Lesson 08 — How to Run a Screen

What you'll do

A screen filters every listed company down to the few that meet rules you choose, such as a minimum ROCE. You will run a ready-made screen and see why each company matched.

Step by step

1. Click Screener in the sidebar (/screener-v2). The page is called Equity Screener and has four tabs: Discover, Screen, My Screens and Scoring.
2. On Discover, browse the ready-made screens. They are grouped, for example Quality & Compounding and Value & Income, and each card shows how many criteria it uses. A Refine button on a card lets you adjust its thresholds before running.
3. Click High ROCE & Low Debt. It runs at once and applies four filters to the latest annual consolidated numbers: ROCE of 20% or more (profit earned on all the money in the business), ROE of 15% or more, Debt-to-Equity of 0.5 or less (borrowing compared with owners' money), and revenue of at least ₹50 crore.
4. You land on the Screen tab. A chip shows how many companies were found. Click a column heading to sort, and use the columns icon (Configure visible columns) to show or hide numbers such as Market Cap, Net Profit and ROE.
5. Switch on Explain Why, then expand a row to see which filters that company passed.
6. To change a rule, click Edit Filters, adjust a number or click Add Filter, then click Run. Check Report Type (Standalone or Consolidated) and Period (Latest Quarter or Latest Annual) first; Lessons 02 and 04 explain the difference.
7. To keep a company for later study, click the Add to Watchlist icon on its row (Lesson 07).

Why this matters

A screen only filters numbers. It does not say which companies are good. The ones that pass are a starting list to study, nothing more, and the rest of this course teaches you how to study them.

Related lesson: Lesson 01 — Screening Criteria for Quality Companies

Key takeaway

A screen narrows thousands of companies to a short list to study. It starts your research; it does not finish it. "Pehle chhaano, phir padho."

Try it