I just noticed that FinViz – which stands for “Financial Visualizations” – has added a new visualization for the day’s activity, called the Bubble Charts.

It looks like a neat tool that allows you to see the day’s (or the week’s or month’s) top and bottom SP500 gainers, by percentage, RSI value, 52-week High/Low, or P/E ratio all at once, depicted as red or green bubbles that are sized according to market cap.

This is a similar style chart to their popular daily “Heat Maps” which also reflect the top and bottom performers, either in 2D or 3D.

The NASDAQ.com website also displays NASDAQ 100 Heat Maps that you can view, as does StockChart’s Heat Maps (which are called “Market Carpets”).

Investors and swing traders can use these tools to find stocks that are outperforming (0r underperforming) others, which might generate into some trading or investment ideas when you look at the charts of the stocks that ‘pop up’ in the heat maps.

And if anything, these are interesting ways to visualize the market – not as one big jumbled mass, but divided into leaders and laggards, with the goal being to stay with the leaders and avoid the laggards (unless you’re shorting them!).

Feel free to share if you know if any other cool free tools for investors/traders to use like this.

Corey Rosenbloom, CMT