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Top Notch Internet Resources Part II
Stock Screening -
Fundamentals
by
D.R. Barton, Jr.
We�re
taking a multi-week look at stock screeners.
You�re interested in �em.
I�m interested.
Enough said.
Last
week we took a quick look at a technical screening site
called �stockfetcher. �
For now we�ll
postpone a more detailed look at the site and its
screening capabilities and group it with some other
technical screening sites.
For
this week, I wanted to start our review of the more
pervasive fundamental screeners out there.
I�m not exactly sure why there are so many good
fundamental screeners and so few good technical ones.
Perhaps the fact that fundamentals have been the
more �traditional� way to pick stocks means that more
retail investors and traders are interested in those
metrics.
For
fundamental screeners, we�re typically talking about
sites that allow you to filter some universe of stocks for
sales, earnings, debt, ratios � all of those and many
fundamental goodies.
The
first screener that we�ll look at is found at the MSN
Money site. It
has long been my favorite.
Unfortunately, they�ve made it harder to find
than a profitable automaker.
But
for your navigating pleasure, I�ve attached the direct
link to the site at the end of the article.
(You know you wanted to read the rest first,
anyway�)
Another
couple of caveats: first,
to use their �Deluxe Stock Screener� (the one I
prefer), you have to download an add-in (it�s small and seamless).
Second, since this is a Microsoft site, don�t
even think about using Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple
Safari or other browsers.
It�s Internet Explorer or not at all for the
Deluxe Screener.
Fortunately,
once you�ve run that small gauntlet to get the screener,
it is extremely user friendly, fast, and powerful.
It
has almost all of the fundamental screens one could ask
for, and allows you to build and save custom screens for
use on subsequent visits � a huge plus.
The screener also has a very simple and effective
exporting capability, allowing you to easily dump the
results of your screen into a spreadsheet for quick
transfers to charting program watch lists, etc.
Also,
on the plus side, there is a list of useful (if somewhat
limited) stock price and volume criteria under the
�Trading and Volume� heading that allows you to make
more useful screens. You can segregate stocks according to
their exchange (U.S. only).
And once you�ve created a list of stocks that
meet your screening criteria, you can sort by any of the
criteria used, a very useful feature.
Last and certainly not least, it�s a no-cost
offering.
On
the downside, the MSN screener does not include cash flow
data (very few screeners include this data, which is the
most useful fundamental tool, in my opinion).
It also is limited to U.S. Stocks and will only
return a maximum of 200 stocks for any screen (though this
is more than enough for most screens).
The
bottom line is that once you�ve gotten over the initial
hurdles of getting access to the proper page, you have a
very powerful and easy to use fundamental screener.
Oh
yeah, here�s the direct link to download the screener
add-in: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/controls/finderpro.asp
I�d
like to send my thanks to all of you who sent words of
encouragement after the passing of my wonderful Mom.
They were all much appreciated.
And though it will take me a while, I�m doing my
best to reply to all of you.
Great
Trading,
D. R.
About
D.R. Barton, Jr.:
A passion for the systematic approach to the markets and lifelong
love of teaching and learning have propelled D.R. Barton, Jr. to the
top of the investment and trading arena. He is a regularly
featured guest on both Report
on Business TV, and
WTOP News Radio in Washington, D.C., and has been a guest on
Bloomberg Radio. His
articles have appeared on SmartMoney.com and Financial
Advisor magazine. You may contact D.R. at
�drbarton� at �iitm.com�.
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