Pimp My Trade

How to Hack Finviz Stock Screener to Find Great Setups

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Adam

Finviz is an incredible tool for any stock trader. Whether you want to pour over the fundamental data (not my cup of tea) or find perfect technical setups, it has the goods to cater to you. So why aren’t you using it?

I’ve been using Finviz for a while now and I’ve managed to devise some methods for finding great setups using the tools they have available.

Bookmark my page for screener presets that I use.

1. Method 1: Go to the groups page. Look at what sectors have been strong over the last three months, one month, and week. That should give you an idea of what groups are worth buying. Look at the one day strength and look to see if any of those strong groups are down today. That will be a good buying opportunity.
2. Method 2: Go to the screener. On the descriptive tab, set average volume for over 500,000. This will ensure you are getting only liquid stocks. Set price for over $10 to make sure you’re not getting any cheap stocks that will be hard to to trade. Go to the technical tab. Set performance to month up. Set performance 2 to week down. Then set 52 week high/low to 60% or more above low. If you want you can filter it by sector to get only the strongest sectors. Put it into charts mode and look at all your thumbnail charts. There you have it - an ironclad stock screener for buying uptrending stocks.
3. Method 3: In the screener search for horizontal support/resistance (strong). You will find plenty of price patterns this way.
4. Method 4: Create your own screens and save the results for a watchlist. You can customize the screener to use whatever indicators or data you want. Write down the ticker symbols you find interesting. When you’re done, type the tickers into the box that says tickers and clear the search criteria. You will see in small letters above your results, “Save as portfolio”. Click on that and there you have it - a saved watchlist.
5. Method 5: Use the heatmap (available on the maps tab) to identify relative strength and weakness. I like the S&P 500 map. On a down day, look for what is holding up recently well. Anything that is break-even or up on a down day is likely to be a good buy candidate. The opposite is true for anything that is down or neutral on an up-day. Look at the group that shows relative strength in the screener to find good looking charts.
6. Method 6: Mouse over the tickers on the homepage to see charts. You can look at a lot really quickly and identify some good setups. The homepage is also good for tracking the price of commodities and viewing actual versus expected news announcements.
7. Method 7: If you are into fundamental analysis, which I won’t get into here, the screener has tons of fundamental screening criteria. You could get lost in it all.

Finviz is a really great market tool and I use it every day. Add it to your arsenal to become a better trader.