Google Finance Stock Screener Tutorial

While Google Finance no longer offers a built-in stock screener, the versatility of Google Sheets paired with the capabilities of Wisesheets add-on presents a unique opportunity for investors. In this concise guide, we delve into how you can construct a powerful and personalized stock screener using these tools. Our focus will be on setting up your screener to filter through market data, assess stock performances, and streamline your investment strategies right within Google Sheets. Whether you’re a novice to the markets or an experienced trader, this approach can enhance the way you select and manage your investments, maximizing the potential of the resources at your disposal. Let’s embark on the journey to build a stock screener that brings the analytical power back into your hands.

How to build your Google Finance stock screener in Google Sheets

To kickstart your journey of setting up a Google Finance stock screener, you first need to have a Google Sheets document open. Google Sheets serves as the versatile foundation for your stock screening tool, leveraging its robust functionality and user-friendly interface.

Step 1: Install the Wisesheets Add-on

Before you dive into the data, you'll need to install the Wisesheets add-on for Google Sheets. Navigate to the 'Add-ons' menu within Google Sheets, search for Wisesheets, and install it. Once you've authorized the add-on to operate within your spreadsheet, you're ready to move on to the data collection phase.

Step 2: List Your Stocks

Your next action is to list the tickers of the stocks you want to track in your googlefinance stock screener. This list will be the backbone of your screening process, so ensure that these tickers match the Yahoo Finance system, as Wisesheets uses the same identifiers.

Step 3: Select Your Parameters

After listing your stocks, the next crucial step in refining your googlefinance stock screener is to select the specific parameters that will guide your investment decisions. Here's how to proceed:

1. Identify Metrics: Choose from a variety of metrics such as P/E ratio, revenue growth, or free cash flow. These metrics serve as your screening criteria. Full list of metrics here.
2. Specify Time Periods: For each parameter, you can specify the time period to analyze. Wisesheets offers flexibility with periods like TTM (Trailing Twelve Months), LY (Last Fiscal Year), and LQ (Last Fiscal Quarter). For more historical depth, periods like LY-1, LY-2, etc., give you insights from previous years up to LY-9, with a similar approach for quarterly data.
3. Period Selection: When selecting your parameters in Google Sheets, remember to indicate the corresponding period for each metric to retrieve accurate data. For instance, if you're interested in the last fiscal year's revenue growth, you would note this as "Revenue growth LY".
4. Defaults: If you don't specify a period, Wisesheets will default to the latest fiscal year data (LY) for that metric. Real-time data parameters require no period specification.

Step 4: Use the WISE Screener Section

With the tickers and parameters set, head to the WISE Screener section within the add-on. Here, you can select your listed tickers and the chosen parameters. It's a straightforward drag-and-select process, followed by a click on the 4 square icon.

Step 5: Retrieve the Data

The exciting part of this process is retrieving the data. Simply hit the "Get Data" button, and watch as your Google Finance stock screener populates with up-to-date information. The add-on will create a 'bucket' that holds your selected data, which can be refreshed anytime to keep the information current.

Step 6: Analyze and Sort Your Data (optional)

Once your data is in place, you can sort and analyze it as needed. You may rank companies by revenue, earnings growth, or any other financial metric that aligns with your investment objectives. The data sorting capabilities of Google Sheets become particularly powerful here, allowing you to organize the information in a way that suits your analysis.

Step 7: Incorporating Conditional Formatting into Your Stock Screener (optional)

Conditional Formatting is an invaluable tool in Google Sheets that can turn your Google Finance stock screener into an easy-to-read dashboard. Here's how to apply it to enhance your investment analysis:

1. Select Data: Highlight the cells with the financial data you want to track.
2. Open Conditional Formatting: Go to 'Format' and choose 'Conditional formatting'.
3. Set Rules: Create rules to highlight metrics of interest, like low P/E ratios.
4. Customize Style: Choose formatting styles such as background color for cells meeting your criteria.
5. Apply and Save: Click 'Done' to apply the changes.

