The stock market is a great place to earn profits. However, it’s not a place to go with a get-rich-quick mentality. It requires a lot of learning, patience, and strategy. One of the biggest concerns for novice traders is finding stocks to deal with. You see, the stock market can be a highly volatile area, and you don’t want to put your money in a notably risky stock. To create a successful investment portfolio in the stock market you need to study and understand market trends. It’s not easy. Fortunately, there are remarkable smart tools that can help you navigate the stock market such as Finviz futures.
How Much Does Finviz Futures Cost?
Stock screeners are remarkable tools that can help you find the best stocks to work with - and Finviz is one of the best out there. It’s a powerful tool that can help you make clever decisions on your investment allocation. Finviz futures charts offer insightful and detailed stock information. Additionally, Finviz stock screener provides a filter for the best stocks to trade and helpful research options.
Finviz stock screener has free user access where you get access to Finviz futures charts and other detailed information. However, you can sign up for Finviz elite service for $25 a month to get access to pre-market data, real-time data, fundamental and advanced charts, backtesting, correlations, intraday charts and you can remove ad interruptions. With Finviz Elite, you are able to make fast decisions and discover actionable investments and trades which helps to improve your returns.
Finviz free service is, however, great for swing trading since you just need to study the charts. Finviz Elite would be of great help if you are an intermediate day trader.
Find Stocks to Swing Trade on FinViz
FinViz is one of the best smart tools for traders - whether you are into day trading, swing trading, options trading, crypto or forex trading, FinViz has it all.
So, how do you use FinViz for swing trading?
Open finviz.com if you want to follow through. You’ll see a page like this.
On top there’s a search bar and navigation below it. Now, looking at the navigation bar you should see ‘Home’, ‘News’, ‘Screener,’ ‘Maps,’ and ‘Group,’ among others. Here, we are interested in the ‘Screener’ tab and you should see a page like this upon clicking on the screener tab.
If you look at this page (without any filters), you will see thousands of symbols. Would you go through all those stocks? I guess not. It would not make any sense anyway - it is like trying to find a single sugar particle in a sack full of salt.
Fortunately, with Finviz future screener filters you can make the list much smaller. For instance, let’s look at stocks with a price of less than $20 and an average daily trading volume of less than 500k.
As you can see, the list got much smaller with just under 2500 stocks. But that’s still a lot of stocks to go through, right?
We can make the list even shorter. Under the ‘Descriptive’ tab there is the ‘Sector’ tab which can be used to filter stocks for the sectors we want to deal with. You can choose any sector, but for educational purposes lets select ‘Technology’ only. The list is now much shorter with just 255 stocks.
Can you see ‘Overview’ below there? Select ‘Charts’ instead. Now you have 255 charts to look through and see if any of them will catch your eye.
I can’t deny that looking through all these patterns can be overwhelming. Luckily, with Finviz screener you can filter different chart patterns. The ‘Technical’ tab has all these features. For instance, let’s say you like to trade double bottoms you can select the double bottom pattern under the ‘Technical’ tab. In our case, if we select the double bottom pattern, we are left with two stocks! Isn’t Finviz futures screener remarkable?
Useful Tips
Keep things simple - don’t select every metric that is offered by Finviz screener. It is not the quantity that matters here but the quality of the filters.
Make a prescreened list of possible stocks you can invest in using Finviz screener. This is a list of all stocks that meet your criteria for both potential returns and safety.
Find stocks that are doing well when the markets are not doing well. Screen such stocks and add them to your list. These stocks are relatively stronger than other stocks. Such stocks are more likely to demonstrate the most upward momentum when the markets rebound.
Group your prescreened stocks by sectors.
From your prescreened list, choose stocks from the best performing sector
Stocks that trade below $10 tend to be too volatile. It is wise to do away with them.
In the case of swing trading, trading volume is not much of a concern. However, you still don’t want to trade in stocks that barely trade. Find stocks with adequate trading volume so you don’t have a hard time when you want to buy or sell. Avoid stocks with an average trading volume of less than 300k per day.
Past performance matters. You don’t want to invest in stocks that are on the decline. Your filter should only include stocks that rose with more than 5% in the previous month. This will help to eliminate stocks that are losing value.
Differences Between Swing Trading and Day Trading
You want to start trading, but how active do you want to be? This is an important question to ask yourself before you start trading. It will determine the kind of trader you want to be - day trader or swing trader. What are your current responsibilities and how much time can you set aside for active trading? If you are not that busy then day trading would be appropriate otherwise you can opt to be buying and holding for several days, weeks, or even months.
