FinViz Atlernative Screener – Equities Lab

Only allows five backtests per day

Their one paid subscription includes everything.

Unlimited backtests

Special operators allow many backtests to be run at once.

30 day free trial

Single Click

Just type it in, or find it in tools menu

Five clicks, use “custom” values, type in 0 and 11 with one page reloads

Just type it in. Any field can be lagged any amount, easily

No way to lag fields

Just type it in, any field or equation can be ranked easily

Multiple ranks possible within a screen. Can rank with sector, industry, or custom group, and can filter. Nesting is easy.

No rank operators

Piotroski exists as an importable, customizable formula. Piotroski can also be built from scratch, easily, saved and reused.

No Piotroski score possible

(Low Stddev of change PE over one month)

Just nest the expressions. Functions operate on time series, and across sections of the market, and all can be nested. Some can be slow (e.g. a moving average of a rank of PE across the market).

No expression to nest

(total earnings of the largest stocks)

Cross sectional expressions are just like other expressions, and are usable everywhere.

No cross sections

(include only airlines, the S&P 500, etc)

Sectors and industries included, but no indexes or exchanges. Usable proxies for S&P, Russell aren’t exact.

Includes sectors, industries and indexes.

Clearly more powerful than the others, as it is able to handle even very complex terms (e.g. Quality Minus Junk, Olhson’s O score, etc)

They can’t handle any expression beyond the built in choices. Cannot even screen in the past.

22 years

1997-2014

Notice that 2015 onwards is not included

Comprehensive set of 600+ fundamental metrics, not including ratios

24 ratios, no raw data

Moving averages, RSI,MACD, triangles, wedges, a few candlesticks, and the ability to add your own with lagging and sequence operators

Collection of indicators, and extensive pattern recognition. Only available in backtest.

No ownership data

Has data but can’t dig into ownership on a deeper level

No ownership data

Very Small amount of earnings data.

Seamless integration with quandl allows usage of all quandl data sets including paid ones (if you have subscribed).

No Macro Data

Quandl gives access to large body of data. No foreign stocks. ETFs included, but cannot screen ETF’s.

Only stocks from NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ

Data

A focus on the core: Amazing fundamentals (600+ fields) and solid technical analysis capabilities make the data solid, useful and powerful.

A backtester needs to either be able to run to the current day, or at least screen what it backtests, to be useful. FinViz does neither.

Good use of colors and shapes. Utilizes the design to help teach the user.

Very dense and difficult to follow

Windows, Mac, or Linux only. Does not require admin rights to install.

Web, very good mobile

Suffers from the blank screen effect, but clicking on the + generates new lines, joined together with ‘and’. Has sensible defaults that are easy to change.

Creating a new screen is as simple as choosing various choices.

Autocomplete is effective, but does not pop up help while completing. Users need to use the tools pane for that.

No searching as everything is placed in the “All” tab. To read more about the item you simply click on it. Can quickly become difficult.

Tooltips explain functions and fields, so reading unfamiliar expressions is easy. Easy use of variables and formulas help chunking.

All expression are in drop down form and never leave that form. Easy to read each line.

Drag and drop, extract variable or formula, all easy wrapping of terms all work together to make editing joyful.

Editing doesn’t go that deep, but, for the features editing is as simple as typing or selecting from a drop down.

Any term can be cut and pasted, even into notepad. Multiple cut buffers are a nice touch.

No copy and paste

Fast navigation, searchable tabs, ctrl-Click to go into an item, and a breadcrumbs trail make navigation easy.

Fairly easy to navigate. Made a bit more difficult when on the “All” tab as the screen becomes cluttered and hard to navigate

Large, searchable content library. 500+ screens (many of them segments, like “Low P/E”), and 400+ formulas give the user plenty to work with. Piotroski, Beneish, Altman, Montier, etc are all done out, so users can modify them. 500+ formulas to use as building blocks.

Only 8 prebuilt screens that can be backtested.

Both variables and formulas help ensure content reuse. Formulas can have descriptions. These allow users to maintain criteria they use in all their screens (such as no penny stocks)

No way to create content to reuse.

