OK, Stock Markets are quiet so before heading off to the gym, decided to knock this one off my To Do List - And, actually, quite glad I did...
There are over 2,000 companies listed on the Main Market and AIM.
So, how do you choose which ones to invest in?
I use Market Cap - Prefer £50m - £300m but I do extend this out to£30m - £600m as absolute limits, just to give a little leeway. The £30m - £600m gives me a universe of 633 stocks.
Profit - No leeway here, if it’s not making a Profit, not interested. This gives me a universe of 420 stocks.
Also, I typically avoid these Sectors - Coal, Oil & Gas, Oil & Gas Related Equipment & Services, Renewable Energy, Uranium, Holding Companies, Real Estate Operations, Residential & Commercial REITS and Collective Instruments. This reduced my universe to 339 stocks.
Of course these are general rules of thumb and sometimes I can invest outside the criteria. However, it's usually rare and I do mainly try and stick within these parameters.
Makes life much easier.
Hope it's useful.
What high level screening or parameters do you apply, if any?
NOTE: I had to do many screens using Mkt Cap >=£Xm <£Xm to get these results as Stocko only returns 200 results, so this was not as simple an exercise as it looks - The support guys tell me this is on the wishlist.
