Stock screeners can be invaluable for anybody with an interest in stocks, offering you an easy way to sort through potential investments without having to do the hard work manually. However, for many people, this might not sound all that necessary at first.
A good stock screener can make a massive difference to your stock investments, whether you are brand new to stocks or a long-time investor – but why are they worth using?
Simplicity
Having a stock screener is one of the simplest ways to build a stock portfolio. Not only can they present you with a list of stocks that you might have an interest in, but they also allow you to rapidly refine that list to get a very granular breakdown of potential stock investments that suit your preferences.
This makes these tools a huge time-saver for investors, as well as being a more effective way to discover stocks that you might invest in. While they can still take some time to learn, stock screeners are usually straightforward enough to need very little practice.
For example, finding a good stock screener for chart patterns can massively simplify a huge part of investing and streamline the learning curve if you are new to stocks. While this might not be a perfect solution in every situation, it makes things much easier to keep track of.
Diversification
For the same reason that a stock screener allows you to narrow down the stocks you want to buy, you can also use it to find stocks outside of your usual niche that might still be worth investing in. This makes it much easier to diversify based on specific criteria, all without having to actively seek out stocks in niches that you are not familiar with.
This kind of passive information-gathering can make a huge difference to your portfolio, both by making sure it is well-rounded in general and making sure you are maximizing your returns across a range of stock options.
Diversifying your stocks is a huge part of investing properly, so using tools like a stock screener can make things far easier to manage. This can also ensure that you are properly diversifying by letting you quickly and easily explore new investing opportunities, even if they are outside your usual niches.
Efficiency
While manually searching through stock options can be a fun and exciting part of the investment process at first, it is also a bit of a pain to keep track of and becomes less interesting as you get more experienced with stocks. Stock screeners are a direct solution to this problem.
A lot of people who get deeper into stock trading could be trying to explore stocks from two or three distinct niches at once – sometimes more – and keeping them organized can be a challenge in and of itself.
With a stock screener, it is much easier to keep track of a range of investment ideas, allowing you to follow up on the ones that you are really interested in. This also helps mitigate the risk of forgetting about them because you are too overwhelmed with other investment options.