Ultimately, the type of trader you become depends on your daily schedule, technical expertise levels and personal choice, overall. Make sure to research each choice respectively in detail before choosing.
Swing trading vs day trading
Whether it’s trading or swing trading, the end goal is the same - generating profits. The holding period, as well as the technical tools, are what make them different.
Time commitment
Day trading involves making numerous trades in one day. Daily trading is based on sophisticated chart systems and technical analysis. The objective of a day trader is to make a living from trading stocks and therefore they don’t hold positions overnight. Day traders aim to make small profits on numerous trades and capping losses on non-profitable trades.
On the other hand, swing trading involves shorting or buying stocks and holding positions for days or even weeks. You see, some trades may take several days or weeks to work out. Swing traders, therefore, identify swings in stocks that can happen over a period of days or weeks. Unlike day traders, swing traders typically do not look to make trading a full-time venture.
Risk
Most people are lured into day trading by the potential of spectacular profits. Spectacular profits are not that easy to make, though. Only a few people with the necessary traits such as discipline, commitment, decisiveness, and diligence become successful day traders. Well, it goes without saying that every venture with potentially high returns, the risk of loss is also high.
Day trading can quickly put you in debt. Day traders normally use margin (borrowed money) to trade. Although trading on margin increases your potential returns, it also increases your loss when the market moves against you. When you lose trading on margin, that’s a really big loss. Stocks can move quickly and inexperience and bad trading habits can cost you big time. If you want to start day trading you first need to start educating yourself and begin training. Most beginners jump into day trading without the necessary training and knowledge of good day trading strategies and that essentially amounts to gambling.
By comparison, swing trading accumulates returns and losses more slowly compared to day trading. Certain swings can lead to quick losses, though. Another thing is that swing traders don’t have to rely on margins (well, unless they want to), so they don’t have to worry about ending up in debt. That is not to say that swing trading is not risky. It can result in substantial losses. Since swing traders hold their positions for longer periods compared to day traders, they also run the risk of bigger losses.
So, which style of trading is the best?
Well, there is no correct answer to that question that will apply to every person. It is to a large extent a personal choice. Both day and swing traders' objective is to earn profit but their styles, trading strategies, trading rules and way of working and expected expertise level differ. However, each style has its advantages and disadvantages.
Day Trading
Pros
Potential to earn spectacular profits in a short period (minutes and hours)
There is no overnight exposure - not holding positions overnight can save you a lot of trouble. Anything and everything can happen and the market may move against you leading to a huge loss.
Invested capital is not tied for a long time
Macro market conditions are not a big concern
Cons
Day trading can be stressful - it involves monitoring your positions every other minute. Day trading requires decisiveness, discipline and more than just a casual understanding of the stock market. After all, you are competing with corporate professionals who are in this to make their living as well.
Requires quick reaction
You need to be in front of your computer (literally) when the markets open.
Since day trading involves making numerous trades, you will have to pay several commissions. I don’t think there is a trader who loves paying commissions, or is there? Stockbrokers will love you though.
Swing trading
Pros
You don’t have to be in front of your computer all the time to succeed. You see, burn out is a big concern, especially for day traders, who spend a big part of the day analyzing charts and monitoring minute-to-minute price action. This is not the case for swing traders who let their positions ride while they pursue other things.
Less commission - unlike day trading, you don’t have to make numerous trades in swing trading. You make big trades using fewer contracts which saves you money on commissions.
Less micromanaging - you don’t have to worry about small stuff such as a sudden 10-point move. In swing trading, you look for much larger moves.
Potential large returns in a few days or weeks
Cons
Weekend and overnight exposure
Losing trades can really hurt - there is much less opportunity to counter bad trades
Slower moving
Invested capital is tied for longer periods
More vulnerable to macroeconomic events and news
Endnote
Finviz is a great stock screener and can make your trading life easy if you know how to use it. In fact, Finviz's free service has everything a swing trader would want. However, even though you understand how to use Finviz and other smart tools, to become a successful stock trader requires more than that. There is a lot to learn in stock trading. Here are brilliant ways to learn stock trading as a starter:
Open an account with a stockbroker - a good number of brokers offer free trading tools and research to their clients. They also offer virtual trading where you can practice trading without using your money.
Read books
Read online articles
Find a mentor
Study successful investors such as Warren Buffet and George Soros
Take online courses
Go to seminars
Remember learning is a continuous process and every trading day offers a chance to learn something new. Also, remember to take advantage of technology and smart tools such as Finviz. Understanding how to use Finviz stock screener gives you a good chance of succeeding as a swing trader. Head over to Finviz now and start screening for swing stocks!
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