz.
But, if you want additional features such as real-time stock quotes, intraday charts and advanced charts, fundamental charts, and email alerts, then you can sign up for Finviz Elite.
It’s about $39.50/ month, but if you pay annually, it would be $299.5/year (i.e. $24.96/month).
Is Finviz Elite worth it?
I think there are much better alternatives for stock research and analysis software than Finviz Elite for the same price.
Right now, I am using Stock Rover Premium Plus to research and analyze all the US and Canadian stocks because it has the most comprehensive financial and fundamental data for all the US stocks, much better stock screening tools, in-depth stock research reports as well as portfolio analytics and management tools.
Conclusion
All in all, Finviz, the free version, is quite okay for US stock market research. Apart from that, it’s also a great place to check all the latest market news as well as the market performance for the day. But, I don’t recommend Finviz Elite because there are much better alternatives such as Stock Rover.
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