Finviz Stock Screener Review 2024: Is Finviz Elite Worth it?

In this Finviz review, you’ll get a hedge fund manager’s honest opinion about the merits and shortcomings of this research platform.

As well as a deep dive into the free plan, you’ll also get a detailed Finviz Elite review, where we’ll compare the tools available in each, and decide whether Finviz Elite is worth it.

Along the way, I’ll teach you how to mimic a famous Guru’s investment strategy, perform top-down industry and sector analysis, as well as pattern recognition and backtesting.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get into it…

Finviz Review Highlights

Finviz Pros

• One of the best free stock screeners
• 67 of the most common fundamental and technical filters
• Strong technical analysis backester with 24 years of data
• Insider trading information & analyst recommendations
• Extensive news coverage for individual stocks
• Access to historical financial statements
• Intuitive data visualization features, including industry heatmaps and performance charts for Forex, Futures & Crypto
• Advanced, intraday charts for Elite members
• 30-day back money guarantee for Elite subscribers

Finviz Cons

• Delayed data for free users
• No mobile app
• Limited number of filters compared to other stock screeners
• Very basic charts in the free plan
• Free edition shows ads

What is Finviz?

Finviz is a stock market research provider that integrates stock screening and data visualization into a simple web-based platform.

Stock screening, news, financial statements, insider trading, analyst recommendations, portfolio tracking, industry heatmaps, and interactive charts, provide you with all the tools you need to find, track, and research stocks.

Elite users can also backtest trading strategies using over 100 different technical chart patterns.

Finviz Pricing

Finviz offers 3 different plans:

• Free
• Registered
• Elite

The first 2 of these are free and offer basic functionality, while the 3rd is a paid plan with more advanced features.

While many stock screeners have similar tiered payment schedules, Finviz is one of the only to offer a “freemium” plan such as this.

Paid members can choose either a monthly or yearly subscription, with annual subscribers enjoying an almost 40% discount compared to monthly users. However, monthly subscribers get a 30-day back money guarantee if they’re not satisfied.

Finviz Free vs Registered

You may be wondering what the point of having 2 different free plans is.

Well, the answer is that registered users enjoy numerous benefits over unregistered users.

Free (Unregistered)

As an unregistered user, or guest, you have access to the following features:

• Basic charts
• Limited stock screener capabilities
• Up to 3 years of financial statements
• Stock quotes
• Heatmaps
• Insider trading data
• Analyst buy and sell recommendations

This is great if you’re looking to run simple screens and gather basic information about stocks on an ad hoc basis.

However, regular users are much better off signing up, for the simple reason that you can save your screens and create a much more personalized experience (for no extra cost).

As an unregistered user, you lose your screener settings and results every time you leave the platform, which means inputting the criteria all over again when you revisit – a super frustrating process.

Free (Registered)

Instead, registered users can create a much more fluid and customized workflow with:

• 50 screener presets
• Up to 50 portfolios (50 stocks per portfolio)
• Personal screener layouts

The ability to save up to 50 screens and portfolios/watchlists removes such a headache as a repeat user.

For the sake of simply providing an email address, this option is a no brainer.

Now, while the free version is great for casual investors, there are a few drawbacks to bear in mind, such as:

• Multiple ads on each page
• Delayed data/quotes up to 20 minutes (15 minutes for Nasdaq, 20 minutes for NYSE & AMEX)
• No backtesting
• No charting tools or annotations

While the ads are bit of a nuisance, they don’t exactly clog up your screen. Besides, you can hardly blame Finviz for including them. Many companies monetize free services in the exact same way.

Finviz Elite vs Free Version

Ok, now we’ve got our heads around the free plan, how does Finviz Elite stack up against it?

As mentioned, Finviz Elite is the paid version of Finviz, which brings many luxuries not afforded to free users.

These include:

• 200 screener presets
• Advanced screener with custom filters and data export
• Interactive charts & technical indicators
• Real-time data
• Premarket data from 8:00AM EST and aftermarket data
• Up to 8 years of financial statements
• Up to 100 portfolios (100 stocks per portfolio)
• Backtesting with 24 years of historical data
• Email alerts
• Correlation Analysis
• No Ads

As you can see, Finviz Elite has a lot more tools at its disposal for serious traders and investors.

Finviz Features

Ok, now we know a bit about Finviz and its different payment plans, it’s time for a deep dive into its features.

Let’s go…

Finviz Stock Screener Review

Finviz is best known for its versatile stock screener, so let’s start there!

