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Desperate Housewives - Episode Four

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Microsoft's free screener is a formidable competitor to Yahoo's, reviewed previously. It is more flexible; however it is not Java-based. You must download the screener software. Also, you will need to sign up for Microsoft's .NET Passport if you haven't already. The download process will also ask you to get ActiveX control if you don't already have it. To do all this, you must use Explorer as your browser. At the bottom of the basic, limited, screening page you will see a link saying "Supercharge your search. Upgrade to the more powerful, easy-to-use Deluxe Stock Screener>". If you use Firefox you won't see the link! At this point I would like to strangle Bill Gates (Grrrr).

In the long run, though, the process is not that hard and it is worth it. The screening has lots of options. The criteria are organized into the following categories: Company Basics, Investment Return, Price Ratios, Mgmt. Efficiency, Financial Condition, Dividends, Trading Volume, Growth Rates, Stock Price History, Profit Margins, Current Financials, Analyst Projections, Advisor FYI, Stockscouter Rating. (StockScounter is MSN's own system of ratings in various areas.)

Rather than choosing from a drop-down list, the search's "value" can be set to your own figure. For example, looking for additions to the MagicMicroCaps fund I can search on exactly Market Capitalization <= 300,000,000. Or you can search on another variable! For example, you can specify "Last Price >= 52-Week High".

The logical operators are <=, >=, =, High As Possible, Low As Possible, Near, and Display Only. When you run the search the results will show figures for all your criteria.

Like Yahoo, the Results display can show the top 200 companies in your search. You can sort up or down on each criterion and customize in other ways.

Like Yahoo, it is possible to easily get the results, up to 200 at a time, into a database. Under "Edit" the screener has the option "Copy Results to Clipboard". Therefore, the results can be pasted into Notepad as a chart, tab delimited, thereby creating a text file which can easily be imported into a database.

There is not time or space, here, to summarize the differences between the Yahoo and MSN critera. Let's just say that between them they give me the kind of data I want for larger, mid-size, or so-called "small cap" (really mid-size) companies.

However, when searching for microcaps, with the only criterion being Market Capitalzation equal to or smaller than 300, MSN returned only 41 companies! A lot of those ended with Q on their ticker (gone bankrupt) and were on the Pink Sheets. So Microsoft does not include microcaps except for a few who were larger but have fallen on hard times.

Among the recent winners in SL screenings, was yet another steel company Harsco Inc. (HSC) of Pennsylvania, founded in 1742. Also on my list as a "definite maybe" is General Cable (BGC), producing copper, aluminum, and fiber optic wire and cable products, located in Highland Heights, Kentucky, founded in 1992.

Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (RIO), which I already have in my Strategy Lab fund, popped up, as it does again and again on most of my screening experiments. It has performed quite well for me so far. People are beginning to ask, "How high can it go?" Well, judging by the published data it is still quite fairly priced or even value priced. I hope the figures are right!

NEXT: Onward to screeners at MarketWatch, NASDAQ and AOL.