Q: What happens to a screener with more than 10 filters?

It keeps working, and says so. Until recently nothing checked a screener's filter count on save, on any plan — and one plan's limit was higher before it was levelled — so a screener saved then may carry, say, 15. It reads, returns matches and backtests. On its own screener page, where it is yours to edit, a note above its filters says: "This screener holds 15 filters; the limit is now 10. It goes on running, and your changes to it save normally while it holds no more than the 15 filters it was saved with. You cannot go above that number. No plan raises this limit." A screener in a public folder is not yours to save, so it carries no note. You can rename it, change its universe, edit a filter and remove filters. What counts is the number it was SAVED with, not 10: an edit is refused only when it would leave more filters than that. Add a sixteenth and the note says the draft cannot be saved and how many rows to take out, until you are back to 15. At 10 or fewer the note goes before you save; reload without saving and it returns. Every save below your old number becomes the new one: save at 12, and 12 is the next ceiling. Nothing is deleted.

Question 1

How does Fincanva handle it?

Accepted Answer

A screener may hold up to 10 filters, on every plan, and no upgrade raises it — there is no higher figure to buy. A screener saved with more before the limit was checked keeps working; what happens to it is below. A strategy carrying a copy of a screener with more than 10 filters reads outside the plan until you remove filters from that strategy's own copy, or detach it. Trimming the screener in your library does not clear it: attaching copies the filters, and the two are independent from then on. A new screener opens as "Untitled screener" over the widest universe, and Save stays disabled until you change something: "Add a filter or change the universe to enable Save." Filters combine with AND, so an instrument has to pass all of them to be a match. A screener's matches refresh daily as new market data arrives, so the same screener can return a different set from one day to the next with no edit from you. Public screeners are read-only. To change one you use Copy to Mine, which puts your own editable copy in your library. Editing filters makes a screener's last backtest stale rather than deleting it: the app keeps showing the previous run under "Out of date — filters changed since the last backtest. Showing the previous run."

Question 2

What is a screener made of?

Accepted Answer

A screener is a universe plus a list of filters, and nothing else. The universe decides which instruments are eligible at all — by asset type, country, exchange, index, sector, and asset subtype; "All" is the whole market — and each filter is one testable condition on a metric. The Matches tab carries the live count of instruments passing every filter at once, and it updates as you add, edit, or remove filters.

Question 3

What can you do with a screener?

Accepted Answer

Three things: read its matches, backtest it, or attach it to a strategy. Backtesting a screener measures how its picks would have performed over six holding horizons — 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months — against a benchmark built from the same universe with no filters applied, so the comparison isolates what the filters contributed rather than what the market did. That same Backtest view is where Fin offers to improve your filters or suggest new ones. Attaching it to a strategy makes the strategy buy what the screener selects; see Attaching a screener to a strategy for the steps.

Question 4

What does it look like in practice?

Accepted Answer

You want cheap, sizeable US stocks with strong returns on equity. You set the universe to US-listed stocks, then add three filters: P/E < 15, Market Cap > 2B, and ROE > 15. The Matches count falls with each one — from the whole universe, to a few thousand, to a few hundred, to 38. Those 38 instruments are the screener's matches: the set a backtest measures and an attached strategy buys. Loosen P/E < 15 to P/E < 20 and the count rises again, because one condition became easier to pass.

Question 5

What happens to a screener with more than 10 filters?

Accepted Answer

It keeps working, and says so. Until recently nothing checked a screener's filter count on save, on any plan — and one plan's limit was higher before it was levelled — so a screener saved then may carry, say, 15. It reads, returns matches and backtests. On its own screener page, where it is yours to edit, a note above its filters says: "This screener holds 15 filters; the limit is now 10. It goes on running, and your changes to it save normally while it holds no more than the 15 filters it was saved with. You cannot go above that number. No plan raises this limit." A screener in a public folder is not yours to save, so it carries no note.

You can rename it, change its universe, edit a filter and remove filters. What counts is the number it was SAVED with, not 10: an edit is refused only when it would leave more filters than that. Add a sixteenth and the note says the draft cannot be saved and how many rows to take out, until you are back to 15. At 10 or fewer the note goes before you save; reload without saving and it returns. Every save below your old number becomes the new one: save at 12, and 12 is the next ceiling. Nothing is deleted.