For example, you might set a green background for stocks with revenue growth above 20%, or red text for P/E ratios above industry average. This simplifies the identification of key performance indicators and helps you spot trends and outliers at a glance, thereby streamlining your decision-making process.

Step 8: Maintain Your Screener

Maintenance is minimal with this setup. To update your data, use the refresh button in the Wisesheets add-on. Remember, the refresh only works in the tab where you've set up your tickers and parameters, so keep your googlefinance stock screener organized.

Real-World Examples of Google Finance Stock Screening

To truly grasp the power of a custom Google Finance stock screener, it helps to see how it can be applied in real-world scenarios. Here are a couple of examples illustrating the practical use of such a screener in different investing contexts:

1. Growth Investing: Imagine you're a growth investor looking for companies with high revenue growth rates. You could set up your screener to filter for stocks with a quarterly revenue growth (Year-Over-Year) of over 20%. This could be paired with a check for the stock’s price being near its 52-week high, which often signals strong market belief in the stock's future prospects. By automating this in Google Sheets, you can constantly have a list of potential growth stocks at your fingertips.
2. Value Investing: If you're on the hunt for undervalued stocks, your screener might focus on a low price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio and a high dividend yield. You could further refine this by incorporating a debt-to-equity ratio filter to find companies with solid financial stability. A real-world application would be screening for stocks with a P/E ratio below 15 and a dividend yield of over 3%, indicating potential value picks.
3. Sector-Specific Analysis: Investors who specialize in certain sectors, such as technology or healthcare, can customize their screener to only show stocks within those sectors. For instance, a tech-focused investor might look for companies with high R&D spending as a percentage of sales, which is a sign of innovation and future growth potential.
4. Swing Trading: Swing traders can benefit from setting up a screener that identifies stocks with high volatility and trading volume, which are key for this trading strategy. By screening for stocks that have a beta higher than 1 and an average trading volume over 500,000 shares, traders can find candidates more likely to experience significant short-term price movements.

These real-world examples showcase how a customized Google Finance stock screener can be adapted to various investing styles and objectives. By combining the dynamic features of Google Sheets and the data integration offered by Wisesheets, investors can transform vast quantities of market data into actionable insights tailored to their specific investment criteria.

Tips for Optimizing Your Stock Screening with Google Finance

Optimizing your stock screening process using Google Finance in combination with Wisesheets can lead to more efficient and effective investment research. Below are some strategic tips to enhance your stock screening experience:

1. Integrate Real-Time Data: While selecting parameters, use Google Finance's ability to pull real-time price data. This ensures that your screening decisions are based on the most current market conditions.
2. Leverage Conditional Formatting: Apply conditional formatting in Google Sheets to visually highlight stocks that meet your specific criteria, such as those with a P/E ratio below a certain threshold or revenue growth above a certain percentage.
3. Combine Historical and Recent Data: Blend TTM, LQ, and LY data with real-time price data to get a comprehensive view of a stock's performance over time compared to its current valuation.
4. Custom Filters: Make use of Google Sheets' filter functions to sort your data according to the parameters most relevant to your strategy, like high growth or value stocks.
5. Utilize Pivot Tables: Create pivot tables to summarize large sets of data and uncover trends or patterns that might not be immediately evident from a standard list view.
6. Save and Share Your Template: Once you have set up your screener with all the desired parameters and formatting, save it as a template. You can also share it with your network or investment club.

Conclusion

By leveraging the combination of Google Sheets and Wisesheets, you can craft a Google Finance stock screener that's tailored to your needs without the hassle of complicated software. This dynamic duo brings back the analytical power to your investment process, giving you control over the data you see and how you use it. With real-time updates and a vast array of customizable options, your investment analysis is poised to be more precise, efficient, and impactful.

Stay sharp and wise!