whateverworks

Desperate Housewives -- Addendum One

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In October '07 I started reviewing free stock screeners on the Web. Recently I found a couple of new ones. The first is at finance.google.com and, although very simple, lets me search on many of the fundamentals I like. The criteria are grouped as follows:
Price -- Last Price , EPS , Quote Change (%) , 52w High, 52w Low , 52w Price Change (%)
Volume -- Volume, Average Volume
Valuation -- Market Cap , P/E Ratio , 1y Fwd P/E
Dividend -- Recent Quarter, Next Quarter, Per Share (Recent Year), Div Rate Indicated Annual , Dividend Per Share , Dividend Yield (%) , Dividend From Cash Flow
Balance Sheet -- Book Value/Share , Cash/Share , Current Ratio
Stock Metrics -- Beta , Float , Institutional Percent Held
Margins -- Gross Margin (%) , EBITDA Margin (%) , Operating Margin (%) , Net Profit Margin (%)
Growth -- 5y Net Income , 5y Revenue , 10y Revenue , 5y EPS , 10y EPS

When you click on a criterium you can add a minimum and a maximum. If you are not sure what min. or max. to add, a Company Distribution chart with sliders helps you chose those figures. Another nice touch -- Google also shows you the definition in case you are not sure of it.

You can choose to screen on a list of specific sectors (or screen on all) and if you wish you can choose only AMEX, NASDAQ or NYSE.

As you add each criterium, the list of companies meeting your screen appears below (in groups of 20) along with their figures for the criteria you have chosen. You can see the number of companies remaining as you add each criterium. This is especially helpful because when using any screener it is easy to inadvertently choose criteria which eliminate most or all of them.

I was delighted to find that, unlike many databases, Google's screener has figures for microcaps as well as for larger companies.

I do wish Google would add the ability to download all the resulting data into Excel; however my usual copy and paste into notepad works OK.

All in all, this is a very useful tool.

Next time I'll review the Motley Fool's new screener.