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To help you trade the stock market better, how do you choose the right stock scanner and charting software?
In this post, I am going to help you compare the following four popular trading software, Finviz, TradingView, StockCharts, and Trade Ideas.
Also, I will share with you all the pros and cons of each stock market trading software after testing them myself.
Finviz Elite Vs TradingView
Both Finviz and TradingView provide you with the following:
- Web-based software (i.e. you can access it anywhere from any web browser on any device)
- Charting tools
- Backtesting tools
- Stock screener
- Realtime market data
- Alerts
So, are there any differences between these two?
There are a few key differences.
First of all, TradingView covers a wide range of international stock markets (e.g. US, Canada, HK, Australia, UK, India, Japan, etc.), Futures, Cryptocurrency, and Forex.
On the other hand, Finviz Elite only covers the US stock market, Futures, Cryptocurrency, and Forex.
So, if you are investing or trading non-US stocks, then TradingView would be a better option.
Furthermore, TradingView’s charting tools are more advanced and powerful with all the popular chart types (i.e. Candles, Bars, Heikin Ashi, Renko, Kagi, etc.), every possible drawing tool (i.e. Trendline, Gann & Fibonacci, XABCD pattern, etc), and almost all the technical indicators that you could imagine(i.e. 100+ built-in indicators and 5000+ custom built indicators by community developers).
On top of that, you can add many different fundamental metrics (e.g. revenue, net profit, profit margin, revenue growth, etc.) to the charts using TradingView.
This would be useful if you want to visually see how the share price has changed with relation to the company fundamentals.
But, you cannot do that with Finviz Elite.
Also, TradingView’s charting is also aesthetically more appealing and more user-friendly.
On the other hand, Finviz Elite’s user interface looks more outdated.
Next, if you are trading stocks, the stock scanner is an essential tool to help you find good trading opportunities.
Depending on the type of stock trading you do, you will have different requirements for your stock scanner.
For example, if you are day trading where you buy and sell shares frequently on the same day, then you will need a stock scanner that not only helps you scan the market constantly and quickly in real time but also allows you to easily customize your scanners based on your trading strategy (e.g. price-based, pattern-based and/or indicator-based, etc).
So you don’t miss out on any good trade setups.
Both TradingView and Finviz Elite are not suitable for day trading because they don’t provide traders with a stock scanner.
Instead, TradingView only has a stock screener that you can use to screen for stocks that meet your pre-defined conditions.
The difference between a stock scanner and a stock screener is that a stock scanner continuously scans the market in real time to find stocks that meet your criteria while a stock screener is static.
Also, TradingView’s technical filters are rather basic and limited as shown below.
Now, let’s take a look at Finviz Elite.
Just like TradingView, Finviz Elite only has a stock screener with descriptive, technical, and fundamental filters.
Again, these filters on Finviz are also very basic as shown below.
On top of that, the user interface design of both Finviz and TradingView is not ideal for day trading, either.
For example, with Finviz, you have to scroll down to see what are all the stocks that meet your screening criteria.
This wastes a lot of time and might even cost you good trading opportunities.
So, if you are day trading, I highly recommend Trade Ideas because both have a very powerful stock scanner that helps you scan the market in real-time.
Every tool Trade Ideas has is designed with day traders in mind.
But if you are just a stock investor who needs stock screeners to help you save time on investment research, both Finviz Elite and TradingView are good options.
However, personally, I use Stock Rover to do all my fundamental analysis and research on stocks for long-term investment because it has the BEST fundamental stock screener that you can find in the market right now.
Pricing-wise, Stock Rover is also very competitively priced as shown below.
Stock Rover | Finviz | TradingView |
Free | Free | Free |
Essentials at $7.99/month (or $6.67/month if billed annually) | N.A | Pro at $14.95/month (or $12.91/month if billed annually) |
Premium at $17.99/month (or $15.00/month if billed annually) | N.A | Pro+ at $29.95/month (or $24.91/month if billed annually) |
Premium Plus at $27.99/month (or $23.33/month if billed annually) | Finviz Elite at $24.96/month | Premium at $59.95/month (or $49.91/month if billed annually) |
So, who should use TradingView?
TradingView is best for Forex and Crypto trading where you use a lot of charts and technical analysis.
It is also good for stock traders who are doing position trading where you hold your stock positions for months or even years based on technical analysis.
But, if you are day trading stocks, Trade Ideas is much better suited for stock day traders who need a powerful stock scanner to find good trading opportunities quickly and easily.
What about Finviz Elite?
Personally, I think that if you are looking for a paid stock market research platform to help you find good investment ideas, there are much better alternatives such as Stock Rover.
Finviz Vs StockCharts
Now, let’s compare Finviz with StockCharts.
StockCharts is primarily a technical analysis platform with advanced charting tools.
On the other hand, Finviz Elite is more of a stock research and analysis platform to help you screen for stock investment opportunities.
So, here’s what you can do with StockCharts.
Its Advanced Charting Platform (StockCharts ACP) is a full-screen interactive charting platform that allows you to create advanced charts by choosing from different chart types, time frames, technical indicators and drawing tools.
To help you save time, you can also save your customized charts under “ChartLists” where you can store up to 1000 saved charts.
On top of that, you can also use it to display multiple charts in a single window.
If you want to see a ticker symbol in multiple time frames, you can use StockChart’s Gallery View to display the four different “Intraday”, “Daily”, “Weekly” and “Monthly” Charts on one page.
