Barchart.com Review – Charting, Research, and Automated Analysis

Introduction To Barchart.com

Barchart.com is financial markets charting, research and analysis service covering U.S. and global markets. The site has expanded dramatically in nearly two-decades of service when it started out merely as a technical analysis charting site and evolved into a financial portal with a worldwide community of users ranging from small investors to institutional portfolio managers. The diversification of services covers everything from news, articles, scanners that enhance both fundamental and technical analysis.

Barchart.com Plans and Pricing

Barchart.com provides a free membership just for registering, which provides limited access to technical and fundamental analysis tool, charts, historical data, watch lists, screeners and more. The free plan contains advertisements.

The Barchart Premier Plan lets members save up to 1,000 custom charts for the same symbol, no-ads and enhanced access to tools, like Unlimited Custom Views, Chart Templates, Watch Lists, Portfolios, Saved Custom Screeners compared to a limit of five of each under the free membership plan. The cost is $29.95-per month or the annual prepaid plan for $199.95 for a deeper discounted savings. The Premier Plan comes with a 30-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee. Real-time Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE) BZA is available during market-hours for stocks, but other exchange data remains delayed (as per exchange rules).

Barchart.com Platform Features

There is a ton of tools and functions on the Barchart.com site. It can be overwhelming for beginners, so here are some of the more useful tools I feel traders can benefit from:

Charts

While the name is Barchart.com, users have a choice between candlestick, Open High Low Close bars (OHLC), area, line and hollow candlestick charts. Users can select charting time periods from one-minute up to monthly and select from a multitude of technical indicators and studies. Flipcharts and interactive charts enable users to quickly access the information they need and determine the depth of data to integrate. These charts are often found throughout the internet as the site enables free access to their chart widget. I like them for the stability and cleanliness. Users can access the basic charts from free and upgrade to premium subscription for more depth and functions. Ultimately, I prefer the charts from TradingView and TrendSpider but Barchart has some other unique features.

Technical Indicators

Traders will find various charting indicators ranging from moving averages (simple, exponential, triangular, weighted) to Bollinger Band, Donchian and Keltner channels. Momentum indicators are labelled technical studies which include stochastic, RSI, MACD, Average True Range (ATR) and On-Balance Volume (OBV) to name a few. Experienced traders will have no problem setting up charts quickly and creating templates. Beginners should get acclimated to technical analysis tools to better utilize them.

Unique Technical Analysis Trading Tools

Barchart.com has provides traders with some additional tools to held them frame a better perspective on price action. The Traders Cheat Sheet and Barchart Opinion tool incorporate 13 back-tested strategy indicators to derive a data-driven BUY/SELL recommendation. While this takes a lot of legwork out of research, I can’t stress enough that traders must have a good understanding of the mechanics of the underlying indicators. Newbies should avoid the need to jump right into a position based on any singular analysis tool.

Automated tools like Barchart and TrendSpider are best used in conjunction with your own personal analysis.

News

Headlines and articles are pulled from various sources online including Associated Press, Reuters, Yahoo, PR Business wire and various media portals. Barchart also produces their own news and opinion content and posts a Chart of the Day for traders to consider. The news feature is more similar to sites like Motley Fool and The Street than standalone news platforms like Benzinga Pro and TradetheNews.

Screener

Barchart.com has a powerful screener for stocks, options, commodities, ETFs and even mutual funds (all asset classes) that users can customize and save. New users can start with the pre-built screens for stocks and options and then tweak the calibration settings to suit their preferences. This is a good way to get acclimated to using the screener and eventually creating your own customized screens. Keep in mind the free membership limits only five saved screens whereas the Premier Plan has unlimited saves.

The screener offers a wide range of filters (similar to FinViz) that traders can use to create unique scans. It is not as comprehensive as tools like StockFetcher and EquityFeed, but it gets the job done.

Options Screener and Unusual Activity

Options trading has ballooned through the years, especially with traders using smaller accounts. Monitoring unusual options trading activity has become a norm with intraday traders. The Options screener is a great tool for monitoring active options and unusual activity, volume leaders, highest implied volatility and many more pre-built screens.

Advancer Options Strategy Screener

The advanced options screener will scan for options strategies based on various configurations like Potential Return. This is one of my favorite ways to find income generation opportunities selling covered calls, bull/bear spreads, volatility or creating hedges. The Covered Call Screener is a great place for beginner options traders to explore a simple strategy.

Personalization

Users can create their own customized “My Barchart” layout pages to display just the data templates they need including quotes, news, screens and charts. Created watch lists and portfolio can be displayed to optimize valuable screen real estate without the clutter of data and functions you don’t need.

More Unique Features

Barchart.com posts a daily (high probability) Chart-of-the-Day that users can follow and determine if worth playing. Users can also have their watch lists and alerts e-mail to them daily for free. The free membership is very generous with access to the tools, but limits capacity to five saved templates. One of the most useful features is the Flipcharts, which a provide an instant mini-chart for all stocks on selected watch lists and portfolios.

Main Benefits of Barchart.com

Barcharts.com combines so many tools in one spot for technical and fundamental research spanning domestic and global markets. As mentioned earlier, the screeners are excellent for finding opportunities especially for options trades. Personally, I like to scan the most action options and trade the underlying equities for potential high probability patterns and set-ups.

Should You Try Barchart?

Barchart.com is great for intraday traders looking for ideas throughout the day and swing traders looking for candidates on a wider time frame to hold. Intraday traders should consider premium membership to get real-time quotes. Investors and portfolio managers can track their complete portfolios including most asset classes include cryptos along with alerts. Beginners need to gain a solid knowledge base for technical analysis to take advantage of the tools and functions. While seasoned traders gain the most, even newbies can work their way up slowly.