Stock screeners are invaluable because traders can scan an entire market for stocks that have specific characteristics, so that potential trading opportunities crop up, all within seconds. In other words, it’ll cut your research time, leaving you more room to make potential profitable trades and other opportunities to make more money.
You can use stock screeners to find undervalued stocks that look like it will increase in value quickly. When doing your research, criteria you might want to think about include low debt to equity ration, high revenue growth, low PE rations and high profit margins. You can use any of these criteria to look for things such as bottoming patterns or other bullish signals.
If you’re not sure where to start, check out these six free stock screeners.
Yahoo Finance
Yahoo finance provides comprehensive search options for share prices and valuation ratios. This screener allows you to hone in on the stocks in your price range for any given industry. It’s the most user friendly of all the free screeners listed.
MarketWatch
MarketWatch provides streamlined filters that allow you to look up stocks according to price, volume, fundamentals, technicals and industry.
Google Finance
Every country, currency, exchange and sector is included in Google’s screener. You can also look up funds according to criteria including price, ratios, yield, margins and growth. The breadth of Google’s screener is not surprising, given the company’s internet-altering search engine. However, it can get overwhelming, but with a bit of time you should get the hang of it.
CNBC
CNBC provides screeners for Large Cap Growth, Small Cap Value, High Dividends, ‘S&P 500 Dogs’, and ‘Solid Companies’. It’s not as user-friendly as Yahoo, but not as overwhelming as Google.
Zacks
The company that powers Nasdaq’s stock screener provides a stock screener that includes its own ranking system, as well as broker information. A good tool for curious newcomers to trading.
Reuters Stock Screener
Reuters’ screener emphasizes global markets and industries. Use it to find the overachievers in oil & gas drilling in Qatar, or the up-and-comers in European wool.
