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How to use the IC stock screener

Created:

23 June 2008

Updated:

26 October 2009

Written by:

David Stevenson

The Investors Chronicle website has its own very satisfactory simple stock screening tool based on the DigitalLook engine. You can reach it using the 'Stock screening tool' button on the RESEARCH TOOLS page. The stock screener is only available to IC Advantage users.

Running the screener presents you with a number of key options. First, you decide the sector and index you want to start on (a great advantage for sector specific searches) followed by company basics such as market cap and share price. Note that you can only select an index or sectors, not both.

Then, you can choose some basic technical measures based around the share price, such as falls and increases over set time periods. Note that if you are looking for falling share prices, you put the larger end of the decline in the 'Min' box. If you were looking for stocks that had fallen between 20 per cent and 40 per cent over the past month, this is what you'd enter:

After this you get to the core of the screener - the key fundamental criteria based around classic measures like the PE ratio, the price to sales ratio and the yield. Here you can input your range of values - minimum and maximum - followed by a choice of years in the future for forward looking estimates.

Last but by no means least you'll then see a group of buttons that let you choose the range of broker forecasts , broker recommendations and the estimates for future dividends.

The actual process is incredibly simple and easy to use, and generates a single page of results. If you need to modify the inputs, you can just use the Back button on the browser. Clicking on the company names in the list of search results takes you to lots more financial information about that company, including key metrics and broker forecasts.

You can't export the results directly into an Excel file (surprisingly few online screeners boast this feature), but you can copy and paste them cleanly. The easiest way is to start at the bottom-right corner of the list of search results, select the entire data area, and copy (Ctrl+C). In Excel, select the 'Paste Special' command from the Edit menu, then select 'Text' from the available options (as below). Then, you can play around to your heart's content.

For the most basic screens, this online tool should be absolutely ideal as it has all the key measures you'll ever need to run basic fundamentals, value screen. The problems emerge if you want to use more complex technical/price based queries or if you want to use more complex financial ratios such tangible net asset value (all the book assets that are not intangibles and have real, physical value).

For more complex stock screens with better outputting facilities you'll need either InvestorEase (for medium complexity screens) or Sharescope, which should just about run any screen you can ever think of. However, both these products cost more than a year's IC subscription, and don't include any content - see last week's feature, Best stock screening products, for more details.