Uncle Stock Review – Does This Stock Screener Measure Up?

About Uncle Stock

Uncle Stock is a straightforward but detailed stock screener that combines fundamental and technical information. The main advantage of this platform over the many other available stock screeners is the immensity of its dataset. Uncle Stock has more than 3,000 metrics, and all of them are historical, so you can back-test your stock screens. In addition, Uncle Stock has detailed fundamental information about stocks from around the globe, rather than just those on the US exchanges. That makes it an ideal choice for traders who dabble in trading in emerging markets as well as on major North American and European exchanges.

Is Uncle Stock worth paying for? Keep reading our Uncle Stock review to find out.

Uncle Stock Pricing Options

Uncle Stock offers three different service tiers. The Bronze plan, at $14/month or $112/year, offers only the most essential capabilities of Uncle Stock. You can create watchlists and use the stock screener, as well as view advanced fundamental metrics such as valuation and profitability.

The Silver plan adds backtesting with yearly rebalancing, as well as the ability to save your stock screens. This plan costs $22/month or $174/year.

Finally, the Gold plan, for $37/month or $295/year, unlocks the full potential of Uncle Stock. You can rebalance back tests on half yearly and quarterly timescales, as well as benchmark metrics against the industry medians. With a Gold subscription, you can also export data – including screener results and stock details – to Excel.

To get you started, Uncle Stock offers a free two-week trial of the Gold subscription for new users.

Uncle Stock Features

Stock Information

The most impressive thing about Uncle Stock is simply the sheer amount of data it has on more than 77,000 stocks from around the world. That includes coverage for the US markets, Canadian markets, and European markets. In addition, Uncle Stock has data for Chinese companies, Indian companies, Brazilian companies, and much more.

The platform goes far beyond the sort of high-level fundamental readings traders typically get with services like Yahoo Finance. In fact, Uncle Stock boasts more than 3,000 individual metrics, many of them derivatives of common metrics to give you a more detailed breakdown of a company’s financial health.

All of the fundamental metrics most commonly used are summed up on the ‘Stock Price’ page, right next to basic technical charts from Trading View. When you hover over any metric, Uncle Stock automatically pops up text to explain exactly what that metric is. In some cases, this provides more information about what uncommon metrics are and what numbers represent good and bad values. In other cases, the popup includes additional data points to show investors the underlying figures included in a metric (e.g. the popup for earnings yield shows exact price and EPS figures for the past year).

Diving into detailed fundamentals can be a bit more confusing, especially if you’re not looking for a single metric in particular. Here, you can access all of the thousands of data points about a company. Uncle Stock organizes them into categories and users can search for metrics using a drop-down search menu.

For most fundamental metrics and most companies, Uncle Stock has historical data going back at least five years and often much longer. The “long-term” viewer shows data year-by-year, but you can also look at trailing, rolling, and forward data for most metrics. Gold subscribers can also check metrics against industry medians, and Uncle Stock automatically highlights figures red or green to draw attention to which metrics show the company under- or over-performing.

Importantly, Uncle Stock does provide basic graphs for any metric that you click on. These graphs have improved over time and Uncle Stock now offers graphs with multiple data points. You can even plot fundamental data, which gives YCharts a run for its money (at a way better price).

Uncle Scores

In addition to widely used financial metrics, Uncle Stock provides a number of custom metrics – the most important of which is the Uncle Score. The platform provides an exact definition for how this score is calculated, but essentially it’s a measure of whether a stock offers growth at a reasonable price. For growth investors, the Uncle Score offers a simple and fast way to find new investing ideas.

Based on Uncle Scores, Uncle Stock offers a buy/hold/sell recommendation for every company in its database. Of course, Uncle Scores are also available in the long list of fundamental data metrics for each stock and can be used for screening and back testing. In fact, Uncle Stock offers a list of the top 20 stocks recommended based on Uncle Scores at any given time as one of the default lists in the dashboard.

