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Formula 90

The Formula 90 screen is a variation of the pure Relative Strength screen. Like the other Growth screens, Formula 90 starts with the 100 top-ranked stocks in the Value Line Investment Survey and then uses rankings culled from Investor's Business Daily.

In an effort to generate a screen with a longer holding period than the monthly or quarterly rotation associated with Unemotional Growth and Investing for Growth, I tested a screen which holds five to ten stocks for a full year. Building on James O'Shaughnessy's and others' emphasis on Relative Strength for long-term Growth investing, I set minimum scores of 90 for both EPS (earnings per share) and RS (relative strength) scores (from Investor's Business Daily) and then used the RS screen as the final ordering factor.

Instructions to generate current rankings:

1. Start with the list of 100 Timely Stocks from page 27 of the Value Line Investment Survey (excluding any stocks on foreign exchanges).

2. Look up the EPS and RS rankings for each of the stocks.

3. Identify only those stocks with minimum scores for both EPS and RS of 90.

4. Take the five (or ten) stocks from the list in Step 3 with the highest RS rankings, using the higher EPS score to settle any ties for the final position.

5. Hold for one year. (We'll also track this screen for a monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual holding period as well, but only the annual method has been backtested.)

Using an annual rotation (identical to the cycle used for the various Value approaches, even though this is a Growth screen), this approach has a ten-year compound growth rate of 35.99% for a five-stock model, and 35.33% for a ten-stock version.

Here are the annual returns from 1987 - 1996:

         5-stock   10-stock
1987     -2.90%      9.82%
1988      4.81%      3.74%
1989     45.17%     48.53%
1990      2.13%      5.94%
1991    160.72%    145.58%
1992     33.11%      7.64%
1993     43.59%     46.59%
1994     25.22%     22.03%
1995     65.22%     56.68%
1996     39.02%     55.14%

 

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