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Hi,

I use stock investor pro. I wonder what the best screeners that are affordable are. Is portfolio123 which is the same price better?

Thanks in advance.

Porfolio123 for an individual retail investor has many different pricing levels.
$25/mo, $299/yr Screener with 5 Yrs of point in time backtests for stocks & ETFs.
The 5 years backtest and access to ranking systems makes it better than SIPro but GTR1 with a SIPro subscription is in my opinion better. 5 years is a minimum period for backtesting. Some individuals who have tested future performance of screens have found best performance using either ~historical 10 years or another peak at ~20 years.
$84/mo, $1000/yr Backtest version gives you 10Yr backtest, customizable ranking systems and allows you to select Universes (SP500, SP1500 equivalent, Easy to trade US, Russel 1000,2000,3000 equivalents), use your own derived formulas among factors.
There are also Portfolio $1500yr and Ultimate $2400/yr and still another optional charge for AI computer time.
To me the question becomes how large is your portfolio and how much do you believe their tools will increase your return? If you have a portfolio of $200K and your return is increased by 0.5% that might justify the Backtest version.
Having read many testimonials over the years there are a large number of people who are unable to take advantage of the features and end up losing money. There are also a number of long-term users that continually report very profitable over all returns. 30 to 50% CAGR over 5 years but YT who now works for 123 and has a long series of successful years since 2015 lost a little last year. From my observations those individuals tend to be either from the financial universe or very mathematical inclined individuals and it requires a significant amount of effort.
I first started using P123 in 2005. I now have the Ultimate version with all the AI additions. So far AI predictions look better than any previous screens. But my AI models can’t predict a market in turmoil! I’m currently 95% in cash waiting for some stabilization!

I had StockScreener123 for a long time, backtested with data back to 1999. Which was as far back as they had survivorship-biasfree data. Really, just barely far enough back to be worthwhile. I think it was $15/mo.

Then they folded SS123 and merged us existing SS123 customers into Porfolio123 for $25/mo but with the same full 1999+ data.

I never wanted nor used the full Porfolio123 features, just wanted the screener capability. Yeah, my portfolio was more than $200K. Eventually decided that $25/mo was too expensive, so I dropped it.

$25/mo for 5 years of data is stupid. 5 years is not enough to be meaningful or useful.

I get that having good survivorship-biasfree data is expensive for them to maintain, but it just wasn't worth $25/mo. A real-time screener is handy, but without the ability to run a 15-20 year backtest it is rather useless.
Certainly (arguably) not worth $84/mo for only 10 years, or $1500/yr. What??? "$125/mo 15yr backtests"

The big feature they touted with P123 was being able to piggy-back on portfolios that other users created. For an additional fee. Totally black-box portfolio, you not see what the screener/portfolio was, just the current picks.
Heck, you can get black-box portfolios all over the internet for free. Reddit, youtube, TMF, Jim Kramer, shrewdm. ... Why would you pay?


To me the question becomes how large is your portfolio and how much do you believe their tools will increase your return?

I have virtually ZERO confidence that their tools will increase one's return better than screens that Jim has mentioned here and on TMF (r.i.p.)

Ahhhhhh, looking at their site they are being cute about the pricing. They do NOT list the prices & features unless you create an account and log in. They just say "From $25/mo" Yeah, no thanks.

Thanks. I would be using to create a list of stocks for further reference, not to have a trading strategy.

rayvtI have virtually ZERO confidence that their tools will increase one's return better than screens that Jim has mentioned here and on TMF (r.i.p.)’

Although GTR1 is an excellent backtester it does have a significant learning curve. The majority of historical screens on both sites have had poor post discovery records but is my opinion that P123 as a result of more financial professional users and a larger staff has significantly improved from their earlier ranking systems and designer models.

But as I previously said I don't believe the typical investor will end up making a profit using P123 but for those few that are willing to commit to a significant long term learning experience can.

As for performance take a look at some of the 2024 eoy posts by P123 users.

https://community.portfolio123.com/t/how-did-your-...

