AAII.com: Tracking Successful Investors

Tap into the investment styles, ideas and methodologies of over 60 successful investment luminaries at the AAII Stock Screens area. For the past seven years, AAII has been developing, testing, and refining a wide range of screening strategies. Many of the screens follow the approaches of popular investment professionals such as Warren Buffett, while others are tied to basic principles of investing such as low price-to-sales ratio. You can view the results of our ongoing efforts at www.aaii.com/stockscreens, or by clicking on the Stock Screens link under Tools in the AAII.com navigation bar.

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Redesigned Page Provides Better Focus

With over 60 investment approaches to choose from, you can easily become overwhelmed. To help you gain focus, we’ve recently redesigned the AAII Stock Screens area. Now you can see at a moment’s glance which approaches are the top performers on a year-to-date basis. And we provide easy access to links that answer your questions about screening in general and the AAII stock screens in particular.

If you’re a newcomer to stock screening, we encourage you to review our new Getting Started area. This special area provides you with all the basics you need to begin using the Stock Screens area on AAII.com with confidence.

Clicking on All Screens takes you to a complete list of the 60 approaches we track. For each screen, we present an overview of the methodology, the stock selection rules, a performance chart, and a table of companies that pass the screen each month. The rules of each screen reflect our interpretations of the approaches.

By browsing through the passing companies of a stock screen, you can get a good idea of the companies that a screen favors along with a sense for any industry concentrations generated. For insight into why certain criteria were used, read the article (overview) describing the screen.

Tracking Screen Performance

Each month, the current companies passing each individual screen are reported on AAII.com. The results are usually posted to the site in the middle of each month using data from the previous month’s end.

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Performance is based on hypothetical portfolios, not actual trading results. Furthermore, the performance figures do not take into account commissions, time slippage, or bid-ask spreads. But our results reveal a lot about how the screen performs against other strategies and in different market environments.

To compare performance among the screens, complete statistics—including year-by-year return figures—are presented in the Monthly Performance table. Note that you can also gain access to this table by clicking on the Monthly Performance tab at the top of any Stock Screens page. However, remember that past performance is no guarantee of future success.

The Portfolio Characteristics table presents a snapshot of the group of stocks that make up each portfolio at a specific point in time. Updated twice a year, this table gives you an indication of the general types of stocks that each strategy tends to hold.

A Caveat

Before following any AAII stock screen, we recommend that you look at the long-term returns as well as recent performance. Try to gain an understanding of the forces impacting performance and determine what kind of market environment might be expected in the future. Most importantly, remember that screening is just a first step. There are qualitative elements that cannot be captured effectively by a quantitative screening process.

Note: The screen portfolios that we present are merely computer-generated lists, based on AAII’s interpretation of popular investment approaches. They are not intended to be ‘recommended’ lists, but merely a starting point for additional analysis.