A stock screener narrows thousands of stocks down to a manageable handful. This is how pro traders find promising stocks and build strong watchlists.
Swing trading is a form of active trading that’s on a longer timeframe than day trading. Swing traders can take weeks or months to let a move play out.
In swing trading, you get more time to think about your process and research stocks. But that doesn’t mean you can waste time. Taking too much time to research might mean missing out on great trading opportunities. That’s why a stock screener is essential in swing trading.
Why do you need a stock screener for swing trading, and which ones are the best? Let’s dive in!
What Is Swing Trading?
Swing trading is a trading method that involves holding stock for a short amount of time. The time period varies — swing traders can hold stocks overnight or even for a few months.
Swing trading is less about how long you hold the stocks and more about capitalizing on a trend. As a swing trader, you want to hold onto stocks long enough to try and profit from longer-term price swings.
Here’s an awesome example from a hot sector:
What Is a Stock Screener for Swing Trading?
A stock screener for swing trading is a platform that helps you pick stocks to swing trade according to your preferred criteria.
Swing traders trade on a longer timeframe than day traders. They need to research more than just a stock’s technical indicators — they may also do thorough fundamental research. That’s why most swing traders opt for a stock screener that specializes in both types of analysis.
Different stock traders need different types of stock screeners. Check out my other picks for the best overall stock screeners and the best stock screeners for day trading.
Importance of Using a Stock Screener for Swing Trading
A stock screener for swing trading is important to support your strategy.
For instance, if your strategy is based on the stock’s momentum, you want a screener that can track momentum-based indicators like moving averages, Bollinger Bands, and the relative stock index.
Why Do You Need a Swing Trading Stock Screener?
You need a swing trading stock screener because it’s essential for trading — simple as that.
Your stock screener does the heavy lifting to help you pick promising stocks according to your criteria. A stock screener achieves that by being customizable, meaning you can tweak its features and scanners to your satisfaction.
Many good stock scanners key you into news catalysts and provide strong charting capabilities to help you make informed trading decisions.
Advantages of Swing Trading Stock Screeners
The main advantage of swing trading stock screeners is that it helps you identify the right stocks to trade according to your strategy. You can customize swing trading stock screening tools with technical and fundamental criteria that help you find the stocks you’re looking for.
You need a good grasp of both fundamental and technical analysis to swing trade. Check out my picks for the best stock screeners with technical indicators and learn more about using stock screeners for fundamental analysis.
Stock Screener Settings for Swing Trading
Your swing trading strategy will decide your stock screener settings. We have to work our way back from the indicators we’re looking for our strategy first…
I break down a basic swing trading strategy in this video:
Here are the attributes I’m looking for. A good swing trading scanner will let you scan for most of them. The rest you figure out by looking at the chart…
- Earnings winner
- News
- At or around 52-week highs
- Low float
- Clear support
- “Good” company (they won’t dilute or delist overnight)
- Hot sector
How We Evaluated These Best Stock Screeners for Swing Trading
There are lots of stock screener choices out there, but not all of them are right for swing traders. Here are the criteria I used to evaluate the best swing trading stock screeners:
- Pricing: Most of the best stock screeners are paid apps. So find one that suits your budget but still meets your trading needs.
- Customizability: Stock screeners live and die by their criteria. The best screener platform should be customizable enough to fit its target audience’s trading needs.
Different traders want different things out of their stock screener. Identify your own stock screener criteria for swing trading to make sure you find the screener that’s right for you.
Best Swing Trading Stock Screeners
Here are my picks for the best swing trading stock screeners:
- StocksToTrade — Best Overall Swing Trading Stock Screener
- Seeking Alpha — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener for Stock Recommendations
- Benzinga Pro — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener for Fundamental Analysis
- Zacks — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener With Ranking System
- Trade Ideas Pro — Best AI-Powered Swing Trading Stock Screener
There’s no law saying you need to stick to one screener. Try them all and use the ones that work best for you!
Paid stock screeners usually provide more bang for your buck. But free screeners can help beginners get their feet wet — check out my favorite free stock screeners!
1. StocksToTrade — Best Overall Swing Trading Stock Screener
My first swing trading stock screener pick is StocksToTrade.
StocksToTrade is an irreplaceable part of my trading day. I don’t know what I’d do without it. Why? Because it’s an insanely customizable screener that lets me scan with any parameters I want.
You want to replicate my basic swing trading scan? That’s doable. Have other favorite scans or preferred parameters? Plug them into StocksToTrade, and it’ll do the job for you.
StocksToTrade is a screener made by traders for traders. You’ll have loads of built-in screeners, so you can trade like the pros.
Take it for a spin — get a 14-day free trial of StocksToTrade for just $7!
There’s one more reason to love StocksToTrade: Oracle. It’s an algorithm-based chart analysis tool that gives you actionable trade signals from the day’s most tradable stocks.
Want a taste of Oracle? Sign up for NO-COST Oracle trade alerts right now!
2. Seeking Alpha — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener for Stock Recommendations
My second swing trading stock screener is Seeking Alpha.
Seeking Alpha provides a stock screener with pre-made screens, but it’s also customizable enough for you to set up your own scans.
What’s different here is that the screener also shows each stock’s Quant rating, Wall Street rating, and Seeking Alpha author rating.
These ratings act as recommendations for traders — that doesn’t mean trading these stocks is guaranteed to make you money, though. Take this advice as one piece of your evaluation process.
3. Benzinga Pro — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener for Fundamental Analysis
My third swing trading stock screener pick is Benzinga Pro.
This fundamental-focused stock screener targets swing traders and investors. It provides over 30 fundamental data screener filters and multiple pre-configured templates to assist in fundamental analysis.
Benzinga is a newswire, so it’s no surprise that Benzinga Pro specializes in news. One of the most helpful features is a calendar which lets you look back on news to see how it impacted a stock’s price.
You can search news by type — from press releases to SEC filings and more.
4. Zacks — Best Swing Trading Stock Screener With Ranking System
My fourth swing trading stock screener pick is Zacks.
One of Zacks’ premiere features is its Zacks Rank system. This ranking lists the stocks most recommended by Zacks financial analysts — the stocks ranked are recommended buys. Some of their number-one picks earn high returns. But the companies can also underperform.
Zacks offers pre-built premium screens for traders with subscriber accounts. But the customizability is somewhat limited — you can’t edit these screens yourself. What you can do is recreate the screen and tweak it according to your needs.
5. Trade Ideas Pro — Best AI-Powered Swing Trading Stock Screener
My fifth swing trading stock screener pick is Trade Ideas Pro.
Trade Ideas Pro has Holly (because she’s the ‘Holly Grail’ of trading AIs), an AI-powered discovery engine. At the end of each trading day, Holly looks over everything that happened and comes up with multiple strategies to help traders beat the market
But Trade Ideas isn’t just a robotrading platform. It lives up to its name thanks to its Channel feature. Trade Ideas offers different channels that give you a quick look at various sectors and provide trade ideas.
Final Thoughts
Swing traders need a stock screener that offers a good balance of technical and fundamental analysis. Not just that, they need a stock screener that identifies the right stocks to trade according to their strategy and preferences.
Using stock screeners isn’t like getting married — go out there and try as many screeners as you can to find the ones that work for you!
Here’s an extra stock screener pick for you: millionaire trader Matt Monaco’s Alpha Scanner. Before he became a trader, Matt was a software engineer — and he brought those skills back to design this scanner based on his trading style.
It’s got trade alerts, live mentoring, and more. Will Alpha Scanner give you an edge in trading? Find out for yourself…
Sign up and join the next Alpha Scanner LIVE broadcast to learn more!