The Finviz stock screener caters for 67 fundamental and technical filters across more than 8300 major stocks and ETFs in the US stock market, including foreign-listed ADRs.

In addition, there are 33 trading “signals” that you can complement your screens with and narrow your focus even further.

The stock screener criteria are divided into 3 groups:

• Descriptive: General information regarding a stock’s exchange, industry, market cap, country, float, etc.
  
  
  
  
• Fundamental: Metrics that capture a company’s growth, valuation, profitability, and ownership structure.
  
  
  
  
• Technical: Screen across a variety of price indicators, including moving averages, gaps, new highs/lows, 28 chart patterns, and 11 candlestick patterns.
  
  

Alternatively, you can display all of the criteria in one screen by selecting the “All” tab.

Very few stock screeners include such a broad range of fundamental and technical criteria. Usually they specialize in either one or the other, which makes Finviz unique in terms of its diversity. As such, it’s a great choice for traders employing both fundamental and technical analysis.

Having said that, you’ll find that “specialist” stock screeners include much more indicators for their particular niche (fundamental or technical).

For example, fundamental-biased screeners such as Portfolio 123 and Stock Rover provide more than 450 and 650 indicators, respectively. Similarly, technical-leaning stock screeners such as TC2000 and MetaStock have over 100 and 150 technical indicators, respectively.

As such, you can think of Finviz as a “Jack of all trades, master of none” type platform. Again, great if you’re looking for a well-rounded platform for both fundamental and technical screening. Another great “all-round” stock screener is ChartMill, which you should definitely check out if you like Finviz.

How to Use Finviz Stock Screener

I always find that the best way to showcase a stock screener is with a demonstration. So that’s what I’m going to do…

In particular, I’ll show you how to run a basic Peter Lynch screen, and explain some cool features along the way.

Firstly, here is the stock screener criteria:

• EPS Growth > 20%
• PEG Ratio < 2
• LT Debt/Equity < 0.5
• Current Ratio > 1
• Institutional Ownership < 80%
• Insider transactions positive over last 6 months

And here is what that looks like in Finviz…

I have labelled some of the key features you need to be aware of:

1. This is where you save and edit your screens – up to 50 for registered users, and 200 for Elite members.
2. Sort your screen results according to 80+ different fundamental and technical metrics. For example, display stocks with the highest EPS growth forecasts at the top of the list.
3. Finesse your screens further with any one of 33 “trading signals” including: New Highs, Overbought, Insider Trading, Analyst Upgrades, or chart patterns like Head & Shoulders.
4. Choose any one of 15 template variations to format your stock screener results in.
5. Save your screen results as a portfolio (Registered and Elite users), create email alerts based on your screening criteria (Elite), and have your screen results update every 3 minutes (all users).

Finviz Candlestick & Pattern Recognition

I couldn’t finish this Finviz stock screener review without mentioning one of its best features. And that’s its candlestick and pattern recognition screening.

Firstly, there are 28 different chart patterns that Finviz can screen for, including:

• Support & resistance lines
• Channels (ascending, descending)
• Wedges (bullish, bearish)
• Triangles (ascending, descending)
• Double tops & bottoms
• Head & shoulders (bullish, bearish)

If you’re unfamiliar with these, I suggest reading how to find breakout stocks as a useful primer.

You can also screen for 11 candlestick patterns, including:

• Shadows
• Hammers
• Dojis
• Spinning Tops

And more…

For example, if I wanted to find stocks with an inverse (bullish) head & shoulders pattern, I would simply select “Head & Shoulders Inverse” from the “Pattern” drop-down menu. This immediately alerts me to stocks building bullish head & shoulders formations.

One of the great things about Finviz, is the ability to view your screener results in multiple formats. As mentioned above, there are 15 of these templates, with each tailored to a certain type of screen.

Unsurprisingly, the best way to view any technical screen is via the “Chart” or “TA” (technical analysis) formats. This way you can quickly scan your eyes over each stock’s chart, and efficiently find the price action you’re looking for.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see how the results from my Head & Shoulders screen are all displayed as charts. What’s more, Finviz overlays automated support and resistance levels and “L”, “H”, “R” labels so you can see the pattern more clearly. This screen also works quite well to find cup and handle patterns.

Considering Finviz isn’t an all-out technical analysis platform, I was seriously impressed with its pattern recognition capabilities. I would highly recommend anyone interested in technical analysis to go check it out. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as you can go with charts as a free user, which I will get into more detail below.

