Finding the Next Winner: Stock Screener Reviews

Brief reviews of top listed stock screeners

Stock screeners are a great place to start when looking for investment ideas. Unfortunately, there are quite a few of them out there. So, which one are you going to use?

At The Bowser Report, we use a few different screeners to sift through the many companies out there, discovering companies that meet our criteria. Each screener has its pros and cons. In order to be as objective as possible, we rated each screener based on three criterion:

1. Factors considered: what type of information can you use to narrow the results?
2. Information presented: once the results are narrowed, how is information presented to help make a decision?
3. Usability: how user-friendly is the screener?

For this article, we rated the top 3 Google search results for "stock screener." They were Google Finance, Yahoo! Finance and FINVIZ.com. Their results are below:

FINVIZ.com

FINVIZ.com (or Financial Visualizations) showed up third on Google's listed results. This stock screener has three categories of information to narrow your results down, plus an ALL category. The categories are Descriptive, Fundamental and Technical. Total factors that you can consider come out to 61. Instead of setting a range, you select one option for each factor; example: for "Price" you can select Under or Over a certain price.

The information included is "all-inclusive," or at least as much is reasonable. Results are displayed immediately, allowing you to select from 14 different displays, including "Custom," where you select the information that you want displayed. You can also click the company's ticker symbol to head to its FINVIZ.com profile.

This stock screener is quite usable. While the three categories are nice and succinct, it does make it a tad more difficult to find the specific criteria that you want. Instead of searching through 5 or so factors per category, you are looking through 15+ per category. Also, the drop down selections can seem overwhelming as well if you're unsure of just what you want to see.

1. Factors considered: 9
2. Information presented: 10
3. Usability: 9

AVERAGE TOTAL: 9.3

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Google Finance

As should be expected, the Google Finance stock screener appeared first on the list in the Google search results. This screener offers  9 different categories of criteria to narrow your results down by. The total number of factors hits a considerable 63. You can mix and match which factors you want to consider. The factors range from basic price data to valuations to ratios and beyond.

For each factor  you choose, a column appears in the results below. The column shows (if available) the information requested. The ability to see right away specific company results for each of the selected criteria, is a great feature.

The Google screener is quite usable. You can easily select which factors your want considered. Then, you manually put in the value range (rather than selecting from a menu), or slide the bars under "Company Distribution." This feature shows the spread of all companies available, showing where your range falls in relation to all companies.

1. Factors considered: 9
2. Information presented: 9
3. Usability: 9

AVERAGE TOTAL: 9.0

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Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Finance is a popular site for financial information. Their screener is the second in the listed results on Google. Six categories divide a mere 16 factors. Like FINVIZ.com's stock screener, you select parameters from a drop down menu. Unlike FINVIZ.com, Yahoo!'s screener tends to be gappy.

As far as information goes, for each parameter set, a column is displayed with the value displayed. There is also an option to click for a quote, which takes you to the stocks Yahoo! Finance profile page.

Usability is decent with this screener. It's very simple (basic), making it perfect for general searches. The drop down menus are a bit of a minus. As we mentioned above, they are fairly gappy. For example, "Share Price" can only be narrowed down in certain increments (Any, $0, $1, $5, $10 and so on).

1. Factors considered: 7
2. Information presented: 9
3. Usability: 7

AVERAGE TOTAL: 7.7

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The Bottom Line

FINVIZ.com's stock screener is perhaps the most inclusive screener that we have seen/used. While it can be overwhelming, the number of factors that you can narrow results down by, and the information that you can display without leaving the search results is considerable. Google comes in a close second, with Yahoo! Finance coming in third.

Google allows you to search based on many different factors, as well. However, complete company information is not right in front of you, like it is with FINVIZ.com's screener.

Yahoo! Finance is a good basic screener, but the small number of factors considered leave a lot to be desired.

While all three of these stock screeners are great choices, for the most inclusive, most informative screener, head to Financial Visualization's website and check out what stocks you can find!

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The Bowser Report is a monthly financial newsletter that specializes in small stocks trading for $3/share or less. Our goal is to provide the individual investor with relevant information on microcap stocks. Each month, we recommend a new company, provide information on past recommendations and report news surrounding the microcap marketplace.

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Information in this blog post may contain references to past Bowser recommendations. This blog post contains no recommendations, and instead relies on data gathered on past recommendations from sources thought to be reliable.