Many of our A+ Investor users have been asking for a custom stock screening solution that allows them to build stock screens based on data elements such as growth, valuation, earnings estimate revisions, stock performance and more.
After months of development, we have rolled out a custom stock screener that allows you to easily and quickly identify stocks that meet fundamental criteria that matter most to you when selecting stocks. This new tool complements the popular Stock Screens and the A+ Stock Grades Screener, which lets you identify stocks based on investment factors focused on value, momentum, quality, growth and estimate revisions and surprises.
You will find the link to the Custom Stock Screener on the A+ Investor dashboard page (www.aaii.com/plus):
You can also bookmark this page to take you directly to the custom stock screener: www.aaii.com/stockideas/customscreener
I prepared a short intro video that walks users through creating a stock screen, which you can access below.
If you want to jump right in and watch the video, I won’t be offended if you stop reading. But if you’re interested, I also wanted to give you a brief overview of the screener to help you get started building your screens.
With the custom stock screener, you build screens in two steps.
Selecting Your Filters
First, you select the filters you wish to use with your screen. When you add filters, you are given all of the screening filters (data fields) currently built. This image is only a fraction of the 70+ fields the stock screener currently offers:
The filters are divided into data categories:
From the “Select Your Screening Filters” window, click the checkboxes to the left of any of the data fields you want to use for your screen.
Once finished, click the “Adjust Filters” button at the bottom right of the window to proceed to the next step.
Adjusting Your Filtering Parameters
After selecting the filters for your screening, the second and final step is to adjust the parameters for the fields you chose. In effect, you specify the characteristics you are looking for in the stocks that pass your screen.
You adjust the minimum and maximum range used for each filter with slider bars. Click on the white dot at either end of the slider bar and drag it to adjust to the desired range.
For example, if you select one A+ Stock Grade for your screen and want to isolate stocks with a grade of A or B, you drag the dot from the left so that the A to B range is highlighted:
Screening on Absolutes or Percentile Ranks
For numeric fields, you have the option of filtering based on the field’s absolute value or its percentile rank. You can toggle between filtering based on “Absolute” or “% Rank” by clicking the blue button for the specific field.
By default, % Rank is the initial filtering option. But let’s say you want to screen for companies with a positive average annual dividend growth rate over the past three years. After selecting Dividends Per Share Growth 3yr from the filters list, you click the toggle button to screen for Absolute and then drag the slider dot from the left until the minimum range is 0 (zero):
Percentile ranks show how a company stacks up against all the companies in the A+ Investor stock universe. Percentile ranks are helpful because they adapt as market and economic conditions change. Depending on where we are in the market and economic cycle, for example, a price-earnings ratio of 10.0 may be high or low. But if you are looking for low price-earnings stocks, you can use the percentile rank to focus on the companies in the bottom 25% of the stock universe. While the absolute value that denotes the cutoff will change over time, you are always looking for the bottom 25% of stocks:
Estimated Results
As you adjust the screening parameters of the fields you’ve selected for your screen, you will notice that the “Estimated Results” number at the top-right of the screening window will change. This tells you how many companies pass the screen you are building with the current parameters you’ve established.
This is useful to see if the screen you are building is too restrictive (too few or no passing companies) or not restrictive enough (too many passing companies).
Adding & Deleting Filters
As you build a screen, you can remove and add filters.
To delete a filter from the screen you are working on, click on the blue “X” at the bottom-right of that filter field.
If you want to add filter fields to your screen, click the “Add Filters” button at the top-right of the screening window to return to the “Select Your Screening Filters” window, where you can select additional filters. You will need to click the “Adjust Filters” button again to adjust the parameters for any new fields you choose.
Applying Filters & Viewing Screening Results
Once you have finalized your screening parameters, the final step is to run it to view the passing companies. You can do this by clicking the “Apply Filters” button below the Estimated Results total.
When you apply your screen, the passing companies are displayed in the data table at the bottom of the page. Here you can view a variety of data for the passing companies, grouped by similar data types:
You can navigate between the different data tabs by clicking the data categories (Stock Basics, A+ Stock Grades, Company Growth, etc.).
Furthermore, you can sort a given tab by an individual data field by clicking on the data header.
Once you have created a screen, you can save it for future use. To save a screen, click the “Save” button at the top-right of the screener page.
You can name the screen as well as provide a description:
You can load saved screens from the drop-down menu on the top-left of the screener page:
If you want to learn more about A+ Investor’s new custom stock screener, I will be hosting a free, live webinar on Wednesday, September 8. To learn more about this event and to register, click here.
We will continue to improve and enhance the custom stock screener based on user feedback, so be sure to tell us what you think by using this feedback form.
