AAII Stock Investor Pro

Stock Investor Pro, the database of fundamental information offered by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), is probably the most complete set of data available to the average investor.

With over 2000 data fields for each of the 8000+ companies, it provides a wealth of timely information to support investment decisions. Database updates occur weekly and are available on the AAII site. No online screening is available.

It is more than just a database. AAII identifies over 50 investing strategies complete with supporting rationale. It is the “Cliffs Notes” of investing strategies and is a great tool for investor education.

Going beyond typical investor education, the product comes with a screen for each of the investing strategies. The monthly performance of each screen is published starting from January 1998.

Stock screener “must have” features

All the “must have” features of stock screeners are included. With few exceptions, the data set is adequate for every fundamental investing strategy I have studied. 

Both “AND” and “OR” logic are included and the operators are adequate. Not included is the ability to restrict the number of results.

The screener is unusual in that it allows a factor (multiplier) of the criteria. For example, if you want the PE to be no more than twice the PE of the database you can simply enter a 2 in the factor and select the PE of the database as the operand.

Custom screens can be saved by name and are added to the list of 50+ pre-defined screens.

Perhaps most important of all, the date of the data for each company is a screenable field.  If you want to ensure the timeliness of the results, you can identify the latest acceptable date as a criterion in the screen.

Stock Investor Pro “nice to have” features.

When examined against the list of “nice to have” features in our checklist, only two are missing. As noted

above, it is not possible to use one of the operators to limit the number of results and AAII supplies no proprietary ranking system.

The number of industry relative and sector relative data fields available as criteria and the percentile ranking of the data fields reflect the richness of the data set. Almost every data field pulled from an SEC filing is used to derive an industry relative, sector relative and percentile ranking field for screen criteria comparisons.

The results of any screen can be saved (by name) in the portfolio included with Stock Investor Pro or exported to a spreadsheet. The data view selected in the export process determines which data fields are included in the export.

The view of company data is definable independent of the screening criteria. Any data field in the database is viewable. Sorting by any field (ascending or descending order) is possible by right clicking the column heading.

Advanced features

The advanced features are what separate Stock Investor Pro from most other stock screeners.

Because the database exists as a set of point-in-time snapshots of fundamental data, it can be used to back-test investing strategies. It is clumsy, but possible.

Custom formulas allow users to create derived data fields. Enterprise value is an example. In “The Little Book that Beats the Market”, Joel Greenblatt describes Enterprise Value. Although it is not a data field in Stock Investor Pro, using the existing data fields and the formula in the book results in a custom data field saved as Enterprise Value.  This custom field is available as a screen criterion.

Free stock screeners limit the screen to the online database.  Stock Investor Pro screens run against the database, the results of a preceding screen, or an imported list of tickers.

As mentioned earlier, both “AND” and “OR” logic is available to provide more flexible screens.

Implementing investing strategies

Your personal investing strategies identify the data and logic needs of the best stock screener for you.  If you need Net Payout Yield (e.g., the New Dogs of the Dow), it is not available as a data field.

The Tiny Titans investment strategy discussed elsewhere on this site illustrates a stock screen implemented in Stock Investor Pro.  See the implementation of a variation of Tiny Titans with AAII.

Conclusions

Stock Investor Pro includes every “must have” and advanced feature of a stock screener and has extensive fundamental data. The learning curve to take advantage of the features is steeper than the learning curve for a simpler screener but it offers more.

It is low cost, delivers high value and is a complete tool to support your investing needs. Even if you are not interested in a stock screener, you should consider subscribing just to improve your understanding of investing strategies.

The original product provided monthly updates on CD mailed to subscribers. Now it is possible to download updates weekly from the AAII site.

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