The Best Free, Online ETF Screener?
| For an overview of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), see the ETF Investing Guide at SeekingAlpha.com |
Why settle for a list of ETFs?
ETF Screeners can do more…
ETFs are an interesting investment vehicle, but there are over 800 ETFs… and growing. How do we narrow down such a huge list of choices? In this post, I’ll examine several free, online ETF screeners. The kinds of tools anyone can use, regardless of where they trade.
I searched the web and found three screeners for comparison. The primary requirements of a screener are detailed filters to narrow down the choices, and well-formatted data grids for comparing the search results.
As with most comparison tools, there are differences, both in the number and types of filters, and the way the output is displayed. In some cases, the differences are significant.
Without further ado, below is a comparison of all the screening fields. As much as possible, I tried to put like items on the same line. Thus, the unique filters should be more apparent.
(see below for summary…)
  MarketWatch Adv. ETF Screener |
  Morningstar ETF Screener |
  IndexUniverse Fund Screener |
| Category: Classification | ||
| Equity - Style / Size | ||
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| Equity - Regional (non U.S.) | ||
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| Equity - Sector / Specialty | ||
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 |
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| Fixed / Other | ||
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  |
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| Category: Expenses | ||
| Expense Ratio | ||
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 |
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| Turnover | ||
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| Category: Price / Performance | ||
| Historical Return | ||
 |
  |
 |
| Dividend Rate % | ||
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||
| Alpha | ||
 |
||
| Beta | ||
  |
 |
|
| Standard Deviation | ||
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| Current Volume | ||
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||
| Average Daily Volume | ||
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| Price | ||
|
||
| Category: Valuation | ||
| Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio | ||
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| Price-to-Book (P/B) Ratio | ||
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| Category: Management | ||
| Company | ||
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| Inception Date | ||
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| Category: Other | ||
| Structure | ||
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| Sharpe Ratio | ||
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| Additional Data Points (Not For Screening) | ||
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| as seen at… | ||
| The Wall Street Journal | Investor’s Business Daily | |
Summary
All of the screening tools have some unique filters. So depending on the criteria, any of these tools could be useful. The biggest difference is in the presentation of search results. Both MarketWatch and Morningstar have small, fixed displays with few columns. That makes them seem more like dynamic list-generators than comparison tools. However, they do have deep detail-pages for the ETFs.
In contrast, IndexUniverse.com has a dynamic data-grid for search results that facilitates time-saving comparisons. The amount of choices can be overwhelming, although they have a default display with popular criteria. Overall, this site might offer the most efficient way to compare ETFs. They have sparse detail-pages, but once you have a ticker symbol, you can visit other sites for further research, such as MarketWatch and Morningstar, among others.
| Do you have a better way to analyze this information? note - my ideal tools have the following characteristics:  Free Public Easy Comprehensive |
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Thanks for pointing these out. I’ve used Morningstar before, back in my mutual fund days. I hadn’t thought that I should also try to use it (or others) for ETFs. Duh…!