Chapter 1
The Importance of Screening and Backtesting
One of the reasons why so many people are not seeing the kinds of returns they hope to see in their stock investments is because they don’t know which stocks to buy and sell. They find themselves invested in mediocre stocks because they don’t know of anything better to get into. For some, their knowledge or “universe” of familiar stocks is relatively small, and this limits their opportunity to invest in better ones.
Worse, when they finally do pick a new stock (likely an all too familiar one) and that doesn’t work out as planned either, it discourages them even more from going out and finding others.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Why Should I Use a Stock Screener?
With over 10,000 stocks out there to pick and choose from, we all need a way to find the good ones.
Aside from buying stocks that are talked about on TV, written about in the newspaper, or touted on the Internet (not to mention tips from a friend)—how else are you going to find stocks that meet certain characteristics?
Even if you don’t use a screener now, most people still do their own screening in one way or another. You may hear that a stock has a certain growth rate or a certain P/E ratio or sales surprise or whatever. You then find yourself listening for or reading about or surfing the Internet for stocks that meet this criteria. Well, if you want to find stocks that meet certain criteria, certain characteristics, you can find them quickly and easily with ...
