Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas!

2011 has been a crazy year for my family and me!  First, we sold out first house and moved into our second.  Then, we had our second child, Athan.  And as if we didn't feel like that was enough change, I changed jobs from ATS Automation to Ainsworth!  But I think these were all in God's grand plan for us.  We are thankful that we all made it alive and well!

There were also some bittersweet moments this year...and we are thankful for those as well.  I've always believed in the saying, "Bad things happen to good people to make them better."  Recently, I started to (re)-read the book of Job, after seeing an extended family member go through some very hard times over and over again.  I believe every Catholic/Christian should give Job a good read as it gives a biblical perspective into why God allows suffering in our lives.

Regardless, this is the season to remember that the battle has been won.  "Joy to the world, the Lord is come!"  I wish you and your family a joyful and peaceful Christmas.  Thanks for your continued support in this blog.  I'm truly grateful!  Again, Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Rule #1 Analysis Spreadsheet: Updated with Auto Stock Lookup

Update October 7, 2014: Spreadsheet has been updated.  See http://goo.gl/KEm3ar

Update January 26, 2012: I've updated the sheet.  Go to the Investing Resources to download the latest sheet.

FINALLY!  It's been a couple of months since I wrote.  A newborn and a 2-year old definitely takes up a majority of my free time!  Today was a bit of a vacation.  The family is staying over at my parents' for the weekend and so, I have some time to sit down and do some personal stuff, while there are plenty of people looking after the kids!

I promised, earlier on, to publish my Rule #1 spreadsheet with the auto stock lookup.  You can access the spreadsheet HERE.  The first thing you need to do is make a copy of the sheet so you can make edits to the sheet.  Click on File > Make a Copy, and name the file to your liking.  Oh yeah, you'll need a Google account.

How the Sheet Works
The main difference in the sheet lies in the "Stock List" tab.  The tab is designed to run the Rule #1 analysis on the symbols that is specified in column A.  Here's a simple procedure on how to use the sheet.

  1. Fill in Columns A and B with the symbols and their respective stock exchange.
  2. Click on Automation > Run Stocks - Start at Top.  This will start the script and the table will be filled with the Big 5 numbers.
If you have a long list of stocks, the Google script may time out and stop in the middle of the list.  If that's the case, use Automation > Run Stocks - Continue from List instead.  It will continue where you had left off.

In addition to just displaying the Big 5 numbers, I've also added an arbitrary formula that will rate the stock based on the numbers in Column R.  It basically gives a higher score if the Big 5 numbers are greater than 10%, a mediocre score if they are between 0 to 10% and a negative score if the numbers are less than 0%.  Feel free to change this formula to whatever you want it to be.

Data...a Lot of Data!
When I had started working on this sheet in the summer, one of my readers, Brad, got me a very comprehensive list of US stock symbols.  Due to Google's script time out issue, it took me quite a while to go through all 6000+ symbols...but here it is, available to you.  It's under the "Copy of Stock List" tab.  Keep in mind that the data is from the summer, which may be a little outdated.

Brad also gave me a lot of suggestions to add more fields such as P/E ratios, sticker price, current stock price, etc.  I haven't had time to implement much of what he suggested.  For now, I would use this sheet as a stock screener.  Essentially, it'll give you a list of stocks with a Rule #1 score, and you can filter the stocks based on the score.  Take the ones you like and do more research on them.

Let Me Know...
Please send me any feedback that you may have.  I'd like to develop the sheet further to help you out!  Hopefully, it won't take me another 6 months to release the next version!