Hi Everyone, I am not much of an investor but I do utilize 401k, Employee stock plan, 529 and even have a brokerage account with not much activity. The account is with eTrade and I have been researching using their Stock Screener. With the screener it lets you tweak the dials on a number of metrics. What metrics do most of you look at?

Here is a listing:

Fundamentals -
P/E Ratio
PEG Ratio
Profit Margin (TTM)
Price/Sales Ratio (TTM)
Price/Book Ratio (MRQ)
Price/Cash Flow (TTM)
Return on Equity (TTM)
Return on Assets (TTM)
Debt/Total Capital Ratio (%) (MRQ)
Number of Employees
Percent Owned by Institutions
Insider activity over the last 1 month

Earnings and Dividends -
EPS Growth Annual (%)
Revenue Growth Annual (%)
EPS Growth (Quarterly)(%)
Revenue Growth (Quarterly)(%)
Number of Consecutive Qtrs of Positive / Negative Earnings
Payout Ratio
Dividend Growth 5 Year Positive Growth
Dividend Yield Positive Yield
Annual Dividend Greater than $ and less than $
Last Qtr Dividend Greater than $ and less than $

Technicals -
52 Week High
52 Week Low
Price closes [Above/Below] exponential moving average (EMA)
13 day EMA is [Above/Below] its 50 day EMA
Market Edge Picks

 

i like to look at eps and PE of the company and compare to the competitors. also, revenue growth, operating margins and expense margins. before i buy, i ususally look at the 50 and 20 day moving averages. all should be considered when buying the stock. also, read the news about change of management and look at any signals for strategies.

 

I don't think the screeners are the right way to find stocks. The problem with screeners is they tell you where on the curve a stock is RIGHT NOW. Right now doesn't matter, you want to find the derivative so to speak. You want to find in what direction the stock is going. After investing for a while you already know of hundreds of stocks. You want to get a peice of each sector and figuring out what works.

How is a stock screener going to tell you if a stock is on its way up or down? The vast majority of $ I make is from attatching a catalyst or trend to a sector, than picking which stock will move the most. Stock screeners skip all the most important steps.

Here's an oversimplified example: People were selling financials over the past two months. You know it, I know it. If the fed cut rates, everyone from your grandma to instituional investors would quickly be getting back in the banks that have no or little subprime exposure. It doesn't even matter if they really do at that point, it's what people think.

If they cut 25, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. If they did a big cut [we had a big cut], the banks would rally all day. The banks themselves and "the street" said wells fargo, morgan, boa, etc. were clean pretty much all along. Easy money.

On the other side, countrywide was getting absolutely slammed. If you followed the stock you'd realize as soon as we got bad news about housing or CFC itself it was dropping at least a dollar. Around 21 I jumped on [short], and it was obviously leveling out around 17. I sold at 16 and change and some "fake" good news took it to 21 [fake being it was shorts covering and not many people going long on it], then it stopped again and wouldn't move for days. That means any bad news was probably going to send it running. I layed low during the cut on that particular stock but have shorted it down 2 bucks since. 2 bucks on a 20 dollar stock is real money.