Much user error is prevented by the editor, with reasonable error messages. Multiple level undo and a restore autosave make it difficult to lose work by mistake.

Much user error is prevented by the use of a dropdown menu only system. No undo.

UI is amazingly fast, and handles massive data well (100,000 trades in a table). Some queries are slow.

Snappy UI, refuses to load more than 20 results per page.

Usability

An actual joy to use (after the first few minutes of bafflement). The preloaded content inspires the user to new heights. Can be slow sometimes.

Eminently approachable and usable – if not useful. Its simple screener is intuitive, while their backtester is less so.

Fully configurable rebalance, though one must rebalance all stocks, or none.

No Rebalance, just entry and exit rules.

Can sell without rebalancing, but not buy. Sales go to cash until the next rebalance.

The only way to backtest on the system is to constantly buy and sell what fits or doesn’t fit the criteria.

Custom stop losses/gains possible. Stop losses and gains can be adjusted based on conditions. Trailing stops possible.

Custom stop loss, but no stop gain.

Minimum and maximum holding periods can vary per stock and change over time.

No time based stops

Can get a zoo of statistics over time, including holdings, and even use these in the backtest (Stop trading if a threshold is met, etc). Basic plotting is easy, more complicated uses are less obvious.

Not a large amount of data, but the data that is there is fairly useful and easy to read.

The results of backtests are just another expression to be used.

Can kind of do it by setting an exit when screener.

Virtually everything can be configured – arbitrarily. Options to control leverage and short selling are hard to find and use.

Configurable, assuming you don’t need to rebalance. Since most professional and academics rebalance, this is a problem.

All results in one page, searchable, sortable by multiple categories, exportable

Sort columns, only see 20 at a time

Configurable benchmarks, other backtests, and data on chart, which is clickable, zoomable and more

Only two lines – can’t change. Given some statistics on the backtest page. Slightly interactive.

(What is this company’s PE?)

Plots ad-hoc plots and panels, fields and expressions, in screens, backtests and charts.

No way to customize values plotted

All data within all pages is completely customizable. Can build tear sheets to supplement those in the system.

No data customization within backtests or screens

Heat maps used in most places throughout the software. All maps allow the adjustment of order, size, and what is considered a good or bad return.

Has heatmaps in multiple places throughout site, but not used at all for backtesters or screeners

Interactive charting with custom plotting, customized plotted panels, price history, Trading models, links to news and filings.

Data is extremely long form and hard to make usable. The charts only allow you to plot technicals such as trend lines.

Backtest by time, positions breakdown, scatter charts, and good reports let users understand the results clearly. The ability to add plots to the backtests is very useful.

The lack of any (good) visuals beyond the performance chart make users of FinViz sad.

Equities Lab is able to handle even very complex terms (e.g. Quality Minus Junk, Olhson’s O score, etc)

FinViz can’t handle any expression beyond the built in choices, and cannot even screen in the past.

A focus on the core: Amazing fundamentals (600+ fields) and solid technical analysis capabilities make the data solid, useful and powerful.

A backtester needs to either be able to run to the current day, or at least screen what it backtests, to be useful. FinViz does neither.

An actual joy to use (after the first few minutes of bafflement). The preloaded content inspires the user to new heights. Can be slow sometimes.

Eminently approachable and usable – if not useful. Its simple screener is intuitive, while their backtester is less so.

Virtually everything can be configured – arbitrarily. Options to control leverage and short selling are hard to find and use.

Configurable, assuming you don’t need to rebalance. Since most professional and academics rebalance, this is a problem.

Backtest by time, positions breakdown, scatter charts, and good reports let users understand the results clearly. The ability to add plots to the backtests is very useful.

The lack of any (good) visuals beyond the performance chart make users of FinViz sad.

Equities Lab validates and creates investable strategies more effectively than any other contender.

FinViz has a backtesting dataset that stops at the end of 2014, and users can’t screen for stocks that match a backtest. This makes FinViz useless for backtesting.