Creating a Tear Sheet from Start to Finish

A little over a year ago we released an article that outlined the process one has to go through to create a tear sheet within the Equities Lab system. Looking back on it, I realized that the article didn’t really make the process seem very user friendly, so I’m going to go ahead and illustrate how to build a tear sheet step by step.

  1. Create a new formula
    1. Go into the editor and create a new formula. Name it whatever you like – in our case we are building momentum with red and green flags.
    2. Remember to preface the name of the formula with “Tear Sheet:”

  2. In the editor you want to use the “+” operator before you start adding values.

  1. Create a variable on each line
    1. Start each variable name with “plot_detail_”. After that, add the name you’d like to call the variable by.
    2. Simply assign the variable to the value of the item you’re looking for – in this case, the 50 day moving average.

  1. Keep adding these values until you have everything you’d like in the tear sheet in place.
  1. Identifying red flags
    1. Since we are trying to make a real, useful tear sheet, as quickly as possible, we need it to look for red/green flags for us before we even decide which companies from a screener we want to analyze.
    2. Create a new tab title “red_flag_score”
    3. Use the “count_of” operator.

    1. Create a variable, prefacing the variable name with “plot-red”
    2. Add the parameters of that variable.

    1. Go through and add the rest of the red flags you would like the system to look for each time you run the tear sheet.
  2. Identifying Green Flags
    1. This works exactly like the red flags tab, just use “plot-green” rather than red.

  3. Creating the Actual Tear Sheet.
    1. Going back to step 3, we are going to put the elements of the tear sheet into an easy visual that we can use anytime we need it.
    2. First, copy the following block of text.

<h2>
  Tear Sheet Name
</h2>
<table border=”1″ cellpadding=”1″ cellspacing=”1″ height=”393″ width=”400″>
  <tr>
<td>
  <strong>Your Variable Name</strong>
</td>
<td>
  plot_detail_variable
</td>
  </tr>
</table>

  1. This will be the basis of your tear sheet. Take that code and click on the overview box in Equities Lab. From there, click on the description and you’ll be able to edit the information there – select “HTML”.
  2. Paste that code into the html box.

  1. Start plugging in information
    1. Change the space that says “Tear Sheet Name”
    2. Change the space that says “Your Variable Name”
    3. Change the space that says “plot_detail_variable”
  2. To add more values to the sheet, add the following section after “</tr>”

    <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>Your Variable Name</strong>
    </td>
    <td>
      plot_detail_variable
    </td>
      </tr>

    1. This will allow you to add an unlimited set of variables to show up in the tear sheet.
  1. Save the Tear Sheet and put it to use.
    1. If you’d like to use this Tear Sheet, just look for “Momentum with Red and Green Flags” when you select to switch the tear sheet of a company.
  2. You can have these variables accessible on hand for every company you look at, and it will identify strong and weak points within screeners to cut down your analysis time even further. Good luck, and if you have any questions, just post them in the comments below.