Google Finance has a
stock screener that I think is pretty neat.
The default screen gives you a list of 3,588. That's a pretty big list.
To start cutting that down I first changed the screening criteria to include only stocks with a P/E ratio between 2 and 14. The market average is probably about 14 or so (I'm not sure what it is exactly). So that's just stocks that are making a little money but the market isn't forecasting huge income growth.
If the market anticipates large income growth it will trade at a high P/E ratio, the price reflecting an anticipation of future earnings rather than a a simple status quo type projection. I think of that as the market buying the story rather than buying results.
That pares the list down to 1438. Still too big to be managable.
The next step was to get rid of stocks that had been having wide price swings in the last year. Huge price swings are just an indication that the market has been surprised by performance (or lack of performance). I don't think a company whose performance can't be predicted with any kind of stability is a very good bet. I screened out everything that had had price swings in the last year of more than plus or minus 50%.
That still left over 1,100 stocks.
The next screen is institutional percent held. How much of the stock is held by
institutional investors, mutual funds, pension plans, etc. I looked for between 12 and 65 percent.
That left me with 152 stocks.
19 of those are energy stocks. Since I don't have any energy stocks in my recommended portfolio, and I'm a fan of diversification, I'm going to look more closely (in later posts) at those 19 energy stocks.
Company Mkt P/E Div Yield (%) 52w Price Change (%) Institutional Percent Held
Cap
Alliant Energy Corporation LNT 3.66B 8.43 4.24 -13 46 58.80
Barnwell Industries, Inc. BRN 87.16M 9.97 2.82 -28.48 14.66
Chevron Corporation CVX 178.64B 9.20 3.05 -7.24 64.54
Consolidated Edison, Inc. ED 11.93B 10.63 5.42 -7.73 46.06
Dominion Resources, Inc. D 25.17B 7.43 3.73 -2.48 60.00
DTE Energy Company DTE 6.65B 11.92 5.19 -16.98 56.91
Enbridge Inc. (USA) ENB 14.57B 11.86 3.27 6.70 57.52
Energy West, Incorporated EWST 39.08M 11.84 5.48 -9.25 12.56
Exxon Mobas il Corporation XOM 418.90B 9.97 2.05 -15.15 50.88
General Electric Company GE 251.19B 11.82 5.04 -40.17 57.05
MDU Resources Group, Inc. MDU 5.26B 13.66 2.18 4.67 50.35
OGE Energy Corp. OGE 2.89B 12.36 4.41 -5.21 48.43
Pepco Holdings, Inc. POM 4.75B 13.64 4.73 -15.97 59.66
Petro-Canada (USA) PCZ 17.18B 4.63 2.17 -37.13 53.79
TECO Energy, Inc. TE 3.58B 10.14 4.87 1.29 62.65
Tenaris SA (ADR) TS 24.79B 12.63 2.31 -17.81 27.54
Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. TNP 1.17B 4.99 5.77 -14.96 29.34
WSI Industries, Inc. WSCI 15.14M 10.77 2.75 21.06 17.20
Xcel Energy Inc. XEL 8.84B 13.70 4.64 -6.02 59.00