If you want to take automated chart pattern recognition to the next level, TrendSpider’s AI algorithms will blow your mind.

Finviz Elite Stock Screener Review

Now, everything mentioned so far is possible with the free version of Finviz. And as you can see, it’s a pretty neat research tool considering it costs nothing. In fact, it gets my vote as the best free TradingView alternative.

However, you may be asking what extra features Finviz Elite has to offer.

Let’s see, shall we?…

Ok, the first major difference is the fact that you can customize pretty much all of the screening criteria. Whereas the free version only gives you a handful of loosely-defined options for each filter, such as “above 30”, Finviz Elite allows you to specify your own ranges and thresholds – giving you much more control over your screens.

I have highlighted this in the screenshot below to show you what I mean, as well as some of the other features included in Finviz Elite.

1. You can use Finviz Elite as a pre market scanner from 8:00 am EST.
2. By clicking “Custom” in the drop-down menu, you can select multiple exchanges, sectors, industries, countries, chart patterns, and candlestick patterns, instead of just 1 with the free plan.
3. For the numerical criteria, the “Custom” option allows you to specify your own ranges rather than having to use the broad preset options in the drop-down menu.
4. Save up to 100 portfolios (max 100 stocks each), create email alerts for stocks meeting your criteria, and refresh results every 10 seconds or 1 minute if you wish to.
5. Export data into a CSV file for further analysis.

In summary, the Finviz Elite stock screener allows you to be much more specific with your screening criteria, create a broader range of watchlists, and export data.

Furthermore, the ability to update your screener results every 10 seconds means you get trading signals almost in real-time. As such, you could use Finviz as a stock scanner if you wanted to, however I prefer Scanz and Trade Ideas for this.

Still, this flexibility is appealing if you implement both swing trading and day trading styles.

Finviz Charts

In the next part of this Finviz review, we’ll cover the stock charts and technical analysis features.

Firstly, the free version of Finviz offers very limited charting possibilities:

• Basic candlestick & line charts
• 20, 50, and 200-day simple moving averages
• Volume bars
• Daily, weekly, or monthly time frames
• Automated trend lines

While these features are pretty bare-bone to begin with, the real disappointment comes when you realize there’s no option to customize anything, or add any other indicators and line studies. You can’t even zoom in, or view the chart as a full screen.

Having said that, I will say that the automated trend lines are surprisingly accurate and very useful if your eyes aren’t “trained” to spot chart patterns yet.

Finviz Elite Charts

Thankfully, Finviz Elite makes up for the shortcomings in the free plan with:

• Intraday charts (1, 3, 5, 30, or 60 minutes)
• Extended hours (pre and post-market)
• 5 Chart Types (candle, line, OHLC, Heikin Ashi, hollow candle)
• Advanced charts with 11 overlays & 19 technical studies
• 15+ drawing tools

If you’re new to technical analysis, these articles show you how to use the MACD effectively, and how to find oversold stocks with improving RSI.

While Elite subscribers certainly have more charting tools at their disposal, like most things in Finviz, they only scratch the surface. Yes, the average trader will have most of his charting needs met with Finviz Elite. However, more serious traders looking to run complex trading strategies, will be frustrated with its “no-frills” features.

Also, the user experience could be smoother in my opinion. Changing any of the indicators or overlays requires opening a separate settings window, inputting your new preferences, and then saving. What ever happened to a simple “right-click” or “drag-and-drop”?

All in all, the charts in Finviz Elite, while basic, will cater to most peoples’ needs. However, there are definitely better charting platforms out there, such as MetaStock.

Finviz Backtesting Review

A Finviz Elite review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning its backtesting feature.

Have you ever wondered if a trading strategy would’ve made you lots of money in the past? Well, backtesting allows you to answer that exact question.

With over 24 years of historical data, Finviz Elite provides one of the longest backtesting periods that I’ve come across. This is vital for building robust trading systems that stand the test of time.

Unfortunately, the backtester excludes fundamental criteria, so you can only backtest technical trading strategies. If you want to see examples of fundamental backtesting, check out my free cash flow yield backtest and earnings revisions backtest.

However, all is not lost, because Finviz has more than 100 technical indicators and chart patterns for you to experiment with – more than enough to get your teeth into. The screenshot below shows just a small snippet of these.

