9 of the Best Canadian Stock Screeners in January 2024 - Stocktrades (2024)

A stock screener is a tool used by traders and investors to shortlist stocks based on metrics, either pre-set ones or ones defined by them.

They allow users to sort through hundreds and sometimes thousands of securities in a very short time, enabling them to make smarter investing decisions.

Stock screeners are useful tools for both fundamental and technical investors, traders and even companies themselves. They allow users to sift through large amounts of data using specific criteria.

The more proficient one gets at using stock screeners, the better investing/trading decisions they can make. This is exactly why many Canadians are seeking outthe best stock screeners in Canada for 2021.

Generally, long-term investors opt for fundamental screening criteria in the screeners like EPS, average daily volume, market capitalization, return on equity etc.

Short-term traders are more likely to look at technical criteria like charting, alerts, momentum studies, moving averages and RSI.

Often, when new investors first encounter stock screeners they can get overwhelmed looking at the sheer number of options in front of them.

In this list, we have listed two stock screeners at the start of this list for these kinds of investors. It will help ease you into the world of trading and investing.

Most stock screeners are free or are free for a limited period so users can try them out before opting for the paid version.

Both of these are very basic screeners that offer a very basic entry point for users. These are the two stock screeners that we spoke about in the article’s introduction to ease new investors into the system.

The MSN Money stock screener is one of the simplest stock screeners out there. It has preset screens like “high dividend yields, bargain stocks, blue chips, 52-week highs and lows, tech giants”.

A user can create their own portfolio using filters like price, growth, profitability ratios, estimates etc. Analyst ratings and Morningstar data can further help a user’s searches.

The Reuters Stock Screen has six quick screens:

• growth at a reasonable price
• large cap growth
• small cap value
• small cap growth
• near price highs
• mid-cap momentum

For example, under the small cap value, you can identify all companies classified locally as small cap that returned EPS growth rates in the highest 20% in their local market as well as an historical EPS growth rate of greater than 20%.

Each of these screens comes with preset criteria that are suitable for the particular screen you want to run.

You can play around with those screens but can’t choose a new screener. It is very limited in functionality.

8. Globe and Mail Screener

The Globe and Mail Stock Screener is very similar to the Bar Chart screener, and that’s because the screener uses Bar Chart tech for their screeners.

Growth investors love the 5-year dividend growth % metric. Apart from this, there are other filters like price quote, fundamentals, per share info, ratios and financials for users to choose from.

There are 66 metrics to filter stocks which is very good for a free version but the free version of this screener is very limited if you're a professional trader, at least compared to the other free screeners on this list. It doesn’t have technical metrics and that might not be the technical trader’s cup of tea.

7. Finviz

Finviz which means ‘financial visualizations’ is known to have one of the best stock screeners for traders and investors, and has gained a lot of popularity in the last 10 years.

It has added in a ton of features such as new functionalities as well as bigger databases to help improve customer experience.

It is available for free, but there are also paid versions called Finviz Elite. Around 19.75 million people access their website every month.

Although it is a simple screener, it is more powerful than what one might expect. It allows for fast search, finding a stock symbol within a fraction of a second, separating the results into three categories as well – publish to a chart, save it to a portfolio and create an alert.

The screener’s core features include full integration of fundamental and technical analysis, rich-information output, multiple views, fast navigation, and instant updates.

You get access to Finviz's new sources at the bottom of the results page for each stock wherein the charting is divided into different types – candle (free), line (free), advanced (free), performance (elite), and interactive (elite).

The time frames are also divided into – monthly (free), weekly (free), daily (free), and intraday (elite). Other than this, you get access to a variety of key features such as dividends, P/E, and various performance figures too.

6. Investing.com Screener

Investing.com's screener researches and then filters stocks based on certain key parameters such as dividend yield, market cap, stock price, and more. Along with covering global stock markets, it also covers cryptocurrencies, commodities, world currencies, world indices, bonds, funds, ETF's, interest rates, options, and futures.

For Canada, the Investing.com stock screener offers a good range of metrics including 12 technical indicators. Apart from technicals, the screener also offers a decent range of criteria, such as price, 1-Year change, market cap, P/E Ratio and more.

An additional feature that the screener offers is the Adjust Overview columns. You can select the information or columns that you would like to see in the Overview tab of the screener results. It could be information coming from technical analysis, like MACD, and/or financial information like the P/E ratio.

It provides investor access to over 300,000 financial instruments across the globe, as well as financial market tools such as real-time alerts and quotes, customized portfolios, calendars, personal alerts, financial insights and calculators at no charge!

5. Bar Chart

Bar Chart screener is one of the first free websites for futures markets and commodities. It’s been around since 1995 and Bar Chart gives access to five major world markets including Canada.

They have a diverse client base that includes financial services, investment and trading firms, commodity firms and media.

It is extremely user-friendly, and the settings are much like you'd expect them to be. You have typical buttons like RSI, volume, and moving averages available.

The screeners give you hundreds of different criteria to find possible trading candidates. You can filter on things like price change or volume, and refine results based on technicals, ratios, fundamentals, or opinion. You can even save a screener to run at a later time, and download the screener results to a .csv file.

However, its most unique feature is its proprietary criteria like Trendspotter.

