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.

by
D.R. Barton, Jr.

Two years ago, I did a 12 part series on low and no-cost internet resources. The series was very well received, and I really enjoyed sharing my favorite sites and finding some new quite useful ones.

Because the task takes a bit more time, I never got around to doing a section on stock screeners; but I think we’re ready to dig into those sites!

First of all, if you’ve used any low or no-cost screeners for fundamental screening (there are loads of them out there) or especially for technical/indicator based screening, please send me the web address and what you liked or didn’t like about the site. You can send comments to drbarton “at” iitm.com (please use the tradition “at” symbol for the e-mail address—I have to do this to keep the spambots from overwhelming me!).

As a prelude to the series, I’ll let you know that we’ll be looking at some good fundamental screeners including MSN, Yahoo and other big names. There are also some good technical screeners out there ranging from limited flexibility to ultimately customizable.

For today, I’ve taken a cursory look at a site called “stockfetcher.” It has some definite promise. As a no-cost site, it a nice variety of pre-written stock screens. It only returns a limited number of stocks per screen, using this as a teaser for a subscribing. It has a fairly low cost of only $9 per month or $25 per quarter and with that you’ll be able to write your own screens and use their library of prewritten screens as well.

The good news is that there are some other screeners out there that do some very interesting and comprehensive fundamental and technical screens on a no-cost basis. And we’ll start taking a look at them next week.

A Tribute to My Amazing Mom

The following is a very personal account about my Mom.

Thanks once again for all of you who knew about my Mom’s health struggles and sent your kind sentiments, thoughts and prayers. And thanks for allowing me the excellent therapy of writing my experience to keep my dear friends and colleagues informed.

Just before church on Sunday morning, my Dad called to report extreme circulatory difficulties that Mom was experiencing. We loaded up the car with kids and dog, and headed south, getting there at 9 p.m.  Mom was tired but caught up with my son Josh’s golf and straight “A’s” and daughter Meg’s second straight perfect score on her PSAT reading section.  Mom told them how proud she is of them.  We left to go home and get some sleep. 30 minutes later, my amazing Mom, now complete after having connected with all of her family, passed quietly on to be with her Lord whom she loves so much and served so well.

Mom had the soul and spirit of a servant. She will be remembered as a person of great service to the community and as one who always put others first.   The love she shared with her family and friends and her contribution to numerous ministries and organizations will continue to be felt for generations. She was a beacon to many through her service as an active member of First Christian Church and a founding member of Radford Clothing Bank.  She was also a servant leader in her work with the Radford Women’s Resource Center, and she gave her support, time and service to countless individuals and organizations too numerous to name.

I’m at a place of real peace, knowing exactly where she is and getting to share such a wonderful time with her just minutes before she moved on to a much better place.  Despite physical discomfort, Mom was full of joy through the whole ordeal; one of the last things she said to me and my kids was “Elvis has left the building.”  We laughed until our sides hurt.  I hope that my transition has half as much grace and style.