StockFetcher Review – An In-Depth Look at This Stock Screener

About StockFetcher

StockFetcher.com is a highly flexible stock screener that lets you create custom stock screens using plain English rather than code. It’s impressively easy to create swing trading screens based on fundamental and technical analysis while incorporating key indicators, metrics, and ratios.

The unassuming, low-key website is very simple and lacking animation or anything flashy. In fact, it’s had the same homepage for well over a decade. The StockFetcher website is similar to FinViz in that sense. There are even indicators dating back to 2002 on the site. However, the outdated homepage is no reflection on the vast depth of the tools that make this service a bargain by any standards. Fortunately, StockFetcher’s pricing also appears to be stuck in time, to the benefit of users.

In our StockFetcher review, we’ll take a closer look at everything this stock screener can do.

StockFetcher Pricing Options

StockFetcher tools can be used with a free account with one-day delayed data and limited scanning options. To make the most of this stock screening platform, you must sign up for a subscription plan. There are two subscription plans:

The StockFetcher Standard Plan costs $8.95 per month or $24.95 per quarter.

This enables 100 saved filters, daily e-mails with scan results, 100 watch lists with up to 200 symbols per-watch list, and up to 200 symbols can be exported (.csv).

The StockFetcher Advanced Plan costs $16.95 per month or $44.95 per quarter. This is a beefed-up version of the Standard Plan, allowing 250 saved filters, 250 watchlists with up 1,000 symbols each. Up to 1,000 symbols can be exported (.csv). Advanced filter support is added.

Stock data is delayed 15-to-20 minutes during market hours for both plans. The pricing is very attractive when compared to similar stock screener programs like StockRover or FinViz.

StockFetcher Features Breakdown

Here are some of the notable features and indicators on the platform.

Charts

StockFetcher charts are simple but effective. Users can choose between candlesticks, OLHC (bar chart), dots, line, and or area (histogram) charts. Time frames range from intra-day to monthly. Users can add trend lines, boxes, and circles with notes. The simplicity is appealing as to not clutter up the charts with too many technical indicators. The charts are actually nice and easy to read. If you’re looking for a charting platform with more advanced features, you may prefer TradingView, but StockFetcher delivers a great charting experience.

Screening Filters (Stock Scanners)

StockFetcher features both pre-built stock screeners and customizable screeners. The stock screening filters are the star of the StockFetcher platform. While there are many great features, the screeners are what make this platform worthwhile. This platform has some of the best free stock scanners available.

There are hundreds of filters for both technical and fundamental analysis. You can browse a list of available filters, or just start typing to see suggested indicators.

One of the unique aspects of StockFetcher is that stock screeners are created using plain English phrases rather than code, so they look something like this:

This approach to building screens means that you can essentially start writing a screen the way you would explain it, and you won’t be far off from how StockFetcher will render it. There’s still a learning curve, to be sure, but it’s nowhere near as steep as the curve for learning Thinkorswim’s thinkscript code or TradingView’s Pine code.

If you prefer a more traditional approach to building screens, there’s also a “Filter Builder” tool. This is similar to the scan builders you will find in tools like FinViz and Yahoo Finance.

Technical Indicators

StockFetcher has over 125 indicators that can be used to create, enhance or refine your screening filters. In addition to the built-in indicators, there are numerous user-created indicators on the site. Compounding your filters just requires cut-and-pasting indicators into your stock screens. Of course, just be careful not to overload your screens with too many indicators.  

‘Find Similar’

This feature will screen the markets to find stocks with similar price patterns to a particular stock you search. The benefits of this are obvious. When I find a stock with a very compelling, high-probability technical setup, I can spread out my trading risk with multiple stocks or find a cheaper stock to trade. Often, this tool will find sector or industry peers to trade. However, I occasionally find cross-sector stocks moving together that have completely different fundamentals but share the same technicals.

Watch Lists

Watch lists in StockFetcher can represent a list of stocks to monitor or entire portfolios. They can be duplicated and exported as well. Watch lists can be viewed in table format or as charts. I like having the ability to run my watch lists through screen filters to see if any of them return filter matches.

The number of watch lists and total symbols you can have depends on your StockFetcher subscription. The Standard Plan allows up to 100 watch lists and 200 symbols, and the Advanced Plan up to 1,000 symbols and 250 watch lists.

Forums/Message Boards

The StockFetcher Forums have various message boards ranging from General Discussions to Indicators and Measures and even Stock Picks and Trading. I found some seriously talented programmers that don’t hesitate to answer inquiries and provide suggestions for constructing filters. The StockFetcher community is exceptionally generous, with customized scans being offered for free use and collaboration. I’ve been able to copy some very impressive screener filters right off the Filter Exchange board. This is a hidden strength of the platform.

Nightly Screener Results E-mail

StockFetcher lets you schedule nightly scans that will e-mail you the results with stock candidates every evening. This is super convenient and takes a lot of the legwork out of researching stocks to consider playing the next day. This feature alone is worth the monthly subscription fee and saves hours of manual scanning.  

StockFetcher Platform Differentiators

The ease of creating your own custom filters with the free-text filter language makes StockFetcher unique. I’m not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but even I was able to learn the language relatively quickly just from observing the built-in filters and then plugging in my own values. From there, I progressed to writing code. The leap from cut-and-pasting to writing your own code in StockFetcher is not that big. I’d say it’s a solid gateway into coding your own algorithmic scans.

Other unique features of StockFetcher include the Find Similar tool, scheduled nightly stock screeners, and the extraordinarily collaborative forum. Any of these features on their own would make for worthwhile trading software, and they’re even more powerful when combined with StockFetcher’s highly customizable screens.

Is StockFetcher a Good Value?

This is a resounding YES. At $8.95 per month, StockFetcher is very cheap and pays for itself with just one good trade idea. Personally, I can’t see the need 250 watch lists and am perfectly fine with the standard service. StockFetcher is cheaper than almost any other stock market screener that offers comparable levels of customization.

What Type of Trader StockFetcher is Best For

As simple as Stockfetcher.com appears, it takes some experience with the underlying indicators and patterns to take full advantage of the functions. Therefore, this service is best suited for experienced traders that have high fluency with candlestick charts and patterns. Newbies can learn the components and indicators and then apply them on the scans if committed.

What this platform lacks in modern design, it makes up for in power. Technical traders who utilize a broad range of indicators and scans will get a lot of value out of this platform.

While all quote data is 15-to-20 minutes delayed, intra-day traders can still fully utilize the scans to find rare pattern formations for trading opportunities throughout the day. The natural trading style fit of this platform is for swing traders and active investors with a solid knowledge base of technical patterns and a methodology to manage triggers.