Stock Screener

The Uncle Stock screener is the heart and soul of this platform, although you wouldn’t necessarily know if just from looking at the screener menu. The stock screening layout is subdued, and there’s not much guidance as to what values you can enter for different parameters. In that sense, the stock screener is tailored primarily for advanced traders who are looking for stocks that fit a particular strategy.

The screener allows you to first filter companies by geography and industry. The geography filters are fine-tuned to the level of continents and individual countries, while the industry filters offer multiple levels of refinement. Beyond that, you can enter as many parameters as you would like for a single screen and sort them based on any single metric.

The results are shown in tabular form, and you can click on any stock in the results list to access the detailed stock information. You can also easily save screener results to a watch list.

One of the unique features of the stock screener is that it includes parameters for fundamental stock analysis. For example, you can filter stocks using financial results like revenue, profit, and earnings as well as ratios like P/E, dividend yield, and enterprise value. The wealth of fundamental screening options makes this one of the best stock screeners available for the long term investor.

It’s perhaps unsurprising given Uncle Stock’s focus on fundamentals and long term investments, but the stock screener only offers a few technical indicators as filters. These parameters are largely geared toward finding outperforming stocks, not for helping day traders find technical setups.

Back Testing

The other feature that sets Uncle Stock apart is historical back testing of screener results. The back test module is where traders can put all of Uncle Stock’s historical data to use. Options for running back tests are somewhat limited, although you can define how frequently you would like to rebalance the portfolio from your screener results and based on what – whether stop loss percentages, keeping the price greater than the simple moving average, or keeping the MACD positive.

The back testing tool is integrated directly into the stock screener and only takes a few clicks to activate. Helpfully, the results show the deviation in the result, which should serve as an indicator of how likely it is that the back test represents future results.

Layout and Customization

Uncle Stock’s layout is not very modern, which can make it seem cluttered at times. Most of your screener results, watchlists, and individual stock searches are kept in tabs so you can get back to them. Silver and Gold subscribers can also set personalized viewing panes.

Overall, though, there isn’t much you can do to change the way that Uncle Stock looks. If you don’t love it, your best bet is to export data to Excel and work with it within that program.

Uncle Stock Platform Differentiators

There are a couple features that set Uncle Stock apart. First, it has historical data for more than 77,000 global companies and more than 3,000 metrics about each of those companies. The sheer volume of financial data is impressive, and something you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. Second, Uncle Stock’s derived scores and other metrics make it significantly easier to take away actionable information from the platform. Finally, Uncle Stock’s back test functionality is extremely easy to use and is integrated right into the stock screener. That makes this perhaps the best stock screener available for fundamental investors.

All that said, I wish Uncle Stock’s screener was a bit more modern and user-friendly. The tool provides access to some powerful analytical data, but the platform interface could use some improvements. The team behind Uncle Stock is taking feedback into account and has continued to roll out some interesting features since our initial review.

What Type of Trader is Uncle Stock Best For?

Based on my Uncle Stock review, I think this platform is best for medium- and long-term traders who are looking for a combination of value and growth. The platform leans in to fundamental trading heavily, but you’ll also find basic technical analysis tools available. It’s a platform that Warren Buffett would approve of, but that a solely value-driven investor like Benjamin Graham might not.

Since the stock screener isn’t overly simple and the number of metrics is somewhat overwhelming, I would recommend Uncle Stock only for advanced traders who have a fair amount of investing experience. You’ll want to have a strategy in place and know, at least to some degree, what you’re looking for.

Uncle Stock can be extremely useful for global traders since its database offers more than just North American and European stock market coverage. It’s currently one of the only fundamental stock screener tools that looks into Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian markets.

Pros

• More than 3,000 metrics covering over 77,000 global stocks
• Basic technical charts from Trading View
• Custom metrics like the Uncle Score provide actionable information at a glance
• Great stock screener with unlimited filter parameters
• Back testing with automated rebalancing integrated into stock screener

Cons

• Copper and Bronze subscriptions don’t offer backtest tool
• Tabular layout is hard to read
• The platform UI can be overwhelming/confusing (but it is improving)