Automatic Stock Screening
Stock screening is the process of searching for stocks that meet certain predetermined investment and financial criteria. A stock screener has three components: a database of companies, a set of variables and a screening engine that finds the companies satisfying those variables to generate a list of matches. Automatic screens query a stock database to select and rank stocks according to user-specified (or pre-specified) criteria. Technical screens search for stocks based on patterns in price or volume. Fundamental screens focus on sales, profits, and other business factors of the underlying companies. By focusing on the measurable factors affecting a stock's price, stock screeners help users perform quantitative analysis. Screening focuses on tangible variables such as market capitalization, revenue, volatility and profit margins, as well as performance ratios such as the PE ratio or debt-to-equity ratio. For example, an investor may want to do a search using a screen for all those companies that have a price/earnings ratio of less than 10, an earnings growth rate of more than 15%, and a dividend yield of more than 4%.
Read more about this topic: Stock Selection Criterion
Famous quotes containing the words automatic and/or stock:
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)