Google Finance is one of the super powerful tool among the dozens of free services offered by Google. Millions of traders and investors worldwide use it everyday. You can do numerous things in this lightweight web application absolutely free of cost. Whether it is managing your portfolio or fetching stock quotes from any exchange in the world or setting up a Stock screener, Google Finance makes everything easier for you. There were bunch of Google Finance API’s available few years back, but unfortunately they are deprecated now. But we still have the liberty to use Google Finance data in Google Sheets or Docs. In this post, we’ll figure out how to use Google Finance for smart trading decisions. We’ll uncover some cool features of Google Finance which would definitely help you going forward.

Google Finance Stock Screener

This is one of the coolest feature of Google Finance which most of the people don’t use at all. It helps you fetch the list of stocks from any exchange as per the criteria defined. While most of the filters in the screener are based on fundamental factors, yet there are few technical dimensions too. Access stock screener from the below link:

https://www.google.com/finance#stockscreener

This is how it looks like:

In the topmost tab you can specify Country, Exchange, Sector and Currency. While in the lower tab you can specify the screener criteria. Click on the ‘Add  Criteria’ button to see more options.  Check the below screenshot where I have screened for Indian Stocks whose 52 week price change is greater than 20%, P/E ratio of atleast 10 and market cap greater than 100B.

Google Finance Domestic Trends

Domestic Trends is a unique feature in Google Finance which lets you estimate the popularity or Trend for a particular keyword. As quoted in their website “Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. Changes in the search volume of a given sector on google.com may provide unique economic insight. You can access individual trend indexes by clicking on the left-hand navigation“

A careful study of trends for a particular sector can help you determine a pattern and make a profitable trading bet. The only known limitation is that the trend is calculated using Google US traffic statistics.

In order to access Google domestic trends, visit the below URL:

https://www.google.com/finance/domestic_trends

You would see a list of sectors in the left hand side of the screen. Click on a particular sector to see its trend in the form of a graph. The below screenshot shows trend for ‘Computers and Electronic’ sector.

At a quick glance, the above graph shows that the trend for this sector has been declining constantly from last 10-12 years.  Now wonder IT is no longer a booming industry. Google Finance measures the search volume of keywords against everything else that is searched for on Google Search.  This means that a rise or drop in the relative search volume of a particular sector doesn’t necessarily mean that that sector is being searched for any more or any less than it currently is.  It simply means that its searches make up a larger or smaller proportion of everything that everyone is looking for on Google Search.

You can also overlay the price chart of any stock(s) in the trend graph to do a comparative study. Just add the symbol name in compare box and click on ‘Add’. See below, the price chart of ‘IBM’ has been overlayed on the domestic trend chart for ‘Computers and Electronics’ sector

You can download the trend data in an Excel sheet for your further study. Google Domestic trends may not look very useful now, but this is certainly going to be a powerful tool for market analysis in future. Market sentiments are governed by mass opinion which is reflected organically in these trends.

Other Useful Google Finance Features

Apart from Stock screener and Domestic trends, Google Finance also offers powerful charting feature with dozens of indicators. These charts refresh in realtime for majority of exchanges in the world. You can create and track your stocks and mutual funds in Google portfolio which is also free to use.

You can use Google Finance function to use real time stock prices in Excel sheet (Google sheets). See few examples in the below sheets:

Camarilla Pivot Points Excel Sheet: Live Signals

Intraday Open High Low Strategy: Live Excel Sheet

So why to spend thousands to bucks on a sophisticated charting application when you have Google Finance available at absolutely no cost. For beginners we highly recommend to explore Google finance and develop a habit of using it.