Finbox.io Review – Fundamental Stock Data For Your Trading

Introduction to Finbox.io

Finbox.io offers a user-friendly platform for sifting through a wealth of fundamental stock data. The platform focuses on two branches: developing stock ideas and analyzing stock fundamentals. On the stock ideas side, the platform allows you to draw on the portfolios of well-known investors or curated picks to develop a watchlist and includes a comprehensive stock screener. On the analysis side, Finbox.io offers a built-in interface and an impressive array of Excel templates to compare fundamental data across stocks.

Finbox.io Price Options

Finbox.io has a simple subscription pricing model with only a single service tier. Subscriptions may be billed monthly for $39/month, quarterly for $29/month, or annually for $25/month. A 30-day trial is available for $1.

Finbox.io Features

Ideas

The ideas section of Finbox.io is a useful tool for generating new stock ideas based on what well-known investors are currently holding in their portfolios. While this is not a concept unique to Finbox.io (see GuruFocus), the platform makes it easy to find portfolios with a search bar and offers curated portfolios based on high-dividend stocks or stocks within particular sub-industries. 

Where Finbox.io shines is the interface once you click on a portfolio. The platform makes it easy to quickly download all recent filings and offers a quick tabular overview of all of the stocks within the portfolio that can be sorted by various fundamental criteria. All of the stock data for a portfolio can be quickly exported to use in Excel with Finbox.io’s formula templates.

Stock Screener

The stock screener is another component of Finbox.io that, while not unique, is executed well. The screener offers a huge range of fundamental and valuation-based data to include as filters, all of which are searchable for easy access. Even better, a stats panel available for every metric shows a bar chart of how that metric measures up across the major industries, making it easy to get a reasonable idea of where to set a filter value. One minor annoyance is that the filters must be adjusted in a vertical column on the side of the page, which can get disorganized if you have a lot of filters.

The screen results page not only shows the stocks that matched your filtering criteria, but also provides a quick overview of their performance with a histogram of analysts projections for those stocks and their average performance relative to the S&P500. While there are similar screeners in tools like FinViz, Finbox does a great job of displaying the results in a clean, easy-to-read format.

Looking further into any particular stock, you reap the full benefits of Finbox.io’s analysis features. While the standard price chart is not particularly detailed, you have access to an entire gallery of chart’s plotting that stock’s fundamental parameters. In addition, simple slider charts allow you to compare your chosen stock’s fundamentals to its competitors in the sector and to the market as a whole. Finally, you get to see how Finbox.io’s models project that stock’s future performance return compared to what Wall Street analysts are projecting (which can be used in conjunction with analyst tools like TipRanks).

Financial Model Templates

The heart of Finbox.io is its set of Google spreadsheet and Excel add-ons for creating custom financial models. The add-on creates the =FNBX(ticker, metric, period) function, which automatically updates your spreadsheets with live stock data so that you’re never working on an outdated model or trying to input data manually. This function also makes it simple to build your own model for one stock and then re-use it instantly for any other stock by simply changing the ticker in the FNBX formula.

To get users who are not comfortable creating their own models started, Finbox.io offers several model templates that can be downloaded and modified as needed. Most of these templates are targeted at using different fundamental metrics to calculate a fair value per share of a given stock, although there are also template models for examining performance. It’s worth noting that while Finbox.io advertises that they will build new models in response to user requests, they currently only offer eight templates, each with a set of small variations in model timeframe or key variable to choose from.

Data Explorer

Finbox.io also offers a data explorer section of the platform to examine fundamental data for any stock within an interactive web viewer. The data types available in the data explorer are the same as those available as metrics in the FNBX function, and this explorer is ultimately designed to push users back towards the spreadsheet add-on by offering explicit instructions on how to use any data metric with the FNBX function.

However, the data explorer can also be useful for making quick comparisons for a single fundamental data type between a stock of choice and its competitors. Finbox.io automatically charts the selected data against other stocks in the industry, although you can customize which stocks are used in the comparison as needed.

Platform Ease of Use

Finbox.io is primarily a browser-based platform, although the real power of the software comes through the FNBX spreadsheet add-on. Thankfully, there is little need to switch back and forth between the two unless you want to use the stock screener or portfolio ideas, since all stock-specific data can be acquired with the spreadsheet add-on function.

The browser portion of the platform offers a clean and modern layout that is easy to navigate. Users can create and save their own watchlists, either from scratch or by modifying the example portfolios found on the ideas page. Stock screener searches can also be saved for re-use and to create watchlists.

On the spreadsheet side, one of the best features of the FNBX function is that it can be easily modified to be used for any stock. That means that once you set up a financial model, all that is needed to re-use it for another stock is to change the ticker symbol included in the FNBX call.

How Finbox Stands Out

The main feature differentiating Finbox.io from other platforms is the platform’s strong focus on fundamental data analysis. While the portfolio ideas and stock screener are not new, they offer more insight into the fair value of stocks based on financial models and into fundamental corporate data than other comparable screeners. In addition, the FNBX function in the spreadsheet add-on is a game-changer for any traders who need some help in creating their own financial models. The function is not only simple to use and offers live data updates, but Finbox.io also offers explicit instructions on how to incorporate any of the fundamental data that the site offers into a custom financial model.

Is Finbox Right For You?

Finbox.io is geared towards the value investor who wants to find stocks that are undervalued in the long-run based on the company’s fundamental data. The platform is highly analytic, with financial model templates and the FNBX function for creating custom financial models. There is almost no emphasis on technical analysis, with both the stock screener and data explorer pages focused solely on fundamental data. Thus, Finbox.io is ideal for long-term investors who are willing to put in the hard work of detailed analysis and modeling to find potential returns.

Pros

• Huge range of fundamental data available for stocks
• Ideas page offers fair value analysis of portfolios from major investors
• Individual stock pages offer excellent comparative insight into a stock’s value
• FNBX spreadsheet add-on allows development of custom financial models with live data
• Data explorer is designed to work relatively smoothly with spreadsheet add-on

Cons

• Very little support for basic technical analysis, including moving averages
• Number and diversity of financial model templates currently available is limited