I would be using to create a list of stocks for further reference, not to have a trading strategy.

Barchart has a lot of data on stocks in an index. You can create your own custom view with up to 15 parameters. Can download view data for up to 1000 stocks.

Also, finviz.com/screener has a bunch of data.

Both are free for limited data or paid subscription for more data.

I don't believe someone can consistently achieve 50% returns. There are a lot of smart people on or were on this board and judging by the number that dropped off the board, those type of returns don't exist. I don't think Jim earns 50% a year. Doing a little math, a 50,000 portfolio would be worth 22,000,000 in 15 years at that rate of return.

You can beat the market over time, so 15% plus returns should be possible. I quit work 28 years ago because of this board (and its predecessor) though I appear to be one of the few focused on weekly trading, which I went to after trying weekly and monthly for a few years and always making more in my weekly trading account. I am not a believer in market-timing, so I take my lumps, but the compounding of positive weekly trades adds up over time.

Beats being a lawyer!

I have read the posts here, and while, I don't consider myself smarter than anyone else, I am retired now, so have time to use this well. For me, 13% a year is good enough.

Also, I have been studying screens for decades now, and have a degree in Electrical Engineering, so I have probably enough math skills to use the software. Hopefully, there are no programming skills required, those I don't have.

My understanding is that you can create more robust screens than you can in stock investor pro. For example, creating O'Shaughnessy's composite value and composite earnings quality factors.

I am the opposite of Musselmant. I like annual screens.

Do sites like FinViz, barchart, and stockrover offer better screening than portolio123.

Then, everything works perfectly until you try it.

Mark19: My understanding is that you can create more robust screens than you can in stock investor
pro. For example, creating O'Shaughnessy's composite value and composite earnings quality factors.

No one has brought up O’Shaughnessy’s screens for quite a while. When he published his 4th edition of
What Works on Wall Street “marginofbuffett, tetranomad and others like myself” were trying out different
Versions in 2012. A few bad years and most disparaged the screens but for those that kept track his Trending value hasn’t done all that bad. Here is tetranomad’s from 2012.
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~TrendingValue_20120222_tet...

From 19991220 till present 21.8% CAGR, Safe Annual Withdrawal Rate 11.4%, MDD -63%
This screen was developed on 2/22/2012 so post discovery results of the screen:
15.0% CAGR, SAWR 9.8%, MDD -63%

Very well thought out screens like this and YEY which has a 24.7% CAGR from 1987 till present but a similar
-67% MDD look spectacular as a backtest but are impossible for an individual looking at those drawdowns
to actually gamble his retirement nest egg in.

"Morgan Stanley’s Michael Mauboussin and Dan Callahan recently studied the price behavior of 6,500 stocks. Among other things, they took a closer look at the 20 stocks with the best total shareholder returns over the 40-year period from 1985 to 2024. They also reviewed the performance of the 20 worst performers during the period. (Note: They only considered stocks listed on the NYSE, NASDAQ and NYSE American exchanges that traded during the entire measurement period. They excluded companies worth less than $1 billion at the beginning and $250 million at the end of their maximum drawdowns.)

“The median maximum drawdown was 72% for the best group, and the median maximum drawdown duration, the time from peak to trough, was 2.9 years,” they found. “The median time to return to the prior peak was 4.3 years. The median annualized abnormal returns following the bottom was 8% for the next 5 years and 12% for the next 10 years. This is based on the unrealistic assumption the stock was purchased at the low.”

Mauboussin and Callahan note that Alpha Architect’s Wes Gray considered this thought experiment in a paper titled: “Even God Would Get Fired as an Active Investor.”

“[Gray’s] point is that if you had the (godlike) foresight to build a portfolio of the stocks that would produce the highest TSRs over the next five years, you would have ‘great returns, but gut-wrenching drawdowns,’” they wrote. “In other words, the drawdowns are so large that a client who hired you to be their active manager might fire you.” " https://www.tker.co/p/best-performing-stocks-exper...