Every backtest requires some user-defined assumptions before you start:

• Stock Universe: Apply backtest to S&P 500, Russell 1000, Russell 2000, or Russell 3000 stocks. Or, alternatively, enter a list of hand-picked stocks into the “Tickers” box
• Minimum daily USD volume: Exclude stocks below this threshold
• Sample period: Define the start and end date of the backtest
• Transaction cost: The cost (%) to execute each trade

Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to build your trading strategy.

The trading rules are built with a series of drop-down menus, where you select the indicators, parameters, and conditions for triggering a buy or sell order. It’s so intuitive that even beginners can use it. Of course, this applies to both long and short strategies.

I particularly like how flexible the exit rules are. In addition to using indicators, you can also use time limits or stop-loss limits for exiting trades. This lets you simulate realistic trading scenarios and incorporate risk management constraints.

What’s helpful, is that Finviz already includes a handful of preset backtests with some impressive track records (see chart below). Needless to say, this is great way to source new ideas for your stock screens if you’re struggling for inspiration.

When your backtest is complete, you can analyse its performance with a number of statistics, as shown in the image below. While they cover most of the key information, it would be nice to have a bit more detail, such as win/loss ratios or average profit per trade.

In addition, you can see a return table that breaks down each month’s performance for the entirety of the backtest.

The only thing I dislike about the backtesting feature, is not being able to drill down into individual trades. Unfortunately, Finviz doesn’t let you see any of the trade executions in your backtest, which means you can’t see what stocks were traded, and when. It’s hard to understand a trading strategy without this information.

Financial Data

Moving on to the next part of this Finviz review, you’ll see what financial data is provided for stocks.

Ultimately, backtesting and stock screening can only take us so far. Once we’ve backtested a promising strategy and screened for stocks based on its criteria, we still need to conduct some further analysis.

Luckily, Finviz provides access to 3 years/quarters of financial statements for free users and 8 years/quarters for Elite members.

This includes:

• Income Statement
• Balance Sheet
• Cash Flow Statement

In addition, you get a snapshot of the key metrics and financial ratios for each stock, ranging from:

• EPS forecasts
• Return on Equity (ROE)
• Valuation Metrics (P/E, P/B, Dividend yield, etc.)
• Margins
• Number of employees

Elite users also get a visual representation of how EPS, sales, and shares outstanding have trended over the last few years.

TradingView is the only other platform I can think of that offers such in-depth financial data alongside its core technical analysis capabilities. Read my Finviz vs TradingView analysis for a closer look at how these 2 platforms stack up against each other.

News

While quantitative analysis is essential for gauging the financial strength of a business, qualitative analysis helps us assess the more nuanced aspects of a business.

Both are equally as important when deciding whether to pull the trigger or not, so a good research tool should facilitate both.

Thankfully, the news aggregation in Finviz is a blessing when it comes to qualitative analysis.

By entering a stock’s ticker, you will find an extensive news feed of recent articles from some of the most reputable sources in the financial industry, such as:

• Motley Fool
• The Wall Street Journal
• Bloomberg
• Reuters
• Yahoo Finance

And more…

What’s more, Finviz will alert you to any news regarding the stocks in your portfolio, which helps you stay on top of market moving events.

One thing to bear in mind, however, is that some of the news is delayed and/or behind a paywall.

Analyst Recommendations

Still on the fence about whether to buy a stock? Perhaps you’d like a second opinion from the professionals?

Well, Finviz has you covered here.

Finviz shows ratings from a broad range of analysts, including:

• Recent upgrades or downgrades
• The bank they work for
• Buy, sell, or neutral rating
• And their price target

Whether you use analyst ratings as a leading or contrarian indicator, the information is all here for you.

Insider Trading

Most investors like to see insiders (management, employees, etc.) own a large chunk of the business. The theory being that they’re likely to exert more effort and make better business decisions when it’s their own money at stake.

This provides comfort to investors, as they feel like they’re investing alongside management as partners, rather than as an outside interest.

Knowing this, Finviz provides insider trading data for each company, allowing users to track recent insider buying or selling.

Finviz Heatmaps Review

The Heatmaps in Finviz are one of their core data visualization features. Essentially, they give you a top-down view of the world’s major stocks and ETFs on one page, so that you can find trading opportunities easily.

Stocks are colour-coded based on a metric of your choice and neatly categorized into industries and sectors. Red stocks rate poorly on the chosen variable, while green stocks rank highly.

