Today I'll continue the discussion of screening by focusing on a unique criterion that is part of the StockCentral Screener.  It is, Take Stock's Quality Rating.

I hope that you all are aware of Take Stock.  It is an online stock analysis program, and it lives here at StockCentral.  Click on the "take stock" tab to use it.  Take Stock evaluates companies in terms of Quality and Mood.  For companies of sufficiently good quality, Take Stock computes a "buy price" or the maximum price that you'd want to pay for the stock at the present time.

If you've used Take Stock, you've probably wondered if there is a way to find companies that meet Take Stock's exacting criteria for Quality.  Well, the Screener gives you exactly that capability.

So, aim your mouse at the Screener tab, click and then point your mouse at the Take Stock Quality Rating criterion.

Do you know that you can have several different browser windows pointed at StockCentral at one time?  Try it:  while you are reading this message, open up another browser window (or a new tab if your browser supports tabbed browsing).  You can open the Screener in that window and then you can bounce between this message and looking at the Screener.  That's how I'm doing it as I write this message ...

If you let the mouse pointer pause over the text, you'll see that we've broken the numerical Take Stock Quality Rating (a number between 0 and 10) into three categories:

• Unacceptable:  0 - 3.3
• Acceptable:     3.4 - 6.6
• Desirable:        6.7 - 10

If you want to find Take Stock's very best companies, set a single criterion in the screen -  minimum Take Stock Quality Rating = Desirable, and click Find Stocks.

The StockCentral Screener returns 57 companies in the Desirable category.  Click the label at the top of the "TakeStock Quality" column to sort the companies from highest quality to lowest.  You'll see that Take Stock awards a quality rating of 10 to only 6 companies.

If you're looking for quality small companies, add Size as a criterion.  To select only small companies, set both the minimum and maximum size to "small."  Only 14 companies pass this screen, with QSII the only one with a rating of 10.  There are five others with a rating of 9 or higher.

Tomorrow I'll look at some other ways of screening ...