UK Data
This screen seeks to emulate the style of Bill Miller, manager of Legg Mason Value Trust. Miller’s strategy focuses on identifying securities that are trading below their intrinsic value, but differs from many value managers in that he focuses on cash earnings, not accounting earnings. He looks for firms that may be undervalued based on the present value of future cashflows, although this is not easy to screen for in detail. He says: "Ideally, what we want is a company... that has tremendous long-term economics and those economics are either currently obscured by macroeconomic factors, industry factors, company-specific factors, or just the immaturity of the business." Diversification is a crucial element in Miller’s strategy but he aims for diversification among the stocks it incorporates, rather than the sheer quantity. By focusing on companies that are being shunned by the market, this strategy takes on higher risks in hope of higher returns. The value moniker for his Fund is perhaps misleading because Miller has bought many Internet “growth” stocks. You can read more about Miller's approach here. more »
Kirkpatrick’s Value Screen combines quantitative filters for relative price strength and relative reported earnings growth, with a value criterion - using relative price-to-sales percentiles, Kirkpatrick arbitrarily selected only those stocks in the 30th percentile or lower. Despite the success of his Growth Model, Kirkpatrick was concerned about the fact that its performance had occurred during one of the strongest bull markets in history. He wanted to strengthen the system against capital loss to protect against the inevitable market reversal. He believed relative price strength would not be effective during a market downturn and could lead to significant capital losses. For Kirkpatrick, the alternative was to reduce the risk of the portfolio by beginning with a group of stocks with low valuations. Kirkpatrick also looks for growth companies with market capitalizations of at least $500 million and share prices of at least $10. You can read more here. more »
David Dreman champions a contrarian investment approach based on interpreting market psychology and using value measures to pick stocks that are out of favour with the market. Dreman invests in out-of-favour stocks, often in out-of-favour industries, that he identifies using relatively straightforward metric criteria. "I buy stocks when they are battered. I am strict with my discipline. I always buy stocks with low price-earnings ratios, low price-to-book value ratios and higher-than-average yield. Academic studies have shown that a strategy of buying out-of-favor stocks with low P/E, price-to-book and price-to-cash flow ratios outperforms the market pretty consistently over long periods of time." more »
The Piotroski F-Score screen aims to identify deep bargain-bucket stocks that are in recovery. Josef Piotroski, a finance professor, recognized that, while it has long been shown that bargain stocks (having a low Price to Book Value) have strong collective returns, there is very wide individual variability. “Embedded in that mix of companies, you have some that are just stellar. Their performance turns around [but] half of the firms languish; they continue to perform poorly and eventually de-list or enter bankruptcy.” What he wondered was whether it was possible to weed out the poor performers and identify the winners in advance. He therefore sought to develop a simple accounting-based scoring system for evaluating a stock’s financial strength. Piotroski's F-Score looks at value stocks, i.e. the bottom 20% of the market in terms of price to book value, and tests nine variables from a company’s financial statements. One point is awarded for each test that a stock passes. Piotroski regards any stocks that scored eight or nine points as being the strongest. more »
This is a strict value strategy based on the writings of David Dreman and focusing on low P/E stocks. David Dreman champions a contrarian investment approach based on interpreting market psychology and using value measures to pick stocks that are out of favour with the market. Dreman invests in out-of-favour stocks, often in out-of-favour industries, that he identifies using relatively straightforward metric criteria. He says: "I buy stocks when they are battered. I am strict with my discipline. I always buy stocks with low price-earnings ratios, low price-to-book value ratios and higher-than-average yield. Academic studies have shown that a strategy of buying out-of-favor stocks with low P/E, price-to-book and price-to-cash flow ratios outperforms the market pretty consistently over long periods of time." You can read more about David Dreman here. more »
David Dreman champions a contrarian investment approach based on interpreting market psychology and using value measures to pick stocks that are out of favour with the market. Dreman invests in out-of-favour stocks, often in out-of-favour industries, that he identifies using relatively straightforward metric criteria. "I buy stocks when they are battered. I am strict with my discipline. I always buy stocks with low price-earnings ratios, low price-to-book value ratios and higher-than-average yield. Academic studies have shown that a strategy of buying out-of-favor stocks with low P/E, price-to-book and price-to-cash flow ratios outperforms the market pretty consistently over long periods of time." more »
Cornerstone Value is a five criteria large-cap dividend yield-focused value screen outlined in James O'Shaughnessy’s seminal 1996 book What Works on Wall Street. His work showed that a large-caps stock portfolio with above average stock liquidity and cash flow per share which was ranked for high dividend yields performed best over the long term. Accordiing to his work, this value strategy outperformed the market producing an annual compound return of 15% from 1954 to 1996, compared to 8.3% for the S&P 500 Index (his Cornerstone Growth Strategy achieved 18% but with greater volatility). more »