So should we all work on divergent blends?
A Blend of 50% YEY and Trending Value:
https://gtr1.net/2013/blend.cgi?!!QlpoMTFBWSZTWeeZ...

At first doesn’t look like it helps all that much. From 19991220 to 20250528 CAGR 23%, SAWR 10.7%
MDD -56% but it appears that excluding the COVID drawdown of 2020 which recovered very quickly
Without significantly impacting any in the withdrawal phase. The drawdowns excluding the 2020 were
Only -34% still allowing a 10.7% SAWR.

Very well thought out screens like this and YEY which has a 24.7% CAGR from 1987 till present but a similar
-67% MDD look spectacular as a backtest but are impossible for an individual looking at those drawdowns
to actually gamble his retirement nest egg in.


You would not put all your money in the screen, and you should have a written plan about how long you will stick with it for, so you don't give up.

Very well thought out screens like this and YEY which has a 24.7% CAGR from 1987 till present but a similar
-67% MDD look spectacular as a backtest but are impossible for an individual looking at those drawdowns
to actually gamble his retirement nest egg in.

In some ways, I'm preaching to the choir: that's why it's suboptimal to bet the whole nest egg on this sort of thing--or even on any proven algorithm: even those only work until they fail, or seem like they've failed for longer than we want to stay with it. Putting a percentage of one's pile into them takes advantage of the long-term performance (and gives empirical, post-discovery data on performance) while any realized big drawdowns don't matter beyond making one's heart go pitty-pat.

I have a (very) few stocks in my pile that are pure plays. They'll work out and make my wife and me rich, or they'll bust, and I'll lose some nickels and dimes, because I'm not betting my wife's retirement life on them.

Eric Hines

To the point below... two things to add. Screens like YEY developed that long ago have been through numerous changes in composition from their original setup just because of market evolution over all that time. MLPs. ETFs. Low-fee index funds. Growth/momentum over value or dividend yield. High volume trading/index arb. etc etc etc.

Which meant that with many of these screens, including YEY, especially on the SI / small cap side, we're really discussing psychology. A screen with month after month after month of drawdowns/going out of favor or 1 stock out of 3 or 5 blowing up and tanking the performance makes it very difficult for people to "stick with the screen". We all know how this goes - "when do we throw in the towel? Am I wrong?"

The 12 month opportunity cost of a screen losing (again) to the S&P500 is extremely difficult to just take, shrug and say "well the backtest is still good, so..."

As I get nearer to retirement, there's the standard advice to minimize "sequence of returns" risk. And looking back at it that's similar to what we faced with these screens. Some screen has a bad 6 month run in a good market and it's down 20 or 25% to the S&P. How hard to stay with it and believe that 10 years later it will have been worth it, vs cutting bait and going back to megacap tech to keep up? (the only thing that's easily "worked" for at least 11 years now.)

The 12 month opportunity cost of a screen losing....

One way to fight the psychology of this sort of thing is to keep in mind a couple of things: opportunity cost vs real cost, and a chosen screen losing to the SP500 but still having a positive return and a screen losing to the SP500 and having a negative return.

Opportunity costs are just that--purely paper and not actual.

The more important difference, though, in dealing with the pitty-patting heart is keeping in mind whether the chosen screen is losing money or making money. Losing money over an extended time: what defines "extended?" That's a real rub, but it's easier--or more imperative--to dump a heretofore stable, in some sense, screen that has been losing money for that "extended" period. A highly volatile screen might want a little more patience (though not too much, and these kinds of screens badly want "extended" defined before going into it, along with what constitutes the biggest loss to be tolerated).

A chosen screen that continues to make money even though losing to the SP500 can handle quite a bit more patience while still looking for something better. This, though, is a matter of "better is the enemy of good enough." Keep looking for better, certainly, but don't bail on the good enough until you find that better.

In any event, what I wrote earlier in this thread: don't bet the whole pile on the chosen screen.

Eric Hines

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