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Jim Thomas
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| 11/23/2007 1:09 PM |
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The stock Screener has two fields labeled "Hist 5-Year Sales Growth %" and "Hist 5-Year EPS Growth %". However, both of these fields actually screen for growth over a four year time period.
Seems wrong to me. If someone puts "15" in one of these fields, presumably they mean to screen for companies which have doubled (sales or EPS) over the past five years, but that's not what they'll get. This same problem was reported years ago about Stock Prospector and, as I recall, there was agreement that it was an error.
The Screener's growth rate calculation also seems to have a problem. If I screen for Sales Growth of exactly 15% (put "15" for both Min and Max) I get two companies. DOM with a 15% *four* year growth rate (see Toolkit's Historical Growth Rate Change Graph) but also SNMB. According to Toolkit, SNMB doesn't have 15% historical Sales growth (or anything close to it) no matter what the historical time period.
-Jim Thomas |
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Joe Craig
Ellicott City, MD
StockCentral Administrator
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| 11/23/2007 8:16 PM |
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| Thanks for the comment and the (seeming) bug report, Jim. I do recall the discussion from a year or more ago. I agree that you need 5 yearly data points that follow the starting point to have a 5-year calculation. |
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Joe |
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Dave Forgianni
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| 11/26/2007 11:54 AM |
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| Thanks Jim, we have a bug filed now and are investigating, i'll post here when it is corrected. |
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Jim Thomas
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| 05/31/2008 12:49 PM |
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Any progress on this? The Screener is still screening based on 4-year growth rates (five data points) but the User Guide for the screener very explicitly says screening is based on 5-year growth rates (six data points). The User Guide describes what the Screener *should* be doing ... not what it's *actually* doing.
"5 yr Sales Growth: The annualized growth rate over the past five years of Sales. This figure is derived by the least squares method, using six data points: a base year plus 5 subsequent annual data points."
Screening for Sales Growth today, with Min=15 and Max=15 shows three stocks: BLG, PONE and SNMB.
According to Toolkit, BLD does have 15% sales growth over the past FOUR years. Over the past FIVE years the sales growth was 19.4%.
PONE has only three years of annual data, so the most it has is a two year growth rate. It doesn't have a four or five year growth rate at all!
SNMB data shows *zero* sales for 2003 and 2004, so I don't know how the Screener is calculating any growth rate at all that includes that time period.
-Jim Thomas |
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Jim Thomas
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| 05/31/2008 12:58 PM |
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I see that the "mouse over" comment for "Hist Sales Growth % - 5 Years" does accurately describe what the Screener is attempting to do ... even though that is the wrong thing to do.
-Jim Thomas |
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