excel sheet for stock picking

aidanki

hi all,

doing some background reading on picking stocks and am beginning to understand all the ratios that one should consider

anyone know of an excel sheet that has all the ratios already entered in and you just put in the relevant figures and it spits you out the ratio?

save me doing up one

Mr_Roger_Bongos

I believe plenty of stock trading brokerage platforms have this information contained in tabular format. I seem to remember tradestation or sharescope had data mining functions by ratio.

I see two approaches to evaluating a share for investment;
1) You learn how to read the balance sheet and make your own interpretation for calculation of the ratios. You then use that information to make forecasts of futures earnings/growth, identifying discrepancies against current market value. You then invest or don't.

2) You understand the implication of the ratios and make your investment decisions by macro factors and understanding of the business model. From my reading of Warren Buffett, the figures are secondary to the business itself, i.e. High 'moat'/barriers to entry around the business, steady cashflow business (i.e. Not heavy on R&D expenditure, established customer base) etc.

Obviously both will give you a much fuller understanding, but starting out i don't see why using number 2 alone will put you at a huge disadvantage.