There are lots of questions about how to find free stock screeners in my mailbox every year.
Most screeners are available from a market data services providers. I can hardly say that they’re the best market screeners, and you have to pay for them!
I’m happy to say that I discovered the way you can prepare your preferred free stock screener on your own computer. It means you won’t have to pay a monthly fee for using such screener.
The description of rules for a screener is mostly based on my chart analysis software I use almost exclusively. But it is possible to use them also with best online trading sites that offer market screening features.
Steps to create a stock market screener
I recommend that you create a market screener using a combination of AmiBroker software and Yahoo free market data. This combination can be fully automated so you can have a pre-selection of stocks produced by the screener after a few mouse clicks.
You have to go through these steps:
1. Use AmiBroker chart and market analysis software
This analysis software has a lot of functions. One of them is that you can create free stock screeners. You can make a lot of different market screeners too. And in time you will find and use your preferred screener.
2. Use Yahoo free data download for this chart analysis software software
AmiQuote (a downloader of stocks data from Yahoo) is already included in AmiBroker. You can download these data free of charge.
3. Define your stock screener rules
You can define your preferred screener as you go. There’s a huge selection of possible parameters that can be included in the equity market screener definition. A check list can help you to prepare your list of necessary conditions for your market screener.
4. Write rules of screener into formula file
You can easily use AFL Editor in AmiBroker to write all conditions for scanning into the file.
5. Open your preferred stock screener definition in Automatic Analysis window in AmiBroker
Open this file in Automatic Analysis window to select your preferred screener file.
6. Run Exploration
Then Select scanning date and click to Explore.
7. See results, move them to the Watchlist and do further analysis
During the run of the screener you will see a list of selected stocks symbols grow. When your preferred screener finishes, you can copy all results to the Watchlist and go through these tickers individually. If the list of results is too big, then you can use some additional parameters to make it shorter.
Real-time data market screener
If you decide to use a real-time data provider then you can use AmiBroker also for real-time stock screening. It’s possible to scan real-time during the trading day per request or set it automatically scan every 10 minutes or so.