This article is an overview of screening; in subsequent articles, I will be doing deep dives into some classic screens such as those by Benjamin Graham, William O'Neil, Joel Greenblatt, Joseph Piotroski, and James and Patrick O'Shaughnessy.
Hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of investors use screens as a first step to picking stocks. Sometimes, the screens have very simple and straightforward rules; sometimes they are very complicated, using multi-factor ranking systems (my screens are like that) or head-scratching technical indicators.
How can you tell if a screen "works"? The conventional way is to