A combined value screen developed by Richard Beddard, editor of leading UK finance site, Interactive Investor. It selects 30 UK-listed companies (with a market value of more than £500 million), using an approach that assesses three key criteria: i) value, as measured by the earnings yield; ii) profitability, measured by return on capital; and iii) financial strength, as measured by Piotroski’s F-Score. Essentially Piotroski plus the Magic Formula. This screen is not to be confused with the Thrifty Thirty, which is Beddard's own stock picks, as described on the Interactive Investor Blog. more »
The Piotroski F-Score screen aims to identify deep bargain-bucket stocks that are in recovery. Josef Piotroski, a finance professor, recognized that, while it has long been shown that bargain stocks have strong collective returns, there is very wide individual variability. What he wondered was whether it was possible to weed out the poor performers and identify the winners in advance. He therefore sought to develop a simple accounting-based scoring system for evaluating a stock’s financial strength. Piotroski's F-Score looks at value stocks and tests nine variables from a company’s financial statements. One point is awarded for each test that a stock passes. Piotroski regards any stocks that scored eight or nine points as being the strongest. In this version of the screen, Price to Earnings, rather than Price to Book, is used as the measure of "cheapness". more »
This screen involves seeking out stocks that are covered by few, if any, financial analysts and attempting to discover sources of value that may have been overlooked by other investors. Neglected firms tend to be small, low-profile companies that have not received much media attention. Areas of the market that attract media attention, public interest or sophisticated institutional followings are more likely to be properly priced than areas that are off the beaten track. more »
A hardcore intrinsic value investing screen based on buying with a significant Margin of Safety but not as demanding as Graham's set of Defensive Screen criteria. Despite the name, this is not a growth screen. Graham felt defensive investors should confine their holdings to the shares of large, prominent/important, and conservatively financed companies with long histories of profitable operations. In contrast, entreprising investors could expand their universe outside of these “important” companies. He suggests looking at i) the relatively unpopular large company, ii) “special situations”, and iii) “bargain issues”. more »
John Templeton believed that there were no simple formulae to finding good stocks, with over 100 factors that can be considered at times. However, Templeton did have four criteria which he considered particularly important: i) P/E ratio, ii) Operating profit margins, iii) Liquidating value and iv) Consistency of growth rates. Templeton also looked for any potential catalysts (new markets and products, potential M&A, as well as industry changes). more »
This screen implements the criteria laid out by Kenneth Fisher in his 1984 Dow Jones book, "Super Stocks". The main criteria used by Fisher was the price-to-sales ratio (PSR). Fisher argued that stocks with PSRs below 1.5 are good value while the real winners are those with PSR values under 0.75. The exception to this was “smokestack” industries which don’t generate a lot of excitement, for which the PSR target should be between 0.4 and 0.8. The other criteria he highlighted were: Profit margins - He wanted three-year average net margins to be at least 5% The debt/equity ratio - This should be no greater than 40 percent, and is not applied to financial firms) Earnings growth - The inflation-adjusted long-term EPS growth rate should be at least 15% per year). An optional criterion (to be used in the technology and medical industries) was: Price to Research Ratio - Less than 5% was the best case, and those between 5 and 10% were still indicative of bargains. Less than 15 percent was borderline. more »
A hard-core contrarian value screen, albeit one using the ‘total return ratio’ in order to combine value metrics with growth. Although he didn’t like the term, Neff was essentially a contrarian investor buying good companies with moderate growth and high dividends while out of favour, and selling them once they rose to fair value. He looked for both value and growth or rather "good companies, in good industries, at low price-to-earnings prices". To identify these, his approach adds the expected future growth rate to the dividend yield, and divided by the PE ratio to give what he termed the ‘terminal relationship’ or, more colloquially, ‘what you pay for what you get’. more »
This is a low Price to Book based on the writings of David Dreman. He champions a contrarian investment approach based on interpreting market psychology and using value measures to pick stocks that are out of favour with the market. Dreman invests in out-of-favour stocks, often in out-of-favour industries, that he identifies using relatively straightforward metric criteria. "I buy stocks when they are battered. I am strict with my discipline. I always buy stocks with low price-earnings ratios, low price-to-book value ratios and higher-than-average yield. Academic studies have shown that a strategy of buying out-of-favor stocks with low P/E, price-to-book and price-to-cash flow ratios outperforms the market pretty consistently over long periods of time." Dreman warns that the Price to Book strategy in particular may lead to investing in loss-making stocks, at which one needs to be especially careful, and double-checking a company's financial strength is especially important. more »
