Once you have set up filters to screen stocks by markets and/or industry, you have the option of applying advanced filters that allow you to screen stocks for multiple criteria. If you are unsure of how to set up a screener or how to screen for markets and/or industry, go to this link How to create your first stock screener.
Adding Advanced Filters
In the examples below, we have shown how you can apply additional filters to a list of Healthcare stocks in the US that trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Step 1: You have 8 main parameters that allow you to screen stocks. Let’s start with “Company”. This section allows you to screen stocks based on a company’s performance in the market. Let’s say you are only interested in companies that have a market cap of $100m or above. Simply select “Market Cap” which will prompt a scroll bar to appear. Using your mouse, scroll to $100m. This will filter out any stocks that have a market cap of less than $100m.
You can move both ends of the scroll bar if you are looking at a more specific range. Additionally, you can choose multiple options under each section. For example, you can also screen for share price and/or 5 year Beta.
Step 2: The next section is based on valuation. After filtering out low market cap stocks, the next thing you want to check for example, is if the stock is trading at a discount to its fair value and you want to filter out all companies that aren’t. You can do this by selecting “Valuation”, and using your mouse to scroll to 0% (which means stock is trading at fair value). Anything under 0% would mean that the stock is not trading at a discount and hence is overvalued. In the screenshot below we have selected a range between 0% to ∞ (infinity). Again, you can scroll both ends of the bar to get a more specific range.
You can continue screening stocks under this section (for example PE or PEG ratios) or simply move to the next section.
Step 3: The next section allows you to screen stocks based on “Future Growth Estimate”. Let’s assume you want to search for companies that have a 3 years future earnings growth estimate of 10% and upwards. That is, you want to ignore companies that are forecast to shrink earnings over the next three years. Using your mouse, scroll till you see the estimate range change. Again, you can scroll both ends of the bar to get a more specific range. You can also choose any of the other options under the section (1 year earnings growth estimate or 3 year ROE estimate) if you wish to.
Step 4
Step 4: After looking at future growth estimates, let’s say you want to check if the company has a good track record. You can do this by clicking on the “Past Performance” section and using the scroll bar to filter companies which have had a growth of 5%, as an example, or more over the past five years. Use both ends of the scroll bar if you are after a more narrow range. You can choose multiple options under this section and apply filters to each.
Step 5: Moving on to the “Financial Health” section, let’s say you now want to look at companies that have a debt to equity ratio of below 100 and anything beyond that is of no interest to you. Using the scroll bar, navigate till you see the range change to 0% to 100%. As always, both ends of the scroll bar can be navigated for a more specific range.
Step 6: Next section is the “Dividend yield” This option would allow you to filter companies with all of the above filters we went through and which also pay a dividend. Simply choose the dividend yield range that is acceptable to you using the scroll bar.
In this instance, we have opted not to choose or filter by dividends. Remember, you don’t necessarily have to click through all of the options if you don’t feel inclined to. When you are happy with what you have, just click “Done” right at the bottom. The more number of options you click on and filter by, the shorter your final list of companies will be. This exercise would ultimately depend on your end goal.
Step 7: Moving on to the next option, let’s say you are interested to know if insiders have been buying stocks in the company and want to filter out companies that have seen higher volumes of insider selling than insider buying, the insider buying ratio would allow you to choose a range that suits you. As the description suggests the insider buying ratio is nothing but the ratio of insider buyers to sellers. In the screenshot below, we have chosen to keep the range at the default level, i.e. 0%-100%.
Step 8: On to the final section now. The “Other” option allows you to filter for some extra parameters. In our example below, we have selected to filter companies based on analyst coverage and secondary listings.
Step 9: After applying all of the above filters, the list of 72 companies that we started with at the beginning of this exercise (we started with just market and industry filters- see the very first screenshot for reference), has narrowed down to a list of 4 companies.
Filtering by Snowflake
You can entirely skip the advanced filter and simply filter by the snowflake parameters and shape. Simply follow the steps below. To know how to use the snowflake for your analysis go to this link.
You can use each of the parameters on the snowflake to filter out stocks or you can use one in combination with the other, or any other number of parameters you like.
Once you have finished filtering stocks, you have the option to save the screener by clicking on “Save Screener” and providing a name and description before clicking “Confirm”.
This way you can come back to this saved screener whenever you wish to, without having to set the same parameters again.