The Web’s Best Stock Screens: Looking for the next winning investment

by Zack Miller on February 9, 2010

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Stock screens allow investors to sort through lots of different stocks in search for only the ones that fit certain criteria.  Investors looking for the next stock pick for their portfolios can use basic screening tools, available at both Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance. MSN recently retired its highly-regarded stock screening tools, leaving what’s freely available somewhat lacking.

Screening 2.0, something I like to discuss on the site, provides the same outcomes but incorporates more algorithmic know-how, some artificial intelligence (how do you deal with an infinite P/E one year?), better ability to backtest results, and preset criteria to match results of the world’s best investors.

I decided to piece together a list of some of the Internet’s best free and premium stock screening resources.

So, here goes:

General Investing

  • Validea: One of my favorites and started by author of The Guru Investor, John Reese.  Validea is a premium service that tracks screens preconfigured with the investing criteria of history’s greatest investors, like Buffett, Graham, Peter Lynch, Ken Fisher, and more.
  • Finviz: Lots of stuff going on here. IMO, the most powerful, free screener available.  With fewer preset screens, Finviz is for more advanced investors who have specific criteria they look for in stocks.  A whole lotta descriptive, fundamental, and technical ways to sort for new ideas.
  • Manual of Ideas: Mentioned in my post from last week, Top 6 Ideas for Piggyback Investing, MOI has both free and premium screens like 10×45 Bargain Hunter, European Value Report, Equities and Tobin’s Q.  These screens come in form of subscription newsletters (again, some free, some premium) with more analysis included beyond the output of the stock screens.
  • AAII Screens: Blown away by how many screens the American Association of Individual Investors has on its website (you have to join AAII to access these screens).  You can find growth and value screens with preset parameters (like IBD Stable 70 and CAN SLIM) as well as guru screens that look for specific investment criteria established by famed investors like Graham, Buffett, Dreman, Lynch, Zweig, etc.
  • Zacks: Nice combination of some free screens (Earnings & Margins, Growth and Income) and premium screens (Zacks Rank 1)
  • CNBC: lets users save custom made screens and also has a few prepackaged screens for free
  • The Kirk Report: Couldn’t be remiss in mentioning the great screens Kirk puts together for subscribers to his service.  He calls his screens, the Stock Screen Machine.
  • The Motley Fool’s CAPS: Nifty free screener that incorporates the community’s CAPS ratings into the screens. Allows users to download results to spreadsheets.

Value Investing

  • Old School Value: Nice site with numerous free screeners for all kinds of value investing
  • MagicFormulaInvesting: Built by the man, himself — Joel Greenblatt, this is a nice free site to do basic screening for stocks that fit the criteria of the Magic Formula

Institutional Ownership

  • AlphaClone: Of course, this hedge fund slicer-and-dicer is a stock screen of sorts.  This premium product (read my review here) allows users to identify the top performing funds, peer into their holdings and backtest their strategies.

Insider Buying/ Selling

  • GuruFocus: Interesting free and premium offerings that track top guru buys as well as insider transactions.  Can download results into spreadsheets for more analysis.

Technicals

  • StockFetcher: Nice premium screen for technical investors encompassing Bollingers, Candlesticks, Moving Averages, and more. Output is downloadable to Excel.

I am SURE I left really good tools out — let me know in the comments if you think I should include something I’ve missed.

Tagged as: dreman, investing, peter lynch, screening 2.0, stock screen, warren buffett

  • http://www.eurosharelab.com/ Tim

    Great article Zack

    The Financial Times has a great stock screener (free registration required) that has more international coverage.

    Take a look over here
    http://markets.ft.com/screener/customScreen.asp

  • newrulesofinvesting

    thanks, Tim. I wasn't aware of this tool — while I frequent the FT for market commentary, I missed this resource.

  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2010/02/23/the-anti-galleon-model-4-good-resources-to-insider-trade-legally/ The anti-Galleon model: 4 good resources to insider trade — legally | New Rules of Investing

    [...] showcasing 6 top resources for following top hedge fund managers (piggyback investing) and the web’s best stock screens, I’d like to spend a little ink on bubbling up the best resources to track insider [...]

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    [...] in trading costs and future returns.  Low commissions, tons of free content online, crowdsourcing, screening, piggyback investing, and trade mirroring — all these essentials of the New Rules of [...]

  • http://www.tradestreaming.com/2010/02/23/the-anti-galleon-model-4-good-resources-to-insider-trade-legally/ The anti-Galleon model: 4 good resources to insider trade | Tradestreaming

    [...] showcasing 6 top resources for following top hedge fund managers (piggyback investing) and the web’s best stock screens, I’d like to spend a little ink on bubbling up the best resources to track insider [...]

  • http://www.tradestreaming.com/2010/02/11/investors-and-google-buzz-a-threat-to-stocktwits/ Investors and Google Buzz: a threat to StockTwits? | Tradestreaming

    [...] ideas (like Piqqem), participate in expert communities (like Covestor and kaChing), and use new technologies to better screen for [...]

  • http://www.tradestreaming.com/2010/06/13/best-investing-websites-for-tracking-insider-trading/ Top investment sites to track insider buying of stock | Tradestreaming

    [...] I’ve written previously about Finviz’s great stock screener.  They also publish a nice free list of all buys and sells from corporate America [...]

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    [...] ideas (like Piqqem), participate in expert communities (like Covestor and kaChing), and use new technologies to better screen for [...]

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  • Citytaipan

    thanks for this great article. Graham intrinsic stock value and Greenblatt Magic Formula stocks for a large international universe, including lots of european and asian stocks, is available for free at

    http://www.valueexplorer.com/

    I liked the long term charts of fundamental company data which are the basis of intrinsic value calculation.

  • http://paststat.com/ james

    try http://paststat.com for around 400 technical predifened screeners on all the US listed stocks along with the backtestint abilities, there is a trade-ideas tab which can quickly filter out the trades by avg profit % , profit factore , median trade % etc.

  • http://insiderize.com/2012/01/best-websites-for-tracking-insider-trading/ Best websites for tracking insider trading | Insiderize

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  • David

    http://www.eurostockscreener.com is the most friendly to use screener I have ever tested. Really good.

  • David

    http://www.eurostockscreener.com is the most friendly to use screener I have ever tested. Really good.

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