Screening Your Stocks

How do smart, savvy (and wealthy) investors pick a stock?
Invariably, they identify criteria for the types of stocks they
want to own. Then they decide which stocks meeting those
criteria are good buys. The process of coming up with a list
of stocks that meet your personal investment criteria is called
screening. Online research beats any traditional investing
approach cold when it comes to screening stocks.

Creating a checklist of stock screening
criteria

Investing philosophies are as controversial as political views.
When it comes to predicting which stocks will double in
value over the next five years, two mainstream “parties” exist.
The NAIC approach recommends that you focus on past performance
and current ratios. The second school of thought
is that you should mainly look for companies with undervalued
share prices relative to the assets that appear on their
financial statements. Both schools of thought rely on screening
criteria to identify stocks that fit with their approach.
You can screen stocks by using software designed for the purpose
or by using statistical information from a source such
as the Value Line Investment Survey.

The Value Line Investment Survey is a publication that you
can pay to subscribe to at www.valueline.com. You can
also use Value Line for free at your local public library. Value
Line contains information on over 1,700 stocks, and it ranks
them according to safety, stability, earnings predictability, and
other factors. The Value Line rating system is highly regarded
by financial experts.