Best Stock Screeners 2021 – Wall Street Survivor

If you’ve been in the investing game for awhile, chances are you’ve come across the term “stock screener” and are aware of how helpful stock screeners can be for your portfolio.

But in case you haven’t…

Let’s start with a definition.

What Is a Stock Screener?

A stock screener is an investing tool that helps you identify stocks you may want to buy based on certain criteria that you choose.

The criteria can be…

Fundamental factors, such as the quality of the stock’s balance sheet and its earnings per share.Technical indicators, such as previous stock price and trading volume.Social measurements, such as a numerical or categorical rating of the company’s carbon footprint.

… And much more.

A stock screener contains a database that has all of the necessary information available on all of the stocks contained in the database. You select which criteria you want to screen for, and then the stock screener uses its search engine to filter out stocks that don’t meet your criteria and presents you with a list of stocks that do meet the criteria.

This can be a very quick and efficient way to narrow down your search for your next stock to buy!

Figuring out which stock screener is right for you can be a daunting task. But that’s why Wall Street Survivor is here! This list of the Best Stock Screeners in 2021 will help you decide which stock screener is a good fit for you depending on what type of investor you are and how much money you’re willing to spend.

So, without further ado, let’s get down to our list of the Best Stock Screeners!

Best Stock Screener for Fundamental Investors: Stock Rover

Stock Rover lets you create your own custom screens with over 500 screening metrics. You can also choose from over 140 of Stock Rover’s own screeners and even screen ETFs to achieve some more diversification. 

We are huge fans of Stock Rover’s capabilities for fundamental investing, given that it has some of the best research on fundamentals out there.

If you use Stock Rover to help you choose which stocks to buy, you’ll never have to wonder whether you have all the information you need to make an informed investment decision.

When you combine the screening tools with the company’s extremely useful Research Reports, Comparison, and portfolio analysis tools, you have all of the necessary tools for buy-and-hold investing right in front of you.

While Stock Rover does offer charting tools that can be used for short-term trades, we think that the platform’s fundamental analysis is what really makes it shine. 

Stock Rover offers a free plan that will help you get your foot in the door with some limited screening capabilities. But if you want to take your screeners to the next level, you’ll need to sign up for one of the premium plans.

Best Stock Screener for Technical Traders: Trade Ideas

Trade Ideas has made waves in the stock screening space due to its superior machine learning capabilities.

The company harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to bring the world Holly, an AI-powered stock screener. Holly was named after the Holy Grail, which is fitting because she is the holy grail of A.I.-powered stock screening!

There are currently three versions of Holly available: Holly Grail, Holly 2.0, and Holly Neo.

Holly Grail is Trade Ideas’ first iteration of the groundbreaking A.I.

Holly 2.0 was created using the same A.I. engine, but with a more aggressive trading approach.

Holly Neo is Trade Ideas’ newest A.I. product, and they’re currently testing and updating her with an entirely new trading approach.

Trade Ideas offers automated investing with Interactive Brokers, meaning you can use your specified screening preferences to execute trades automatically from your Interactive Brokers account!

A monthly subscription to Trade Ideas will cost you $118 per month for the Standard plan or $228 per month for the Premium plan. A yearly subscription costs $89 per month for the Standard plan or $189 per month for the Premium plan.

Best Stock Screener for Beginners: Finviz

You might know Finviz from their stellar S&P 500 map, which shows you a graphic of the performance of all the companies in the S&P 500 organized by market cap.

But did you know that Finviz also has some awesome screening capabilities that are super easy to pick up as a beginner? 

Finviz, which is short for Financial Visualizations, is known for displaying data to its users in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand.

For example, you can simply hover over a stock’s ticker symbol on FinViz to see a candlestick chart of its performance over the last three months.

These visualizations combined with the easy-to-understand screening factors make Finviz a great screener for beginners.

You don’t have to be a professional trader or an investing genius to understand the different filters on Finviz. You can make your screen as simple as specifying the size of the company you want to invest in, its target price, and what sector it’s in. You can even export your screens for future use!

Finviz’s free version makes it a great option for buy-and-hold investors and some swing traders. While you won’t get stock price information updated in real time, you can use the free screens to make investment decisions in advance.

You don’t even have to register for an account to use the free version of Finviz – you can access it directly on the home page! (However, you’ll get a few more features if you sign up for a free account.)

Finviz Elite costs $39.50 per month for a monthly subscription, or $24.96 per month for a yearly subscription.

Best Free Stock Screener: TradingView

TradingView simply has some of the most advanced screening and charting technology we’ve ever seen.

With a long list of both fundamental and technical factors you can use as screening criteria, you can use TradingView’s screener to find the perfect stocks for your particular taste. 

One of our favorite parts about TradingView is its ability to screen foreign stocks. While other screeners might only connect you to U.S. exchanges, TradingView can perform screens of stocks in over 50 exchanges worldwide. 

While TradingView does offer paid plans, we’ve ranked it as our Best Free Stock Screener due to the fact that you can get free access to some amazing screening tools even with the Basic plan.

Once you’re comfortable with the tools offered through the free membership and you want access to more charts with more metrics and more historical data, we recommend signing up for a premium plan, but you can still put together a phenomenal portfolio through TradingView without paying a dime!

If you do choose to upgrade to a paid subscription on TradingView, you get two months free when you sign up for the annual membership of any level.

Best Stock Screener for Hands-Off Investors: Zacks

Zacks Investment Research has long been one of our favorite stock research platforms due to its high-performing #1 Strong Buy list.

Zacks uses the Zacks Rank system to evaluate stocks on plenty of different factors and assigns them a rank between 1 (Strong Buy) and 5 (Strong Sell). The stocks ranked as #1 Strong Buy have outperformed the market for 26 of the 31 years the list has been used!

But Zacks also has its own screening tools that you can use to evaluate stocks on your own and put together your own portfolio. 

Zacks is ranked as our Best Stock Screener for Hands-Off Investors because its screening system can do most of the work for you using the Zacks Rank system.

Instead of combing through hundreds of stocks using your own criteria, you can simply set up your screen to include stocks that are ranked #1 Strong Buy in Zacks Rank, highly ranked in Zacks Industry Rank, or have high Value, Growth, Momentum, or VGM scores.

If you don’t have the time or the interest in setting up elaborate screens using many different factors, then Zacks’ screening tools are a great fit for you!

You can get access to many of Zacks’ screening capabilities with the Free plan, but if you want to include Zacks Rank factors in your screens, you’ll need a Premium subscription. The Premium plan costs $249 per year.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t signed up for a stock screening platform yet, we recommend that you at least take a look into a free trial. Stock screeners can be a great way to make your investing decisions quicker and more informed, and the screeners mentioned in this list are a great place to start!