Or, if you want to see a number of ticker symbols in a group in a single window, you can also do that with its “CandleGlance” where you can view up to 12 stocks at the same time in a single window.
In addition to StockCharts’ charting platform, you can also use its ” Scanner” as well as “Alerts” to scan the market for stocks that meet your technical criteria.
StockCharts has both Standard Scan Workbench and our Advanced Scan Workbench that you can use to create scans by choosing pre-created scan clauses.
If you want to customize your scans, you can use Advanced Scan Workbench, but it is going to take quite a bit of time and effort to learn how to write the correct syntax.
By the way, the scan engine CANNOT scan the market in real time.
There is a delay of about 3 minutes.
So, if you are a day trader, I would not recommend StockCharts Scanner because it cannot help you scan the market in real-time and it is quite difficult to use its scan engine to customize your scans.
Trade Ideas would be a much better alternative if you want a powerful and easy-to-use real-time stock scanner.
Finviz Vs Trade Ideas
What about Finviz vs Trade Ideas?
Trade Ideas is very different from Finviz in a few aspects.
First of all, Trade Ideas is a very powerful day trading software powered by artificial intelligence.
For day traders, you can use Trade Ideas stock scanners to scan the stock market continuously in real time for stocks that meet your criteria.
It has a wide range of both fundamental and technical filters (i.e. over 200 filters) for you to choose from.
Here are just a few examples of the filters:
- Market cap
- EPS
- Gap %
- Volatility %
- Below high of the day
- Above low of the day
- Consecutive up days
- Consecutive down days
On top of that, Trade Ideas also lets you create alerts based on your favorite trade setups, without any programming required.
It can be anything from price-based to indicator-based or pattern-based trade setups.
Here are just a few examples:
- % down for the day
- % up for the day
- 75% pullback from high
- 25% pullback from high
- crossed above 200 day moving average
- crossed below 200 day moving average
- Double top
- Double bottom
With Trade Ideas, you won’t miss any of your trade setups.
Next, Trade Ideas has something very unique – Trade Ideas Holly Artificial Intelligence.
It has quite a number of different trading algorithms.
Every night after the market closes, Trade Ideas Holly AI runs backtests on their algorithms for the past 3 months.
Then, it looks at the backtesting results such as equity curve, risk-reward ratio, and drawdown, and subsequently optimizes the strategies.
There are over a million trade scenarios being run by Trade Ideas Holly AI overnight.
Once it has done that, it will take into account the current market condition and look at everything from fundamental to social mentions.
In the end, five to eight trading strategies with the highest win rate will be displayed in the AI Strategies Window before the market opens.
What’s more, it also shows you exactly when to enter and when to exit.
Basically, it gives you a complete trading plan.
So far, the performance of Holly AI has been quite impressive.
With Trade Ideas, you can also design and back-test your own trading strategies using its proprietary backtesting tools.
Once you have a profitable strategy, you can even automate your trading through Interactive Brokers.
As you can see, Trade Ideas is really specifically designed for day traders.
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Finviz Elite Vs Bezinga Pro
Lastly, let’s compare Finviz with Benzinga Pro.
Both Finviz and Benzinga Pro allow you to screen the market for stocks using descriptive, fundamental, and technical filters.
Below is the stock screener inside Benzinga Pro.
So, is there any difference between Benzinga Pro and Finviz Elite?
The key difference is that Benzinga Pro is specifically designed to help traders trade news events because stocks typically make huge moves during news such as mergers & acquisitions, trial results, earnings results, and product launches while Finviz is a general stock research and analysis platform for investors and traders.
So, how can you use Benzinga Pro to trade news?
Many day traders use its Audio Squawk which is a fast, timely audio news broadcast that delivers only the most critical market-moving news, so you can focus on what matters most.
Here are just some examples of Squawk audio alerts:
- Breaking news
- Real-time market updates
- Economic figures
- Analyst Ratings
- Volume Spikes
On the other hand, Finviz’s “News” feature is just a general flow of stock market news that cannot be filtered and are mostly not actionable.
Next, you can use the Benzinga Pro Signals tool that alerts you to price or volume-related events in real-time such as Price Spikes, Block trades, Trading halts, Option activities, Opening gaps, and High/Low.
Also, the Benzinga Pro Movers tool gives you an up-to-the-minute feed of the biggest gainers and losers in the stock market.
Finviz has something similar to Benzinga Pro Signal and Movers.
As you can see below, Finviz allows you to find stocks that are ” Top Gainers”, “Top Losers”, “Overbought”, “Oversold”, ” Most Volatile”, ” Most Active” or “Unusual Volume”.
However, I don’t like its user interface in the sense that you have to scroll down to see all the stocks.
It’s rather time-consuming when speed is very important in trading.
Lastly, you can use Benzinga Pro’s stock Scanner helps you easily scan for stocks in real-time using filters such as Price, Market Cap, Volume, Float, Relative Volume, Short Interest, and Shares Outstanding.
So, I wouldn’t recommend Finviz if you are day trading.
If you are a day trader who is primarily trading news, then I will recommend Benzinga Pro.
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However, if you are a day trader who needs a powerful stock scanner to help you scan for stocks in real time based on price, volume, technical indicator, or candlestick patterns, then I would highly recommend Trade Ideas.
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