Online Investing Hacks

Build Industrial Strength-Stock Screens

When you have very exacting criteria for the stocks you want, define your own criteria with an industrial-strength screening tool.

Preformatted stock screening tools [Hack #4] are great for quick and easy filtering, but you’re limited to the financial fields and the criteria tests that they provide. When you want to define sophisticated screens, in which you combine tests or screen with numerous financial measures, you need a screening tool that provides access to dozens of financial measures, and includes arithmetic and logical operators for comparing multiple measures. You might expect to pay for a tool with this kind of power and, in some cases, you would be correct. However, the best industrial-strength stock screening tools are free.

The same web sites that bring you basic stock screens often provide more sophisticated screening tools for the overachievers in the audience. Although MSN Money’s basic screener is lame, their Deluxe Screener rules. Reuters Investor doesn’t offer much in the basic screen department either, but the Reuters Power Screener lives up to its name. Although Morningstar and Hoover’s both offer industrial-strength screening tools, they don’t offer enough additional features to justify the price tag they carry. In the for-a-fee category, stock screening software applications sometimes offer advantages over online tools that might make them worth the price.

MSN Money Deluxe Screener (http://money.msn.com/investor/finder/customstocks.asp ...