AAII.com: New Stock Screens and Conference Audio

Three Stock Screens Added

AAII maintains a library of 60 stock screens that are tracked on an ongoing basis. We have recently added three new screens to the AAII.com online database: Kirkpatrick Growth, Value and Bargain screens.

These three screens are based on the investing models outlined in Charles Kirkpatrick’s book “Beat the Market: Invest by Knowing What Stocks to Buy and What Stocks to Sell” (FT Press, 2008). He discusses the shift to defined-contribution retirement plans, which require investors to decide the makeup of portfolios. Kirkpatrick acknowledges that since most individuals are not investment professionals, this task can be very difficult. He knows that most people will invest in mutual funds, but believes the best returns can come from individual stocks.

The three screens are based on Kirkpatrick’s analysis of “relative” data elements (data compared to other data). Kirkpatrick uses relative price-to-sales, earnings growth, and price strength.

Kirkpatrick Growth
The screen criteria based on Kirkpatrick’s Growth model consist of

• Share price greater than $10;
• Market capitalization greater than $1 billion;
• Relative price strength (as defined by current weekly closing price divided by the 26-week moving average of weekly closing prices) ranks in the 90th percentile or higher; and
• Relative reported earnings growth (as defined by the last four quarters of reported operating earnings divided by the four-quarter total of reported operating earnings one quarter prior) ranks in the 90th percentile or higher.

Kirkpatrick Value
The Value screen criteria are:

• Share price greater than $10;
• Market capitalization greater than $500 million;
• Relative price strength ranks in the 90th percentile or higher;
• Relative reported earnings growth ranks in the 90th percentile or higher; and
• Relative price-to-sales ratio ranks in the 30th percentile or lower.

Kirkpatrick Bargain
The Bargain screen looks for stocks meeting the following criteria:

• Share price greater than $10;
• Market capitalization greater than $1 billion;
• Relative price strength ranks in the 97th percentile or higher (may consider lowering to no more than 90th percentile to increase number of passing companies); and
• Relative price-to-sales ratio ranks in the 17th to 42nd percentiles.

You can learn more about the new stock screens by going to www.aaii.com/stockscreens and choosing “All Screens.” You will find performance data, passing company lists and an overview article on the screens.

Subscribers of Stock Investor Pro can learn how to implement these screens at: www.aaii.com/stockscreens/kirkpatrick_sipro_criteria.cfm. [Note to Stock Investor Pro subscribers, we do not currently plan to add these screens to the program.]

AAII’s 2009 Investor Conference Audio

You can now access audio recordings from the AAII Investor Conference.

If you were unable to attend the conference, you can subscribe to the AAII Conference Audio Collection for $149. Members who attended the conference can access the recordings for free (click on AAII Conference Audio from the left-side menu bar under the Publications heading). AAII’s streaming audio collection provides an easy and convenient way for you to learn more about investing. The audio can be played directly from AAII.com, downloaded to your computer, or played as an MP3 on any device.

The Investor Conference Audio area of AAII.com features recordings from 54 sessions in addition to PDFs of presentation materials. Highlights include presentations on building a portfolio by Lewis Altfest, what investment surprises are ahead by Ken Fisher, and income investing in 2010 by Forbes columnist Richard Lehmann—plus sessions given by CI staffers Cara Scatizzi and Wayne Thorp.

To order the audio recordings, go to: www.aaii.com/conferenceaudio. Subscribers can play the audio at the Web page or download the files to a computer. To download the files, right-click on “Download the Audio” and select “Save Target As” (or “Save Link As”). The audio clips are presented by day and labeled as speaker presentation or exhibitor workshop.

New! Join Our Monthly Discussion

The newly updated and redesigned CI e-newsletter now includes an interactive discussion section called “Monthly Discussion.” In each issue we will highlight a member question from AAII’s online Discussion Forum and ask CI readers to provide an answer. We believe that our readers are a great resource for thoughts and opinions on all that is available to individual investors for investment analysis, research and tracking. Each month, the best answer to the previous month’s question will be highlighted in the CI e-newsletter. To participate, please post your questions, comments, and answers to the monthly question to the Computerized Investing discussion board at AAII.com www.aaii.com/discussions/boards). If this is your first time using the AAII discussion boards, you will need to set up an account separate (but free) from your AAII login. The first Monthly Discussion question posted to the CI discussion board was Submitted by arfie0 and asked about alternatives to Quicken. The member wrote: “After reconciling all my holding information in Quicken I was left to find that it does not allow me to categorize stocks by industry, only by type—such as bond, stock, large cap, small cap, etc. While I would expect a program to do this easy stuff I need to make sure that my allocations are in appropriate industry segments such as financial, energy and so on. It would sure be nice to be able to categorize the holdings any way I want. Before I buy another program, could someone please point me in the right direction? Does MS Money allow this?” Go to www.computerizedinvesting.com to read and answer the latest Monthly Discussion question.