AAII.com: AAII Stock Screens

The purpose of AAII’s stock screening area is to provide you with access to a wide range of investment approaches. Some approaches follow the methods of well-known professionals and allow you to mimic their style of investing, while other approaches implement time-tested techniques used to identify attractive stocks. At the “Stock Screens” area of AAII.com you can view a list of the top performers of 2007, broken down by investment style: value, growth & value, growth, and specialty. The “What’s Hot” section profiles popular screening topics and the “What Is Stock Screening?” section provides an overview of how to apply stock screening to your own investing methodology.

Where to Go

To access AAII’s Stock Screens area, go to the AAII home page and click on the AAII Stock Screens link under the Portfolios heading on the left-hand side. Or, go directly to www.aaii.com/stockscreens.

There are four main sections in the AAII Stock Screens area: Getting Started, All Screens, Performance and Screen Characteristics.

Getting Started

The Getting Started section provides an overview of stock screening, how to gauge which screen best fits your approach, definitions, and a series of points that an investor should consider before using a given screen:

• How is your screen of interest reacting relative to the current market environment?
• Are the screen’s characteristics closer to a value-based or growth-based approach?
• How frequently does your list of “passing companies” within a screen change?
• Most importantly, remember that screening is just a first step.

All Screens

The All Screens page provides a comprehensive list of screens grouped by one of four categories: value, growth & value, growth, and specialty. For each screen you’ll see a brief description, year-to-date and total returns, and links to a detailed screen overview article, a list of current passing companies, a performance chart and the screening criteria. The All Screens section also includes links to mid-year and full-year reviews of the screening strategies from the AAII Journal.

Performance and Screen Characteristics

The Performance area provides year-by-year returns for each screen starting in 1998, as well as the screen’s monthly variability and average number of monthly holdings.

The Screen Characteristics section shows statistics for each screen that give an idea of the types of stocks passing the screens. Average price-earnings ratio, price-to-book-value ratio and price-to-sales ratio are some of the figures included. This data is updated twice per year.