Software comparison – which is the best? In this article we introduce finviz.
finviz is short for financial visualizations and is a platform at www.finviz.com that makes market information easily accessible and presents it in the form of snapshots. It provides a quick overview of markets and lets you find interesting trading ideas for stocks, forex, and futures. The platform is free but also includes a paid version for 39.50 USD a month.
The following article introduces the different features of the finviz website.
Table of Contents
The finviz homepage – a good overview
The finviz website has the following structure:
The finviz homepage provides an excellent overview of the US stock market, as you can see above.
If you move your mouse over one of the ticker symbols, a daily chart pops up. This is one of finviz’s most attractive features as it gives you a quick overview of stocks and markets. You can find it on all the pages of the website.
Use the search function
There is a search window at the top of the pages that you can use to search for any stock.
Enter the ticker symbol, the company name, or any another search term and the desired results will appear instantly.
You can also search in company profiles. For example, you can display all of that companies that have the word “gold” in their profiles.
You can then transfer the stocks in the search results to the stock screener and filter them according to additional economic and technical criteria.
The menu bar at the top of the page shows all the sections of the website. Below it you see intraday charts of the three major US stock indexes (Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P 500), together with performance, current price, and relative volume (current volume relative to average three-month volume).
Technical and fundamental signals for US stocks
The next bar presents interesting information on the stocks listed on the three US markets NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX:
- How many stocks are advancing/declining.
- How many stocks have reached a new 52-week high/52-week low.
- How many stocks are currently trading above or below their SMA50.
- How many stocks are currently trading above or below their SMA200.
There is also bull/bear survey that forecasts where the S&P 500 will be trading in the next five minutes. Since everyone can participate, the survey provides a measure of S&P 500 sentiment among finviz users.
Below this bar you see a list of ticker symbols indicating the last price, the percentage change, and the volume traded. It also features various signals, including:
- The six top gainers and losers
- Four stocks that have reached a 52-week high and four reaching a 52-week low.
- Two stocks in overbought and two in oversold territory. This signal is calculated using the RSI (14) indicator and is useful for identifying stocks with extreme price increases or declines over the last two weeks.
- Four stocks with unusually high daily trading volume compared to average daily trading volume.
- Two stocks with the highest volatility.
- Two stocks with the highest trading volume of the day.
- One stock with an upgrade, one with a downgrade.
- One company reporting earnings before market open (BMO) and one after market close (AMC).
- One stock with insider buying and one with insider selling.
The list provides a quick overview of the stocks that are “on the move” on a given day and that you should place on your watchlist. If you hover over the ticker symbol, the daily chart pops up, allowing you to decide very quickly which stocks are interesting for you.
Under this is a table of technical signals.
- Four stocks that are currently close to the upper/lower trendline.
- Four stocks close to support/resistance.
- Four stocks forming a wedge, a rising wedge, or a falling wedge.
- Four stocks forming a rising or falling triangle.
- Four stocks in a channel, a rising channel, or a falling channel.
- Four stocks forming a double top, a multiple top, a double bottom, or a multiple bottom.
- Four stocks with a head and shoulders pattern.
Below these signals is a list of five news items including source, time of release, and headline. If you hover over the news item, further information is displayed in a pop-up.
Next there is an overview of the most important economic data, including time of release, title, impact on the market, and the relevant time period. In addition, you can see the current numbers (if already published), expectations (if available), and prior numbers.
The box under the economic data displays the latest insider trading (six items), including ticker symbol, the name and position of the insider, the date and type of transaction, the stock price, the number of shares, and the transaction value.
The last element on the left-hand side of the homepage is a table showing the most important futures with current price and daily change.
In the upper right corner, you see a map of all the stocks in the S&P 500 sorted by industry and sector. The size of the individual “stock” box represents market capitalization. In other words, the larger the box, the larger the market capitalization.
Below this is a short list of the stocks impacted by important news of the day and the percentage price change.
The next box shows which companies are reporting earnings over the next few days, both BMO and AMC.
