My First Stock Screener
Introducing a simple stock screener!
At this point, hopefully you have Equities Lab up and running. There are several methods you can use to create a basic screener. On the Equities Lab home page, you can click the second option “Create Stock Screener”.
An alternative choice (that you can use anytime, anywhere in the software) is to click the Explorer tab and click “Create New Stock Screener”. You should then be prompted to name your stock screener. After naming click “Done” and you will be presented with a blank Stock Screener as shown below:
Now, let’s look for stocks that meet two requirements: they have a “PE” less than 10 and a “Market Capitalization” that is greater than 70 billion dollars. (This may not be the most interesting set of conditions to look for, but for now we want to focus on creating a simple stock screener.)
Before we’re done entering these two conditions, you will see there are several ways to enter them. A favorable way is to enter an “operator” first. This will construct the single blank box into several boxes depending on the operator entered. The first condition we want to enter is to find a “PE” less than 10. Enter the “<” operator into the empty box and press Return. Two new boxes will appear on either side, where we will enter our parameters.
Type “PE” in the left box and 10 in the right box. Then click the blue GO button on the top right. You will see over 1,000 stocks retuned in the bottom half of the screen that fit the condition we just entered into our stock screen (“PE” less than 10″).
The second requirement we want to enter is to find companies with a “Market Cap” that is greater than 70 billion dollars. Click the green “+” button next to “Stock Screener” to add another line to your test.
You will see an empty box appear below your previous test. This time enter a “>” operator. Two new boxes will again appear on either side of the operator.
While entering our parameters on this line, let’s explore how Equities Lab helps you with intuitive prompts. We want Market Capitalization in the left box, but typing out long names can become tedious and time consuming. (Side note: the name for that in Equities Lab is “Market_Cap,” which you can type out in full, but it is not necessary.) Each stock has over 1,400 fields of information. We call each field a “Property.” You will use these properties but they can not be changed. We have given Properties mnemonic shorthand names that start with capital letters and contain underscores to subdivide and break out a root property by time, rank, and other ways. (Words that start with lowercase letters cover everything else: things like operators, variables, tabs, and formulas.)
Now, type a capital “M” in the right box and see what happens. You will be prompted with four property names. Choose “Market Cap” and press Enter.
In the remaining empty box, enter 70,000 (interpreted as 70 billion in Equities Lab). Press “GO” and a heat map with stocks that match the requirements of our screener’s conditions will appear.