Here are some of the 19 metrics you can rank stocks by:

• Stock price performance (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, year to date)
• Relative volume
• Valuation metrics (P/E, P/S, PEG, P/D, Div Yield)
• Float short
• 5-year earnings growth

As you can see, this is great way to get a bird’s eye view of the entire stock market and quickly see where the value and momentum is – both within and across countries, industries, and sectors. If you like this feature, then you should read my Koyfin review next. This platform takes data visualization and market dashboards to the next level.

Finviz Groups Review

Another cool data visualization tool in Finviz is “Groups”.

Groups give you an alternative way to perform top-down industry and sector analysis. Again, this generally centers around their relative value and momentum.

For instance, you can see tables summarizing their key valuation and performance metrics.

Alternatively, you can see bar charts that show the relative performance of each sector over multiple time frames.

Lastly, you can view individual charts for each sector.

From there, you can drill down into stocks belonging to the most promising industries or sectors.

Futures

If you want to quickly see quotes, charts, and performance data for the world’s leading futures markets, then head over to the “Futures” tab.

This will tell which commodities, bonds, and equity indices are performing the best over different time frames.

Elite members can even perform technical analysis on obscure instruments like Live Cattle.

Forex

The Forex tab is exactly the same as the Futures tab, except it’s for currencies. Finviz has data on 9 of the major currency pairs, including:

• EUR
• GBP
• JPY
• AUD
• CHF
• NZD
• CAD

Cryptocurrency

Finviz also includes heatmaps for cryptocurrencies, however it only covers 14 pairs across 4 coins:

• Bitcoin (BTC)
• Ethereum (ETH)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Ripple (XRP)

Having said that, it’s a great place to perform technical analysis for the major coins.

Finviz Portfolio Review

The “Portfolio” tab allows you to create a list of stocks either manually, or automatically from your screener results.

For example, let’s say I want to create a portfolio from a CANSLIM screen. All I have to do is click “save as portfolio” above the screener results.

Then, you’re taken to a new screen where you can select the number of shares, the purchase date, and also add in any other stocks.

Personally, I just press the “Recalculate equally weighted $100k portfolio” to keep things simple.

When you click “Save Changes”, your portfolio goes live.

From there, you can monitor stocks, set up email alerts (Elite), and receive any aggregated news.

That’s about it, though.

There’s no portfolio analytics like performance attribution, tracking error, or sharpe ratio. As such, calling it a portfolio is slightly misleading in my view. Instead, it’s more akin to a simple watchlist.

If dedicated portfolio tracking is what you’re after, check out my Ziggma review for a detailed look at one of the best free portfolio management platforms on the market.

Correlation Analysis

Finviz Elite subscribers can make use of its proprietary correlation algorithms to find pairs trades.

As you can see in the image below, each stock has a list of positively and negatively correlated stocks underneath its chart.

To create a pairs trade, you can either:

1. Go long 1 stock, and short another positively correlated stock
2. Or, long 2 negatively correlated stocks

Both of these strategies help hedge your main long position and smooth out returns.

Finviz Elite has neat comparison charts so you can see these correlations in action.

Finviz Alerts Review

As mentioned earlier, Finviz Elite members can create email alerts for stocks in any of their portfolios, including:

• Price alerts
• News events
• Insider buying or selling
• Ratings changes (upgrades or downgrades)

This is great if you want to stay up to date with events, but don’t have time to constantly monitor markets.

Finviz Elite Review

So, at the end of this Finviz Elite review, you’re probably wondering what my conclusion is.

In short, the main reasons to upgrade are as follows:

• Real-time data with extended hours
• Advanced charting tools
• Robust backtesting
• Custom stock screener settings

For me, the first 3 of these hold much more weight than the last – which only brings marginal benefits in my view.

Since these will appeal to more active, technical-driven traders, this is the type of trader I would recommend Finviz Elite for. The ability to screen for stocks in the premarket may also appeal to day traders looking for a cheaper alternative to stock scanners like Trade Ideas and Scanz.

FAQs

Finviz Review Summary

This Finviz review covered everything you need to know about this research platform.

From the stock screener, heatmaps, and pattern recognition in the free plan, to the advanced charts, backtester, and real-time data in the Elite plan.

Moreover, Finviz manages to pack these tools into a simple web-based platform, including important financial data, news coverage, and intuitive data visualization tools – giving you everything you need to create a smooth investment workflow all in one place.

It’s no wonder then, that Finviz remains one of the most popular research platforms for institutional and retail investors alike.

If you want to take your fundamental and technical analysis to the next level – just like so many others – then try out Finviz for free below.