A list of top insider purchases and sales over the last few days can be found in the box below this.
Finally, there is a list of forex currency pairs and bonds with their current price level and change from the previous day.
News
finviz provides an excellent overview of current news from the most important sources and the most popular blogs.
Sources include:
Bloomberg, Reuters, MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN Money, BBC.
The blogs include:
Trader Feed, Zero Hedge, The Big Picture, Howard Lindzon, Mish´s Global Economic Trend Analysis, Seeking Alpha, Daily Reckoning, Afraid to Trade, market folly, The Disciplined Investor, Market Realist, 10Q Detective, Vantage Point Trading, Fallond Stock Picks, Abnormal Returns, Calculated Risk, Stock Trading To Go.
You can sort the news by source and time.
The stock screener – tremendous!
The screener is finviz’s flagship feature.
You can filter stocks according to different criteria.
There are general, fundamental, and technical filter criteria.
General filter criteria
The general filter criteria include stock exchange, market capitalization, earnings date, target price, index, dividend yield, average volume, IPO date, sector, float short, relative volume, industry, analyst recommendations, current volume, country, option/short, price.
Fundamental filter criteria
The fundamental filter criteria are P/E, price/cash, EPS growth over the next five years, return on equity (ROE), debt/equity, insider ownership, forward P/E, price/free cash flow, sales growth over the next five years, ROI, gross margin, insider transactions, PEG, EPS growth this year, EPS growth quarter over quarter, current ratio, operating margin, institutional ownership, P/S, EPS growth next year, sales growth quarter over quarter, quick ratio, net profit margin, institutional transactions, P/B ratio, EPS growth over the last five years, return on assets (ROA), payout ratio.
Technical filter criteria
The technical filter criteria include performance, 20-day simple moving average, 20-day high/low, beta, performance 2, 50-day simple moving average, 50-day high/low, average true range, volatility, 200-day simple moving average, 52-week high/low, RSI (14), chart patterns (a total of 28, more in the Elite version), gap, change since opening, candlestick formations (11 formations, more in the Elite version).
As you can see, the stock screener offers a large number of filtering criteria. You can combine them any way you like, making the screener a powerful tool for finding high-quality stocks and trading chances.
You can also save the screens and use templates to display screens.
The templates are based on the following categories: Overview, Valuation, Financial, Ownership, Performance, Technical, Charts, Tickers, Basic, TA, News, Snapshot, Stats.
Here is a sample snapshot that provides all the most important information on a stock. finviz automatically draws trendlines and other charting features. This means the snapshots give you a chart, key fundamental data, news, and company profiles at a glance.
We highly recommend the stock screener, which displays the most interesting results from a universe of 7,030 US equities.
Maps
“Maps” is another finviz tool. It provides an overview of markets, with the individual stocks sorted and visually represented according to selected filter criteria.
The map of the S&P 500 provides an overview of all of the stocks in the S&P 500, grouped by industry and sector. The size of the boxes reflects the market capitalization of the companies.
Instead of the S&P 500 filter, you can select “World,” “Full,” or “Exchange Traded Funds.”
- Using the World filter, you get an overview of all foreign ADRs listed on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX. These are grouped by country of origin.
- The Full filter is a list of all US stocks listed on the US stock exchanges, once again grouped by industry and sector.
- The Exchange Traded Funds filter displays ETFs grouped by sector and type. Here the size of the box reflects the average volume in USD over the last three months.
The stocks, ADRs, and ETFs are marked in color according to the filter criterion selected.
In addition to the general filters (S&P 500, World, Full, ETF), you can choose a variety of other filters when displaying a map. The colors of the boxes reflect the filter criteria.
For shares and ADRs, the following criteria can be selected:
1-day performance, 1-week performance, 1-month performance, 3-month performance, 6-month performance, 1-year performance, year-to-date performance, relative volume, P/E, forward P/E, PEG, P/S, P/B, dividend yield, EPS growth over the last 5 years, float short, analyst recommendations, earnings day performance, earnings date.
