Mike: Haven't looked at you Buffett screen yet, but your last comment, "screens have severe limitations" rang true. I recently did a 2 week free trial with AAII aaii.com just to see what they've been up to. Anyway, they put together screens to emulate the styles of not only Buffett, but Ben Graham, Dreman, Lynch, O'Shaughnessy and several other renouned folk. They've run these screens as portfolios, periodically updating the holdings, probably monthly since early 97. Graphs compared the performance of each of these screens to the S&P 500 and basically all but a couple severely underperformed. An earnings surprise screen outperformed and, oddly, Graham's defensive utility portfolio kept up, but most of the rest really sucked.
As your comment indicates, screening is just a way to narrow the range of choices to a managable few where DD and careful thought take the process the rest of the way.
bob |
