If you are serious about becoming a profitable stock trader, you have to be able to find the stocks that fit your trading niche. Many new traders just join a chatroom and follow picks. The truth is you will never consistently profit from following someone else. You will always lose in the long run. You need to have your own stock scanning tools so you can find your own go-to setups.
Why You Need A Screener
Becoming a successful trader means you are self-sufficient. Chatrooms can be great places for idea generation and discussion, but you should never be completely reliant on one for your trading ideas. You have to scan and find stocks that fit your own trading strategy. When I discuss and share my watchlist, they are stocks that fit my style and trading strategy. If you just blindly follow my watch list, you may not understand how to trade them, or miss out on stocks that are more suited to your trading strategy, After working with 1000’s of traders, we realize that most are looking to keep their trading expenses low when it comes to trading tools. And a screener is an essential tool every trader needs. So today we will breakdown and give an overview of my favorite free stock screener: Finviz.Finviz Features
Finviz.com is one of the best free scanners out there. It is the go-to-scanner for traders who are low budget and are trying to keep their trading expenses to a minimal. Their screener allows you to filter and find stocks by pretty much every fundamental and technical characteristic you can think of. Check out a screenshot of the screener below:
Finviz Screener Filters
Once you run these scans, you can click on individual stocks. Finviz provides a ton of information on the stocks technical and fundamentals. You will see a candlestick daily chart, a variety of fundamental components (float, shares outstanding, market cap, P/E, and so much more), recent analyst activity around it, and links to recent press releases about the stock. See below:
I love that you can see a preview of the stock’s daily chart when you hover your cursor of the ticker name. This can give you a quick preview of its technicals, and allow you to quickly rule it out if it’s not one of your go-to setups. You can make a free account and create your own portfolio to track stocks, so you can have a watch list. If you want more tips on how to create a successful watch list, check out this article here.
One of the disadvantages of Finviz is if you are a big intraday day trader, the quotes are delayed 15 minutes so you may miss out on some moves. They do have a paid version for about $25 a month that gives you real-time quotes and access to even more features such as backtesting.