Trendspotter is a composite indicator that is compiled from scratch by Bar Chart's stock screener. It functions to help find trending stocks matching your criteria. You also have an 'overall opinion' that looks into analyst ratings and filters them against your other results, giving you a finely tuned end list of Barchart stocks to look through and load into your custom chart software.

Barchart Premier members can select their favorite screeners to run automatically and have the results emailed to them each and every day after market close. Premier members can also screen on their Watchlists, Portfolios, or Index Groups.

4. Yahoo Finance Screener

Yahoo Finance is generally the first gateway to anyone who is interested in the stock market. The Yahoo Finance Screener is an intuitive screener that supplies the basic tools to an investor without the requirement of a subscription. When you visit the Yahoo screener page, you get access to the following links –

Saved screeners, that lets you customize your screeners and save them for future use. This is great as you become more experienced.

Equity screeners, which help in finding and analyzing stocks.

Mutual Funds and ETF screeners, for choosing the right product fit for yourself.

Future and Index screeners, that traders find very handy as they navigate the world of indexes and futures.

By using the yahoo finance screener to build your screener, you get access to a ton of features such as – day losers and gainers, undervalued growth stocks, most shorted stocks, growth technology stocks, top mutual funds, small-cap gainers, undervalued large caps, aggressive small caps, portfolio anchors, solid large-growth and mid-cap growth funds, conservative foreign funds, high yield bonds and the like.

This screener is ideal for investors irrespective of their level of expertise.

3. TMX Stock Screener

The TMX Group, owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, is the provider of TMX Stock Screener.

It focuses on finding a multitude of criteria that helps investors with Canadian stocks. Upon clicking on a specific company, you are given access to charts that are designed in a manner that satisfies even the most sophisticated technical analyst.

Day traders can save and set price movements to one-minute intervals. News from PR Newswire and Canada Newswire along with income statements, balance sheets, and price history are made available.

You also get options that include puts and calls, in and out of the money or near the money, an assortment of other details and Greeks, along with screeners for ETFs and mutual funds, the former of which is the first visual or pictographic screener seen.

Traders and investors can choose between fundamental, technical and descriptive metrics. You can use over 76 metrics to search stocks. It is a very valuable tool for day traders and the best part about this screener is that it is free.

The TMX Group's ETF screener starts with 359 orange dots arranged on a green background with each dot acting as a representation of an ETF.

The dots in one corner of each box represent the funds with the lowest management expense ratios, while those in the other corner have the highest MERs.

2. Stock Rover

Stock Rover is a leading independent stock and ETF research platform ideal for individual investors.

The company has seen massive growth as investors have discovered the unmatched capabilities of Stock Rover for its investment content. Their features are built around the demand from real investors.

This powerful research and investment analysis tool goes way beyond what investors are used to from existing equity sites.

It’s a very powerful stock screener with up to 554 metrics that include a host of technical ones. Users can also customize their own metrics.

It is great for experienced traders as well as long-term investors. New investors to the stock markets might find this a little overwhelming at first but Stock Rover offers a 14-day free trial period before switching over to the paid version.

Stock Rover has excellent screening abilities, finding and ranking stocks, and comparing investment options. They compare fair values and margins of safety, warning about trends that might require extra attention, and score companies for their growth, quality, sentiment, and value.

Every detail you might want regarding a stock is well detailed and incorporated into the report and the information is displayed in a well-structured and clear way, making it extremely easy and effortless to do comprehensive research on a particular company. Other than this, you can also link your brokerage for automated portfolio updates and get to view performance metrics that are accurate to the minute!

One point to keep in mind about Stock Rover is that it doesn’t showcase all the securities on the TSX.

1. Stocktrades Premium Growth & Dividend Safety Screeners

We put a unique spin on Canadian stock screeners when we created our screeners over at Stocktrades premium.

Many were skeptical of the functionality and accuracy of our screeners, but critics have been silenced.

Our growth stock screeners takes a combination of quantitative data, earnings estimates and a bit of "secret sauce" to present Stocktrades Premium members the best possible growth stocks on the TSX.

We take the Top 20 stocks our screener presents and benchmark them against the TSX. Since we started tracking at the start of 2019, our growth stock screener has outperformed the TSX Index more than 85% of the time at the time of writing.

This means that thus far, our screener has presented members with stocks that have returned more than the TSX17 of 20 times.

The cornerstone of our whole platform, our growth stock screener has allowed us to present market beating stock picks to thousands of Premium members.

Our dividend safety screener

Our dividend safety screener is arguably one of the most useful tools in Canada for passive income and dividend based investors.

Our screener calculates growth streaks, growth rates, payout ratios in terms of earnings, operating and free cash flow and so much more and presents Premium members with a grade on the overall safety of the dividend.

How useful was the tool? Our grading system works on a 0-5 basis, with 0 being the worst and 5 being the best.

During the COVID-19 crash, 80% of the Canadian companies who slashed or cut their dividend had a rating of 2.0 or less.

If you're looking for a stock screener that will not only allow you to narrow down companies but present you with a proven formula of identifying outperformers,take a 30 day money back guarantee test of Stocktrades Premium here.

We hope this article has given you a lot more clarity on the world of stock screeners and how you can utilize them to trade in stock markets. They are great for saving time, selecting stocks on precise metrics, and most importantly, they remove behavioral biases. Likestock trading Discord communities, they help users discover companies and securities that they would have remained unaware about, thus revealing new investment options.