Stock Screening

[RazorX]

Hi all

As I am growing into share investing I am finding my approach is less of "there's a share I'll buy it" (Which method hasn't helped me too much :p) to now looking for particular requirements. The problem is I work full time, as well as study so I don't have time to sit down and screen every stock on the NZX (Much less the ASX) every couple of weeks or so looking for stocks that fit a certain criteria.

My question is does anyone know of a stock screening package, online or otherwise which lets me put in criteria (Say I want to bring up all stocks that have a dividend yield of 5% or more and cost under $1.50) and then outputs a list of stocks meeting those criteria I can then go and check?

Cheers, and thanks in advance

RazorX

[Lizard]

Hi RazorX,

Are you particularly looking for NZ or Australian shares? If looking for NZ, the cheapest method may be manual - buy the NBR one Friday and go through with a highlighter. This actually worked quite well for me back in 1998, but, looking back, I'm sure the timing may have had more to do with it.

Also, the IRG database (http://www.irg.co.nz/irgpages/pricerat.php) is a useful freebie, although not many options - cut and paste into Excel from memory.

Another option would be the Market Analysis database (http://www.stockmarket.co.nz/cgi-bin/SubscriptionManager.cgi?join_id=1) (scroll down for prices), which I used for many years, but became a bit expensive and quality of data was not always 100%. Cost for database access only now at $144 for 6 months. Has a few less common data series in it like Price Sales, Volatility and Relative Strength, as well as all the others. Also the ability to access historical monthly data, which can be interesting.

For Australia, once again, included on the Market Analysis database. However, these days I use the freebie option from the AFR (http://www.afr.com/share_tables/). Pick your table, download and sort in Excel.

Stock screening is an interesting topic. I like to screen from the raw data, but often I wonder if screening is actually any better than just a random approach - "start at the A's"! The holy grail is to have a screen that actually selects for 100% good opportunities, but the reality is, they just tend to select for certain types of stocks (search for low Pr/NTA, and you'll probably mostly get funds or REITs, search for lowest Price/Sales and you'll end up with loss-making retailers). And the best stock screeners (Piotroski is my favourite), are pretty much impossible to get the data for... and if they weren't, it would mean everyone was using them, so they probably still wouldn't work!

Anyway, whatever you screen for, always remember that screening is just the first stage. No matter how stand-out a stock is on any one ratio, it will need a reason to go up - look for stocks where the crystal ball on earnings seems clear to you and the direction looks positive, or about to become so.

[craic]

Bring the stocks up on the Direct Broking site, put the first up on " charts" then its just a matter of entering the codes. A glance at the chart will tell you enough. Of the few that look promising, a touch of the print button and at the end of an hour, you should have a dozen or so sheets to refer back to "Detail" and I enter data by hand on the sheets and go from there. You only need to this infrequently - if you can't spare the time, buy lotto tickets or something with your cash.

[Ayrton]

Yahoo finance and Google finance both have free stock screener's available. Unsure how many NZX stocks are indexed in them though.

Yahoo: http://screener.finance.yahoo.com/newscreener.html
Google: http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener

I prefer yahoo's.

[glennj]

I use the "Market Analysis" on line data base which is a subscriber service and find it excellent for the screening of NZ & AUD stocks. I check some of their data when I calculate ratios from annual reports and find it very rare for their data to be wrong. This is my first choice of screener and IMO well worth the sub fee as it is a very quick way to find stocks worthy of researching.
Agree that Yahoo is probably the best of the free stock screeners though at one stage a lot of their info wasn't being updated.

[h2so4]

The Australian stock market screener http://www.australian-economy.com/ lets you input a dividend and then you can sort by price. It's free. :)

[RazorX]

Hi All

Thanks all for the suggestions. Liz I hadn't thought of going through the NBR manually, but yeah it wouldn't take too long, then from there I can go and research.

Cheers

RazorX

[Lizard]

I just stumbled across a surprisingly comprehensive and free ASX stock screening site:

http://asxiq.com/index.php

Go through the tabs to find all the many, many different technical and fundamental screens that they have on offer... endless ways to find new stocks! Haven't yet tested it to see what it finds though.

[RazorX]

Thanks Liz!