Hi A, We were having a bit of a discussion on V/L over on the AIM board. Here's what I was telling them:
Hi Keith, I find the written analysis in VL to be the least valuable except for news items. Opinion is just that - opinion, and we all have one of those! It's the numbers that I watch.
As far as AIM goes, their timeliness ratings are only a curiosity, not a predictor of successful AIMing. I sometimes use what I call the
"Value Line Triple Crown"
if I'm bottom fishing.
I attempt to find stocks that are on three of their screens in the index section:
High Growth Stocks
High 3-5 Year Appreciation Potential
Untimely Stocks (ranked 5, lowest)
It doesn't happen very often that a stock will appear on all three screens in the same week, but when they do, it usually means that some traumatic event has happened which has knocked the stock for a loop.
If it also appears on the
Worst Performing Stocks - latest 13 weeks
list, then it almost assured that it really got wallopted! It doesn't mean that it's a great buy, but that it might be one to explore very carefully.
The easy way to screen is to look for the Timeliness 5 rated stocks on the High Growth list. It also lists the BETA which is handy.
Years ago I started a pretend portfolio I called "the million dollar portfolio." It contained 20 stocks and was picked from VL's "High Growth Stocks" list. Each was given an initial $50,000 as a starting point and I used the IW value as of their start. I picked the high point of the previous year's price cycle to handicap it as much as possible.
I still keep the MDP up to date and many stocks have done quite well after a slow start. Hard to recover from that first high water mark I used. Those original 20 were picked with just two criteria - High BETA and being on the High Growth Stocks list. Pretty simple. If one got bought out, I just replaced it with another off the list.
If anyone's interested, I could write a quickie report on it and list the results.
Best regards, Tom |
