I’ve gone through every aspect of the Finviz stock screener in this review. I’ll show you the basics of the free version, my deep dive into Finviz Elite and then I’ll give you my best scanner settings that I’ve refined over the years of trading.
What is Finviz?
Finviz, which means “financial visualizations”, is one of the top stock screening platforms I’ve used. Whether you go with the free version or the Elite subscription you’re getting a powerful tool. I remember when Juraj Duris launched it in June 2007 and it’s amazing to see how it’s grown to 25.3 million users a month.
Features
In my years of trading I’ve found that while Finviz’s interface is simple at first glance, the real power is beneath the surface. Don’t let the clean design fool you, I’ve found it has way more functionality than most users realize during their first use.
Stock Symbol Search
When you type “AAPL” in the top left search box you’ll see your results immediately and they’ll be divided into three main categories. In the upper left corner, you’ll find three options: you can publish a chart, add the stock to your portfolio, or set up an alert. You can use the chart publishing feature for free, but you’ll need to create a free Finviz account to save stocks to your portfolio. If you want to use the alert feature you’ll need to upgrade to Finviz Elite. Your free charts will display daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes but please note that prices are delayed.
News
Find the latest news and market insights in the newsfeed, sorted by time or – if you choose – by source. Track information from reputable outlets like Bloomberg, CNN, MarketWatch, and many more. As a trader, you’ll also get top financial blogs in your feed.
Stock Screener
The Finviz stock screener is about 90% of the value of the platform. The other features are nice to have but the screener is the real gem. With Elite you get advanced charting and more granular control over the screening parameters such as specific market cap ranges and P/E ratio intervals. These will help you with your market analysis.
For serious data analysis, you should consider using MS Excel as your primary tool. By exporting daily data you can build your market database – an alternative to the Yahoo Finance API. This will allow you to build a solid dataset and make timely investment decisions based on your analysis.
Finviz Heat Maps
You’ll find the Finviz heat maps super useful as you watch the markets move. When you open this feature you’ll be presented with color-coded visualizations of price action. Your screen will fill with blocks where green means up and red means down. The size of the block tells you the stock’s market weight.
As you navigate the heat maps you can toggle between the S&P500, global equities, sector (e.g. Technology or Financials), and ETFs. This will give you a quick glance at where money is moving across different areas of the market.
Insider
Insider trades are listed from newest to oldest, by date filed with the SEC. As you browse these filings you can sort and filter to suit your trading strategy. Want to see who’s trading now? Filter by Latest Insider Trading. Need to see what’s happened in the last week? Filter by Top Insider Trading Recent Week. Following institutional money? Filter by Top 10% Owner Trading Recent Week. Each view lets you see buys and sells to match your investment style.
Futures
When you go to “Futures” you’ll see a color coded mosaic of tiles that give you real-time market info. Your view is all futures trading, tiles respond to your cursor – hover to see charts or click to go deeper into Finviz’s analytics.
You’ll see everything from commodities to bonds, metals to currencies, and green or red tiles show you the day’s gains or losses. The big bold price displays grab your attention, flanked by the day’s highs and lows.
Finviz Elite
Finviz Elite has everything and here’s what you need to know about this premium subscription from Finviz.
You get access to real-time feeds through Elite’s pre-market sessions. When you are trading in these early hours you can drill down to 1-minute intervals, but tick data is not included.
Your subscription gives you the full suite of Elite features including enhanced charting tools, expanded technical analysis, backtesting, and correlation between securities. Before you sign up to the platform you will want to know what features and pricing so we will go into that in detail.
The real-time data feed is what sets Elite apart from basic subscriptions. As you watch the markets you are getting continuous updates and your pre-market analysis gets minute-by-minute granularity – perfect for building your early morning trading plan.
Advanced Charts and Technical Studies
Paid subscribers get advanced charting features. You’ll get intraday charts, indicator overlays, drawing tools, and performance comparisons.
Note the free version has limitations – no interactive charts or performance charts. When you upgrade you’ll see the interactive charting interface has timeframe options from 1 minute to monthly. The drawing tool has trendlines Fibonacci retracements and full-screen mode for more detail.
Backtest Modul
Not as fancy as Trade Ideas but Finviz Elite’s backtesting is pretty cool. Getting started is easy – just click “create your first backtest” through the UI. You’ll love how fast you can set up a backtest through the point and click process. You can get very detailed – transaction costs, multiple entry and exit conditions, stop loss levels, time based exits. Long or short positions – you’re covered.
When you create your strategy you’ll have access to a ton of technical indicators and chart patterns for entry and exit. The backtest itself is fast – click “run backtest” and you’ll get your results in seconds. First up will be a visual of the key metrics.
Advanced Screener Functionalities
You will be surprised at what Finviz Elite can do beyond the free version. When you upgrade to Elite you are unlocking a whole host of advanced tools that blow the basic screener out of the water. Your Elite subscription gives you access to full stats, advanced charting, and more filters. You may not use every stat daily but these are invaluable for your deep dive value analysis and long term investment strategies.
What you will find most amazing is the export function. Imagine you have fine tuned your perfect screener and with one click of that export link in the bottom right corner every data point is yours to download and analyze. No more manual data entry or time consuming copy paste operations – you have the whole dataset at your fingertips.
Costs
When you sign up for a free account you get more features but to get the full power of Finviz you need to upgrade to Finviz Elite. For your Finviz Elite subscription, you have 2 payment options: you can pay $39.50 monthly or the smarter way with an annual commitment of $299.50. By choosing the annual plan you save $174.50 compared to paying month by month. You are also protected by a 30 day money back guarantee – if the Elite features don’t meet your trading needs within the first 30 days you get a full refund of your money.
My Conclusion
Finviz presents market data in a beautiful way through their charts, maps, graphs, and lists. You will love how each of their tools has lots of functionality but is super easy to use. When it comes to stock screening platforms you will find Finviz is the one your fellow investors use, with a free version and their premium Finviz Elite subscription.
Finviz Ratings:
- Stock Screener: ★★★★
- Charts: ★★★★
- Ease of Use: ★★★★★
- Customer Service: ★★★★
- Overall Rating: ★★★★★