The newest tool available at StockCentral is our new Stock Screener. I'm going to take a few days to work through the screener, and perhaps give you a few tips that might prove useful. Please ask questions, and also contribute your own ideas for using the screener.
First, though ... let's talk about screening. Stock Screening is a method used to help investors find companies worthy of studying. We developed the StockCentral Screener to utilize the information in our database to help you search for suitable companies to study. We have also coupled that historical data with the estimates and analyses provided by Take Stock so that we can screen not only on historical information, but also on the inferences, projections and judgments made by Take Stock. This is something that has not been available before, and it is unique to the StockCentral Screener.
Let's approach the Screener as we would any new item of software. How do you use it? This part is easy ... just click on the tab labeled "screener." You'll find the Screener tab located just to the right of the "take stock" tab.
After you've clicked on the tab to get to the Screener, you'll see that the Screener is divided into two sections.
- The left-hand column contains a dark blue box with several links in it. This box is present on all of Screener pages.
- The center column changes from page to page, and this is where all of the work is done.
Before starting, let's look at the links in the box in the left-hand column.
- Screener Home: If you click this link, you'll return to the Screener's home page, the same one that you get to by clicking the Screener tab.
- My Saved Screens: This reveals one of the Screener's secrets - you can save the contents of a screen and return later to view it again. If you return days, weeks or months later, the screening results are updated to include the most recent data that we have.
- Help: Clicking here opens a window that contains the Screener's help file. Skimming through the Help file every now and again is probably a good idea. You'll note that Help opens in a new window, so you can continue to read it as you work with the screener.
Using the Screener
Now let's look at the Screener's main page -- that's the table of text, dropdown boxes and buttons that you use to create the parameters for a screen. You'll see that the main section, in which you select criteria for your screening, is divided into four sections: General, Growth, Valuation and Quality. We'll come back to these in a moment.
There are two buttons at the bottom of the section: Find Stocks and Reset. Clicking the Find Stocks button performs the screen and shows you a table that contains the companies that meet your screening criteria. Clicking the Reset button removes all criteria.
If you click the Find Stocks button after clicking Reset (or after arriving at the Screener page with no criteria set), you'll get a list of every company in the StockCentral database!
One more thing before we get started ... mouseovers! Move your mouse so that the pointer is over on the the criteria titles or over one of the section headings. When you do this, your mouse pointer will grow a ? and a box will pop up showing a definition or explanation of that item. If you aren't sure what the term means, this is how you find the definition!
Let's Screen!
You can create a screen using any combination of criteria that makes sense to you! For now, let's get started by screening based only on industry information. For example, you've decided to look for good companies in the Drug Stores industry.
Notice that the Industry criterion has two items.
- The first is a drop-down box and you can select "In" or "Not In" and industry of industries. Leave this alone.
- The second item is a scrolling list of industries. Drag on the slider at the right to find "Drug Stores" and click on it to highlight or select it.
Now, move to the bottom of the page and click the "Find Stocks" button. The Screener returns a list of the eight (8) companies in the Drug Stores industry!
If you read carefully at the top of the page, you'll see that there are actually 8651 companies in the database!
Save your screen
At the bottom of the page, type "Drug Stores" into the box and click "Save." You've saved your screening criteria.
Use a saved screen
- Click "Screener Home" in the left column
- Locate and click "Reset" at the bottom of the page.
- Click "My Saved Screens."
You'll see a list of the screens that you have saved - Drug Stores is the only one if you've never saved a screen before. You can then
- "View Results" - run the screen again
- "Edit Criteria" - modify your screening parameters, or
- "Delete" - get rid of the saved screen
This should do more than get your started. Tomorrow we'll make some more useful screens and explore some of the other options available. Please ask any questions that you might have, or make any comments that you have. And remember: the screener is new. If you find things that you don't like, or have suggestions to enhance the screener ... this is the place to make those known!
|