As is only logical, ETFs can be filtered by performance and relative volume only (1-day performance, 1-week performance, 1-month performance, 3-month performance, 6-month performance, 1-year performance, year-to-date performance, relative volume).
This sample map shows all of the stocks in the S&P 500 grouped by industry and sector, with analyst recommendations highlighted in color (light green = strong buy, dark green = buy, no color = hold, dark red = sell, light red = strong sell).
The maps are a very useful tool that I frequently use myself.
Groups
Groups works the same way as Maps, but the visualization is different.
As the name suggests, this tool displays a wide variety of groups (industries, capitalization, countries in which US stocks are listed).
You can also display each group according to different criteria, and these are almost the same as in Maps.
The templates are very similar to those in Maps.
Portfolio
In this section you can create a sample portfolio, as on other financial websites.
This feature is included in the free version, but registration is necessary.
Insider
The Insider section provides an overview of all insider transactions.
You see the stock, the owner, the owner’s relationship to the company, the date, the type of transaction, the stock price, the number of shares, the total value of the transaction, as well as the total number of shares the owner has bought or sold so far.
There is also a direct link to SEC Form 4.
In addition to current insider transactions, you can display the top insider transactions over the last week, as well as the transactions by people who own at least 10% of the company. You can also filter these transactions according to buy and sell transactions.
Futures & forex
This tool provides you with an excellent overview of the futures and forex markets.
The futures section presents charts for all futures markets. In addition, it displays price quotes and daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-year, and one-year performance.
The time frames for the charts are five minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.
Futures prices are delayed by 20 minutes, but that’s enough to get an overview.
All futures traders know that real-time prices for futures can be expensive.
Here you get a free alternative with high-quality futures charts and price quotes.
In addition to traditional stock index futures, you can display charts for energy futures such as oil and gas, as well as for agricultural commodity futures (softs) such as orange juice and coffee.
Additional markets include bonds, metals, meat, grains, and currencies.
The same overview is available for the forex market.
It includes the currency pairs EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, Gold, NZD/USD, EUR/GBP, GBP/JPY und BTC/USD (bitcoin in US dollars).
This section gives you a good idea of how different currencies correlate and which currency pairs are currently interesting. You can also see which currency is currently showing strength or weakness.
You can display all of the data in the performance table to price developments in different timeframes.
Backtests
The backtesting tool is only available in the paid version. With it, you can backtest more than 100 technical indicators.
The tool draws on 16 years of data.
In addition, you can make performance comparisons to the S&P as a benchmark.
It’s easy to create and run a backtest, but the testing is limited to indicators.
The tool is okay but doesn’t add much value for me, as I don’t set much store by trading strategies based solely on technical indicators.
Account types and prices
You don’t even need to register to use most of the tools.
But you do need to register to create a portfolio or save screens, etc. Registration itself is free.
“Finviz Elite,” which is the paid version, costs 39.50 USD a month. This price is reduced to 24.96 USD a month if you make a yearly payment of 299.50 USD.
There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The paid version includes both real-time and premarket quotes. (Quotes in the free version are delayed by 15 minutes for the NASDAQ and 20 minutes for the NYSE and AMEX.)
In the paid version, you also get a more comprehensive charting package with the option to use intraday charts, indicators, drawing tools, and performance comparisons.
In addition to backtests, you can the display correlating stocks in order to diversify risk, find alternatives to current positions, and better manage portfolio risk.
There are also additional options for the stock screener: data exports, more comprehensive charts, individual filters, and a statistical overview.
Finally, with the paid version, you can receive notifications by email, including special news items, ratings, prices (alarm feature), and new stocks that meet specific screener criteria.
Another benefit: the entire finviz site is then ad-free.
Here’s a good graphic summarizing the advantages of the paid version:
Summary: the finviz stock screener and charting tool
finviz is an excellent resource for finding interesting US stocks.
The stock screener is the site’s best tool and I highly recommend it.
The paid version also offers good value for your money.
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