YCharts Review – Charts for Fundamental Traders

Introduction To YCharts

YCharts.com is a financial research platform with screening, analytics, charting, news and data management tools. The all-in-one platform is comparable to a data terminal streaming information throughout the day with a heavy emphasis on fundamental data and quantitative metrics. YCharts strives to perform like a low-cost version of a Bloomberg feed without terminals or clunky interfaces that caters to retail traders, investors and professional money managers. The site claims to have over 592,000 registered users worldwide.

YCharts Pricing Options

YCharts has four types of pricing plans catering the recommended types of end-users. The depth of tools, services and support vary by plan.  

Ycharts offers a seven-day free trial and a basic LITE plan for students and individual investors just starting off on the platform.

YCharts Standard is $200-per user monthly and recommended for individual and high net worth investors and family offices.

YCharts Professional is $400-per user monthly and recommended is for investment advisors, hedge funds, money managers, investment banks and analysts.

YCharts Enterprise caters to institutional clients and comes with quarterly training sessions and dedicated modeling resources. Call for pricing details.

YCharts Features Breakdown

YCharts is cloud-based, which enables access from any online connection without having to download or sync changes. Here’s some of the notable features and indicators on the platform.

Charts

Ycharts has not only technical analysis charts with candlesticks, bar and line plotting but also fundamental charts that track various financial metrics including revenue and income trajectories. Users can compare different stocks to visualize performance and spot any converging or diverging trends between them. Time frames range from intraday-to-years.

Technical Indicators

Ycharts has over 40-technical indicators from price-based moving averages to momentum indicators like stochastic, MACD and RSI. Fundamental charts are available with over 4,000 financial metrics and massive 30-years’ worth of historical data including income statements and balance sheets. The depth of the financial metrics is quite mind-boggling and can be exported to Excel for further crunching. This is a goldmine for data scientists and quants.

Newsfeeds

YCharts provides real-time newsfeeds that can be streamed and/or linked to watch list symbols to pipe selective stories or even keywords. MT Newswires and multiple other sources provide diverse coverage of all the events moving the markets. Active news traders may still prefer services like Benzinga Pro or TradetheNews, but we found the news options to be adequate.

Screeners

The screener is flexible and enables filters by value, momentum, income or any type of strategy. The screener also has popular investor portfolios from hedge fund titans that users can filter with as the data is pulled from SEC 13-G filing. Users can get very creative with filter creation to find not so transparent information. For example, running a financial engineering screen that shows companies that have artificially boosted EPS growth through stock buybacks (to thin out the float, thus raising EPS). This filter would search for stock’s with EPS growth with flat to negative net income.

YCharts also has a fund screener that lets users filter through 40,000 mutual funds, which is great for financial planners and money managers looking to allocate client funds. Ironically, the scanners are tilted towards fundamental financial filters rather than technical indicators-based.

Alerts

Users can set and configure Alerts to any symbol on the watch lists with various filter triggers. Notifications can be sent via e-mail when triggered.

Export Tools

Most of the financial data is exportable and can be fed straight into Excel spreadsheets. This makes it portable and enables data scientists and quants to manipulate the data. Data manipulation refers to positioning and setting the data in a way to be most usefully interpreted and applied towards building models. The Excel Add-in is available only for the Professional and Institutional plans and export limits are 1 GB and 500 MB per-month, respectively.

Watch Lists

Users can create multiple watch lists by themes, sectors, industries or asset classes and link news, charts and alerts to them. Users can build custom watch lists or start with many pre-configured default watch lists. From there, you can opt to import to your own watch lists. It’s just a matter of screen space. Since the software is browser-based, the layouts can be saved but allow for little customization.  

Fundamental Research Tools

This is where YCharts really excels with deep forensic-like financial data that lets users go through company financials and filings seamlessly and fully exportable. Every single line item on the income statement is viewable. The ability to compare different companies’ side-by-side is a great feature that helps users gain a clearer perspective in a selected context, either with peers or cross-industry/asset comparative. Again, Ycharts provides up to 30-years of financial data. In all reality, who needs 30-year old data, right? But it’s nice knowing it’s there.

How Does YCharts Stand Out?

Ycharts is a one-stop shop for fundamental research. They created Y-Ratings to simplify analysis that streamlines and assesses the quality of the underlying metrics. As a result, they provide value and fundamentals scores on a scale of 1-to-10 (poor to excellent) for most stocks. Using comparable Y-Ratings, the software provides similar candidates as well as a valuation rating that users can reference in their own analysis.

Is YCharts a Good Value?

Compared to a Bloomberg terminal, it’s a great value. The level of in-depth financial research tools is impressive. Being fully exportable makes this a quant’s dream. The seven-day free trial and different pricing plans allow for new user to kick the tires and decide to upgrade or not.

If you are looking for a lower-cost alternative to YCharts, you may consider Stock Rover. Stock Rover offers fundamental charts and many other features for a lower monthly cost.

Should you Try YCharts?

YCharts is best suited for self-directed investors, swing traders and financial planners. Although the name implies a technical analysis platform, it’s more geared towards fundamental and quantitative data analysis best suited for those users. Intraday traders who rely on exotic technical chart indicators and level 2 screens have better options elsewhere.

Pros

• Over 4,000 financial metrics and up to 30-years of financial data available to chart
• Custom YCharts-Ratings analysis saves time and provides instant analysis on stocks
• Dashboard is intuitively designed with a bird’s eye perspective on a single screen of relevant market action
• Responsive customer support accessible via voice, chat and e-mail
• Technical and fundamental charts and screener
• Fully exportable data
• Very responsive customer service

Cons

• Limited charting indicators
• Have to contact for pricing plan costs