The FinViz pre-market scan tutorial that follows is the exact morning workflow used in The Hedge’s 6:40 AM institutional flow methodology. Not a generic overview of FinViz features. Not a listicle of settings someone aggregated from a forum. The specific sequence of steps, in order, that takes you from a blank FinViz screen to a validated options entry signal—or a confirmed no-trade decision—in under 15 minutes.
Most FinViz tutorials stop at “here are some filters you can use.” That is not a workflow. A workflow has sequence, decision points, and explicit outputs. This is the workflow.
Step 1: Open the Heat Map First (Not the Screener)
This sequencing is deliberate. Opening the screener first gives you a list of stocks. Opening the heat map first gives you the market’s structure. Structure precedes individual stock selection.
Navigate to FinViz.com, then Maps, then S&P 500. Set the timeframe to 1 Week using the dropdown. You are not looking at today’s price action—you are looking at the accumulated directional pressure of the past five sessions. Institutional accumulation and distribution rarely happens in a single day. The one-week view filters out daily noise and shows you the medium-term positioning.
Record what you see. Which sector blocks are the largest and darkest green? Which are red? Estimate the percentage of total map area that is red. If that red percentage exceeds 20%, note it—you will make a go/no-go decision based on this number in Step 4.
Step 2: Check the Groups Tab for Sector Performance
Navigate to FinViz, then Groups, then Sectors, then Performance (1 Week). This gives you a ranked table of all 11 S&P sectors sorted by weekly performance. You are looking for two things: the magnitude of the top performer’s gain, and the spread between the first and second-place sectors.
A valid institutional flow signal has one sector up 2% or more on the week with a meaningful gap to the second-place sector (0.5% or more separation). When five sectors are all up between 0.4% and 0.9%, that is market-wide noise—retail buying across the board with no institutional thesis. No trade is taken on those days.
A concrete example from a recent valid signal session: Industrials up 3.2% for the week, Energy up 2.8%, Utilities up 0.6%, everything else flat to negative. That two-sector leadership pattern, aligned with the current macro regime (reindustrialization thesis plus the Iran energy shock), was a valid setup. The screener confirmed it. A cash-secured put on a leading Industrials name was entered that session, sized at 2.5% of total capital deployed.
Step 3: Run the Screener with These Exact Settings
Navigate to FinViz, then Screener. Apply these filters across all three tabs:
Descriptive tab: Market Cap: Mid to Mega. Country: USA. Optionable: Yes. Average Volume: Over 500K.
Fundamental tab: Institutional Ownership: Over 30%. Institutional Transactions: Positive.
Technical tab: Performance: Week Up. 20-Day SMA: Price above SMA20. Relative Volume: Over 1.5.
Run the screener. Sort the results by the Sector column. Count the results per sector. Calculate the concentration percentage: if 22 of your 50 results are in Industrials, that is 44%—which clears the 40% threshold and validates the institutional thesis filter.
Save this filter combination as a preset immediately. Use the Save Screener button and name it Hedge Morning Flow. This eliminates manual re-entry of eight filters every session and reduces execution time for Step 3 to under 90 seconds once the preset is loaded.
Step 4: Apply the Four-Filter Go/No-Go Checklist
You now have three pieces of data from Steps 1-3. Apply the checklist sequentially. If any filter fails, stop. Do not proceed to the next filter and do not rationalize an entry.
Filter 1 — Sector concentration at least 40%: Does the screener show 40% or more of results in a single sector? No: stop. No trade today.
Filter 2 — RED distribution under 20%: Does the heat map show less than 20% red area on the one-week view? No: stop. No trade today.
Filter 3 — Momentum confirmation: Are the top 3-5 names in the leading sector above their 20-day SMA? Pull individual charts for a quick check. Majority below SMA20: stop.
Filter 4 — VIX check: Enter $VIX in the FinViz ticker search. VIX below 20: full position sizing. VIX 20-25: reduce position size by 20%. VIX above 25: reduce by 40-50% and require 2 or more standard deviation OTM strike selection.
If all four filters pass, proceed to Step 5. If any single filter fails, the session is a no-trade. Log the reason. After 30 sessions, this log becomes your calibration dataset. You will see which filter most frequently blocks trades and start to understand the market regimes in which the system generates signals versus sits out.
Step 5: Select the Specific Name and Strike
Within the leading sector cluster from your screener, sort by Relative Volume descending. The highest relative volume names have the most unusual institutional activity relative to their own historical baseline. Select the top 3-5 names for deeper review.
For each candidate, check three things outside of FinViz: Implied Volatility Rank (IVR) via your broker’s options platform or Market Chameleon—you want IVR above 40. Earnings date—avoid positions within 5 days of earnings. Options open interest at your target strike—thin open interest produces wide bid-ask spreads that erode your realized premium.
Set your strike at 1.5 standard deviations below current price at normal VIX, and 2 standard deviations when VIX is above 25. Select the next monthly expiration with 25-35 DTE under normal conditions, or 21 DTE or less when VIX is elevated. Calculate your premium income as a percentage of total capital deployed—not as an annualized yield on premium alone. A $1.50 premium on a $50 strike cash-secured put represents 3.0% of total capital deployed per cycle. That is the honest number.
Step 6: Log Everything, Including No-Trade Days
The scan is not complete until your trade journal is updated. Every session gets an entry—including the sessions where no trade is taken. Your log should record: date, outcome for each of the four filters (pass or fail), leading sector, top name reviewed, trade taken or reason for no-trade, VIX level at scan time, and any macro context relevant to the session.
The no-trade log entries are as valuable as the trade entries. If you look back over 30 sessions and find that Filter 2 blocked trades on 12 of those days, you have learned something important about the current market regime—and about when the system is designed to protect capital rather than generate income. That is not a flaw. That is the strategy functioning correctly.
The complete workflow runs 8-12 minutes once the preset is saved and the sequence is internalized. On sessions where all four filters pass, add 5-10 minutes for Step 5 name selection. The only variable that changes day to day is the market itself. The framework is fixed. The fixed framework is the point.
A common question: does this work on FinViz free? Yes, with the caveat that the free tier carries 15-20 minute delayed data. For directional signal generation before the open, that delay is acceptable. For traders who want real-time data and the alert functionality, FinViz Elite at approximately $24.96 per month billed annually is the right tool for the job.
Follow The Hedge for your 6:40 AM institutional flow scan — discipline beats gambling every time.
The Hedge 