Health · ScreenerEvery Stock’s Checkup, Sorted
The checkup in 30 seconds
Seven yes-or-no checks for every US-listed company worth $1 billion or more, from its latest SEC filings, refreshed daily. Each dot is one check: filled means passed, hollow means failed, faint means not reported. Click a stock for its full Health Check with about 30 checks.
Share count matters most
Of everything we tested, this held up best. Companies that grew their share count by more than 25% in a year did 4.6% worse than other large stocks over the next year, and beat them in only about 1 quarter in 4.
Buybacks helped
Large companies that cut their share count by 3% or more in a year did 3.0% better than other large stocks over the next year (t-stat 2.7, ahead in about 2 quarters out of 3).
The full checkup
Passing 6 or 7 checks was worth about 1.2% a year across mid and large companies, mostly from the smaller ones. Among the largest stocks it made no difference: treat it as a risk filter, not a buy list.
Banks and insurers
Borrowing and short-term cash swings are their business, so the debt, short-term cover and cash checks are skipped for them, and they are scored on four checks.
The seven checks, and how they were tested
- Profitable
- Net profit over the last four quarters (or the latest full year) above zero.
- Debt load
- Total liabilities under 70% of total assets.
- Short-term cover
- Current assets at least 1.2 times current liabilities.
- Share count
- Shares outstanding up less than 5% over a year. Stock splits are left out.
- Earnings backed by cash
- Profit minus operating cash flow under 5% of assets (low “accruals”).
- Positive equity
- Assets worth more than liabilities.
- Cash
- Operating cash flow positive, or cash on hand covering at least a year of the cash burn.
- Quick checks vs the full Health Check
- These seven checks use the same fixed rules for every company so that all of them can be compared at once. The full Health Check runs about 30 checks and adjusts for the type of company, so the two can differ: a company with large buybacks, for example, can fail the debt-load check here and still score well there.
- The test
- Every quarter from 2014 to 2025, about 95 days after the quarter ended (when the filings are out), each company’s checks were computed from the SEC’s data as it stood, and its return over the next year was compared with all other stocks of similar trading size (above $1 million a day and $5 a share). Numbers are averages across 46 quarters; t-stats use the quarter-to-quarter spread.
- Limits
- Free price histories leave out delisted companies, which are mostly the weak ones, so the gaps between weak and healthy companies are likely understated. Company filings are tagged by the companies themselves and can be missing or off.
Good to know. This is a screen of reported numbers, not a signal or advice to buy or sell. Always open the full Health Check and the filings before acting.
For education only. Data comes from SEC filings and third-party price sources and may be delayed or wrong. Past patterns do not predict future results, and nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. See the Terms and Disclaimer.