Creating an HYP screen

[JASpencer]

Are there any good articles on stock screens for HYPs out there?

[Gengulphus]

Are there any good articles on stock screens for HYPs out there?

None I know of, but my own experience of screening to get HYP candidates has given me some rules of thumb:

* Check the completeness and accuracy of the screening site about the figures you'd like to screen on, and only use the ones that do well. For example, using the ADVFN screen some years back (I haven't checked whether that's still the case), I discovered that screening on dividend cover there was not a good idea - too many companies were missing a dividend cover figure. (Even quite a few companies that did have both P/E and dividend yield figures - which was a bit weird because dividend cover can be calculated as 100%/(P/E * yield)...)

* Make your screen "loose" - its objective is to get you down to say 2-3 times as many candidate companies as you want in your HYP, not to get you down to that number. Try to make it get you down to that number and you'll almost always find that it gives you several candidates in currently-unpopular sectors and not enough in others - and it will probably give you a few companies that you'll end up saying "No way!" about on closer inspection. I.e. the role of a HYP screen is not to do all the work of vetting companies for you, nor even almost all of it - it's just to get it down to a manageable level of work.

* Don't feel you ought to screen on everything you're interested in checking. Yield plus 2 or 3 figures that suggest dividend sustainability/growability are ample - and that helps achieve both the first point above (you don't find yourself trying to rely on unreliable data) and the second (the more checks you put in a screen, the "tighter" it will become...).

Gengulphus

[JASpencer]

Are there any good articles on stock screens for HYPs out there?

None I know of, but my own experience of screening to get HYP candidates has given me some rules of thumb:

* Check the completeness and accuracy of the screening site about the figures you'd like to screen on, and only use the ones that do well. For example, using the ADVFN screen some years back (I haven't checked whether that's still the case), I discovered that screening on dividend cover there was not a good idea - too many companies were missing a dividend cover figure. (Even quite a few companies that did have both P/E and dividend yield figures - which was a bit weird because dividend cover can be calculated as 100%/(P/E * yield)...)

* Make your screen "loose" - its objective is to get you down to say 2-3 times as many candidate companies as you want in your HYP, not to get you down to that number. Try to make it get you down to that number and you'll almost always find that it gives you several candidates in currently-unpopular sectors and not enough in others - and it will probably give you a few companies that you'll end up saying "No way!" about on closer inspection. I.e. the role of a HYP screen is not to do all the work of vetting companies for you, nor even almost all of it - it's just to get it down to a manageable level of work.

* Don't feel you ought to screen on everything you're interested in checking. Yield plus 2 or 3 figures that suggest dividend sustainability/growability are ample - and that helps achieve both the first point above (you don't find yourself trying to rely on unreliable data) and the second (the more checks you put in a screen, the "tighter" it will become...).

Gengulphus

Thank you very much for those tips, they sound like accumulated wisdom. Are there any sites in particular that you would recommend for the screening?

[Raptor]

JA Spencer

I use the Stepone as a first step. You might want to have a quick look at that tool.

Raptor.

[Breelander]

Back in 2013 JohnnyCyclops posted a 'Simple HYP Screen' on TMF's HYPP board and posted regular monthly screens for several years after that. It was based around DigitalLook's screener.

Digital Look requires an account to be setup, but it's free... I set the following five parameters...

https://web.archive.org/web/20150508114 ... 08251.aspx

[Hypster]

Back in 2013 JohnnyCyclops posted a 'Simple HYP Screen' on TMF's HYPP board and posted regular monthly screens for several years after that. It was based around DigitalLook's screener.

Digital Look requires an account to be setup, but it's free... I set the following five parameters...

https://web.archive.org/web/20150508114 ... 08251.aspx

Wow, that a coincidence, I was just thinking of JohnnyCyclops and that very screen this morning! Thanks for posting the link. If my memory serves me correctly, JC stopped running the screen every month because Digital Look fiddled with their website or data feed so he couldn't do it easily anymore. I might run the screen in SharePad when I get the chance and see what companies appear.

[Breelander]

If my memory serves me correctly, JC stopped running the screen every month because Digital Look fiddled with their website or data feed so he couldn't do it easily anymore. I might run the screen in SharePad when I get the chance and see what companies appear.

As I recall (no doubt JC can correct me if I'm wrong) it was the average ftse yield the became unavailable. DigitalLook used to be unique in providing a yield that was the average of the yields of the constituents, as opposed to other sources that gave a cap-weighted yield figure.