Stock
Screening
Stock screening is specifying specific criteria that you wish a prospective stock to possess, such as a price to earnings ratio of 15 or below. Once you have specified these characteristics, the computer will return to you a list of stocks which satisfy your request. You will still need to do further analysis to narrow down the list to the one(s) you wish to purchase for your portfolio.
The page can be defined as a "mini-tutorial" for selected stock screening sites.
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Rapid
Research's Advanced search is much like the Basic search
in that your first step is to decide which criteria you
want to use in evaluating stocks. When you skip a
category, all choices within the category will be
automatically selected, as in the Basic search. What's
nice about the Advanced Search is your choice in each
investment category is unlimited. You enter your own
upper and/or lower boundaries for the category- up to 27
separate categories and your choice of stock exchanges
and industry groups. For example, let's say you're looking for companies (in any industry) with minimum five-year earnings per share growth and five-year sales growth of 10% annually and whose stock currently sells at a maximum 15 times earnings, 1.5 times book value, and 1.0 times sales. Within the Ratios section, you will first find the Price-to-Earnings category. Click within the box in the "At Most" column in the Price-to-Earnings category, and enter 15. In other words, you are not interested in stocks whose P/E ratio is greater than 15 but you are also not interested in any minimum P/E value for the purposes of this search. Next, click within the box in the "At Most" column in the Price-to-Book Value category, and enter 1.5. Then, click within the "At Most" box in the Price-to-Revenues category,and enter 1. Since you are not selecting any minimums for these categories, you may leave these boxes blank Within the Growth Rates section, click within the box in the "At Least" column in the 5-Year EPS Growth category, and enter 10. Then, click within the box in the "At Least" column in the 5-Year Revenue Growth category, and also enter 10. Finally, click the Search button. This search returned 40 stocks matching the specific entered criteria. Each Results page contains a maximum of 15 companies; at the bottom of each page, click the appropriate graphic any time you wish to see the next 15 or previous 15 listed stocks. Again, you may rearrange the companies in ascending or descending order according to any of the criteria you have selected. Click the specific company name for a Comprehensive Company Report. |
To Help
Identify Growth Companies
Possible Screening Criteria
** Note: Often the
various screening sites do not make it clear
whether to use decimals or whole numbers for screening
criteria
ratios. Most want whole numbers when using % and decimals
when
not using %. Example: Earnings/share growth (%) enter 25,
for debt/equity
enter 0.35
Sales (revenues) | Minimum - at least $400 million |
Earnings Per Share (EPS) 5 yr. | More Than - 25% |
P/E | Minimum - 5 Maximum 15 |
Debt/Equity | Maximum - 0.35 |
Return On Equity (ROE) 5 yr. | Minimum - at least 15% |
Additional Excellent
Stock Screening Sites
Not
exactly stock screening sites but these two resources
will certainly enrich your investing "tool
box." They are supermarket type research and
learning sites that are excellent places to start your
stock investigation.
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