The Daily Workshop Report
by Robert Sheard (TMF Sheard)

LEXINGTON, KY. (Nov. 10, 1997)

Scroll to the bottom for year-to-date Growth and Value Screen results.

Several readers have asked for a one-stop shopping list of the new screens I'll be tracking in the Workshop for 1998. (These are also the current rankings I post in this column every Friday evening.) So here goes, and look for a permanent file with this information in the near future.

Unemotional Growth -- This screen begins with the 100 top-ranked stocks in Value Line's Timeliness system (listed in our weekly Foolish Workshop database). That list is then sorted according to the Earnings Per Share (EPS) percentile score from Investor's Business Daily and the top five or ten stocks are selected. (If necessary, ties may be broken using either IBD's Relative Strength ranking or a Six-Month Total Return screen.) The holdings are adjusted once per month.

Investing for Growth (Classic) -- This screen begins with the list of High Growth Stocks in Value Line's weekly publication (page 39 of the Summary & Index). Any stocks on that page that carry a Timeliness ranking of 1 qualify as IFG stocks. To select the top ten, sort the qualifiers by Industry Ranking. If necessary, to break a tie for the final spot on the list, turn to the estimated growth rate (listed on the same page 39). The holdings are adjusted once per quarter.

Investing for Growth (Relative Strength) -- This screen is identical to the Classic IFG approach except that instead of the Industry Ranking, the stocks are sorted by the previous Six-Month Total Return. For those readers who prefer the IBD RS ranking instead of the Six-Month Total Return screen, the current IBD numbers for these stocks can be found in the Workshop database each week. The holdings are adjusted once per quarter.

Keystone Portfolio -- This portfolio doesn't come directly from our Workshop database. It is selected from the 100 largest American stocks (based on market-cap data). The group is narrowed further by selecting only those stocks with Timeliness rankings of either 1 or 2. In order to select the top ten, the qualifying stocks are sorted by Six-Month Total Return. The holdings are adjusted only once per year.

Relative Strength (IBD) -- This screen begins with the 100 top-ranked stocks in the Value Line Timeliness system and selects the top five or ten based on the best RS percentile rankings in Investor's Business Daily. If necessary, ties may be broken using the EPS ranking. The holdings are adjusted only once per year.

Relative Strength (Six-Months) -- This screen is identical to the previous one except it uses a Six-Month Total Return screen in place of the RS ranking from IBD. The holdings are adjusted only once per year.

There are obviously hundreds of other possible combinations one could track. If your favorite isn't included here and you'd like to share it with us online, please announce your plan in the message board folder for the Workshop and then keep us posted with regular updates. You may discover an even better screen than any I'm tracking here. We'll all be thrilled if you do. Fool on!

Monthly Growth Screens
(Jan. 3 to present)
80.01%  Relative Strength  
25.47%  EPS Plus RS  
23.14%  S&P 500 Index  
22.39%  Investing for Growth  
15.49%  Formula 90  
12.18%  Unemotional Growth  
  8.87%  Low Price/Sales  
  8.08%  YPEG Potential  

Annual Value Screens
(Jan. 1 to present)
21.96%  Dow Combo  
21.73%  Beating the S&P  
20.89%  Unemotional Value  
20.89%  Beating the Dow  
20.71%  Foolish Four
20.70%  Dogs of the Dow  
17.13%  Dow Jones Ind Avg