New GuruFocus Feature: Customized Rankings in the Screener

We are pleased to announce that GuruFocus users can now sort the Screener results using a customized rank that encompasses multiple filters at one time.

Example of a two-criterion rank: Greenblatt Magic Formula

In his book, "The Little Book that Beats the Market," Gotham Asset Management leader Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio) defined a "magic formula" involving two ratios: return on capital and earnings yield. To select the highest-ranked stocks, Greenblatt considers the overall rank based on a combination of the above two ratios.

• Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with VHC. Click here to check it out.
• VHC 30-Year Financial Data
• The intrinsic value of VHC
• Peter Lynch Chart of VHC

We will now discuss how to implement Greenblatt's Magic Formula using the new "Customized Rankings" Screener feature. To align with Greenblatt's special considerations when using his formula, we will focus on stocks with market cap of at least $100 million and exclude financial services and utilities companies.

If you hover your mouse over a column heading, you will see a black pop-up window that gives a brief definition of the term. In red, you should see a phrase called "Click to customize the ranking." Figure 1 illustrates this using the Greenblatt return on capital.

Figure 1

Click on the the red phrase to open a "Rank By" section, as Figure 2 illustrates.

Figure 2

You can now select the filters you wish to rank by and then adjust the weights as necessarily. Since Greenblatt gave a higher rank to stocks with high returns on capital and high earnings yield, we would rank the stocks by returns on capital and earnings yield in descending order (DESC). Figure 3 illustrates how to define a user-defined rank. You can also open the "Rank By" section by clicking the "chart with stars" icon highlighted in Figure 3.

Figure 3

We can now name our custom rank and save it using the "Customized ranking name" field and save button. Upon saving the custom rank, we can open the rank using the "My Ranking" tab, as Figure 4 illustrates.

Figure 4

Figure 4 also shows how the "Overall Rank" column, which gives the resulting ranks based on our user-defined formula, highlights the top three stocks with a green flag. The top three stocks listed are VirnetX Holding Corp. (NYSE:VHC), Centrus Energy Corp. (LEU) and Equity Commonwealth (NYSE:EQC), concurring with the top three stocks listed on the "Magic Formula" Screen. Note, we are excluding over-the-counter stocks.

Disclosure: The author has no positions in the stocks mentioned. The stocks mentioned are for illustrative purposes only and thus should not be construed as investment advice. Investors should conduct their own careful research before investing in the stocks mentioned.

Read more here:

• 5 Health Care REITs to Consider in 4th Quarter
• 3 High-Quality Stocks With Fair GF Valuations
• 3 Airline Stocks to Consider on Stimulus Hopes

Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Sign up for a free 7-day trial here.

About the author: