Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Dallin Salmon - Stock Analyzer 2-Thousand

Executive Summary

Stock Analyzer 2-Thousand

I invest frequently in individual equity securities, and I’m a disciple of Benjamin Graham in that I employee a very fundamental investment theory. The challenge in my investing strategy is sorting through the thousands of available stocks. I typically constrain my investment activities to equities listed in the United States, which amounts to a dynamic pool of about 6,700 stocks. Performing continual, up-to-date fundamental analysis to screen through these stocks is incredibly time consuming. Specifically, I try to identify the best-performing equities according to various, specific valuation metrics (ROE, ROA, Earnings Growth, Revenue Growth, “Price-to“ Ratios, etc.). I then use these metrics to identify the healthiest companies by sector. Finally, after using the above criteria to identify an array of specific equity securities, I then perform more in-depth valuation analysis to understand growth prospects, P&L break-down, and true financial health. This entire process takes hours and hours of time, and I elected to utilize VBA to help me gather up-to-date valuation data, screen according to my identified metrics, and then provide me with more specific fundamental data on the specific stocks I want to research more in depth.

                
My VBA stock-analyzing tool first pulls every current U.S.-listed stock ticker from finviz.com, with its most up-to-date financial data. The user can click the “Pull Stock Info” button at any time and the tool will re-generate the most recent list of stocks, with their most recently updated financial data. Next, the user can click the “Sort Stocks” button. This button will generate a new tab, and will display a user form. The user is then prompted to select four key areas to screen: 1) sector, 2) valuation metric, 3) sort high or low, and 4) whether to screen from entire pool of U.S.-listed stocks or focus on the S&P 500. The newly created tab is then populated with the screen-selected data. Finally, the user can look at the data to decide on 2-3 stocks upon which he or she wants to perform a more in-depth valuation. The user then clicks the “Stock Analysis” button, which displays another user form in which the user can enter the desired stock ticker. Using available fundamental data on Reuters.com, the tool will then create a new tab (named after that stock) and will display all available data regarding expected growth, P&L break-down, and financial health.

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