Introduction
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This is Ken Leoni Vice President of Marketing here at Stock Rover and in this video, we’ll explore next level screening using Equations. We’ll show you when and how to use equations to take advantage of Stock Rover’s comprehensive screening capabilities.
Before jumping in, a quick word about accessing Stock Rover’s out-of-the-box screening capabilities.
Stock Rover comes with a rather extensive collection of screeners that are available in the Stock Rover Library these screeners are all available for import. The plan column shows the Stock Rover subscription plan needed to access and operate the screener.
Greyed-out Screeners have already been imported. When you select a screener you can see the criteria listed below. We can see that this screener makes use of equations.
Once imported, the screeners are available in the Screener Manager is here where functions specific to a screener can be performed, among them are altering a screener’s criteria or adding new filtering criteria.
The concepts covered in the video are applicable whether you are altering a screener or creating a new screener from scratch. You can alter an imported screener or use it as the basis of a brand-new screener.
If you alter and later want to bring an imported screener back to its original state, you can simply re-import it from the Library.
To use an existing screener as the basis of a new screener simply copy it with a different name and make whatever changes you like.
Please note screeners with Equations require a Stock Rover Premium Plus subscription.
Let’s start first, with a simple screener that doesn’t use any equations at all, our Growth At A Reasonable Price (GAARP) Essentials Screener. As we can see the filtering criteria are based on metric threshold values.
What are Equations?
Equations are formulas constructed from metrics.
When Do you use Equations?
Equations are appropriate when filtering based on a simple threshold won’t do.
Comparing Historical Values
Let’s take a look at a more advanced version of our Growth At A Reasonable Price screener – the GARP Premium Plus screener. This screener builds upon the GARP Essentials screener with not just more filters, but more granular filtering criteria as well.
The equations highlighted in red are using formulas to filter based on historical values. The equations referencing Earnings Per Share, Sales, and Operating Income and are filtering for consecutive Trailing Twelve Month increases last year and this year.
In the formulas:
The [Now] suffix represents the most recent trailing 12 months value
The TTM1 suffix represents the trailing twelve months value going back 1 year
The TTM2 suffix represents the trailing twelve months value going back 2 years
Comparing metric values
Another use case for equations is comparing metric values.
Let’s take a look at a different Screener called “Improving Analyst Ratings.”
This screener is filtering for stocks with increasingly favorable analyst ratings.
The screener consists of 5 equation-based filters that are evaluating metric values against each other.
For example, the 1st equation is filtering for the current analyst consensus ratings being higher than 1 month ago. The value ranges from 1 as a Buy to 5 as a Sell.
Complex filtering situations
Another use case for equations is creating complex filtering situations.
Let’s take a look at the Vintage Value Investing’s Wealth Builder Screener, which use equations to create complex filtering criteria.
Our first equation is looking at earnings per share now being greater than earnings per share at year 5 and earnings per share at year 5 being greater than earnings per share at year 9.
Let’s take a closer look at another equation via the Equation Editor.
This equation is filtering for tickers where the 10-year average return on equity exceeding 15%.
Creating Equations
In our first example, we’ll create equation filters that are referencing historical data.
But first, let’s talk a little bit about metrics. Out of the box, Stock Rover comes with some 700+ metrics that cover areas such as growth, profitability, financial strength, capital efficiency, price performance, momentum, dividends, analyst ratings, stock ratings, industry and sector deciles, financial statement data, and more, including advanced metrics such as the Piotroski F-Score, Price to Graham Number, Shiller P/E, Margin of Safety, Beneish M-Score and the Altman-Z score.
To see the full list of metrics, you will want to launch the Metric Browser, you can filter the display based on the columns. Selecting History “yes” shows a list of all metrics that Stock Rover maintains history for. You can screen on history that goes back as far as 10 years.
Referencing historical data
Let’s launch the Screener Manager.
Let’s create a new screener. We want to filter for stocks with consecutive periods of earnings per share growth. We’ll narrow down our universe to Stocks to the S&P 500. We’ll click on “Add Free Form Equation” to create our equation. We want to search for the earning per share metric under Metrics and Functions.
We see that EPS Now shows up next to the Test button. This tells us that Stock Rover is maintaining history for the EPS metric. The Now suffix tells Stock Rover to evaluate the recent trailing twelve-month value and as we’ll see this suffix will change when you want to reference different time periods.
If a metric doesn’t have history it will appear in the equation editor with no suffix and it will not appear next to the Test button.
I want to filter for tickers where the most recent trailing twelve-month EPS value is greater than the trailing twelve-month value from 1 year ago. So let’s put a greater sign in here and let’s again look for EPS and let’s again look for EPS and what we are going to do now is click on the edit button. We can see that Stock Rover maintains quarterly data going back 9 quarters. Trailing Twelve Month data going back 10 years and Calendar Year data going back 10 years as well.
We are interested in trailing twelve months and we want TTM1, so we want to go back 1-Year ago today. We can then click test to verify our equation syntax. Notice also we can select which ticker to test against. Let’s do this again for the previous trailing twelve-month period. Add Free Form Equation, again we’ll select earnings per share. We want to start at TTM1, so we want to go to trailing twelve months 1 year ago greater than. We’ll click edit once again, pick TTM2 and we’ll add one more equation with a bit of math. So, we’ll got to “Add Free Form Equation”. We want to see a 20% increase. What I’ll do is start with EPS, we’ll change this to TTM2, put our greater than in here and do a little bit of math. So, we’ll pick EPS TTM3 and we’ll multiply that by 1.2. So, we want to see a 20% increase. Here we see our three filters and it is very easy to edit a filter as well. So, I’ll edit the first filter and we’ll make it consistent for a 20% increase and we’ll do the second filter as well.
We can see that Stock Rover found 19 tickers that met our filtering criteria. Let’s save this screener. We’ll just give it a friendly name.
To perform research on screener results you will want to go to the Table under Research. In the navigation pane you can select the screener that you would like to load into the Table. We’ve selected the Sample EPS screener. Here we see 19 tickers loaded into the Profile view.
The Table uses a spreadsheet-like paradigm where each row is a ticker and each column corresponds to a metric.
At the top we have multiple view from which to select. You can change these views or create your own view.
Boolean logic
Let’s take a slightly different approach and instead create the same screener using a single filter with boolean logic.
We’ll narrow our universe down to the S&P 500 only. We’ll click on “Add Free Form Equation again and in the equation editor what I’m going to do is paste the formula.
Keep in mind that once you are comfortable with the syntax you can also simply type freeform into the Equation Editor and use “Test” to verify the syntax.
We can now see we are filtering in earnings per share now greater than the earnings per share from a trailing twelve-month period from 1 year ago times 1.2, we’re also doing it for last year and the previous year. Once again, we returned 19 tickers. Let’s save this screener.
Equation functions
The last screener demonstrates the use of one of many Stock Rover equation functions. So again, we’ll narrow down our universe of Stocks to the S&P 500.
The screener is going to filter for S&P 500 stocks that recently stopped paying dividends. So, we’ll go and “Add Freeform Equations”. We want to look at dividend per share. We are interested in the dividend per share now, well not being reported. So, we are going to use an equation function “is null”. And dividend per share, we’ll edit, pick TTM1. We are interested in those that paid dividends so we want our equation function “is not null”. We can see that Stock Rover returned 22 tickers. Let’s save.
Summary
I hope you found the video useful. I encourage you to explore Stock Rover and see all that it has to offer, as well as check out our other educational videos on our website. Thank you for watching.
