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Vuru.co: Stock Screening and Analysis for Value Hunters

Written by WealthLift Team in Investing Tips and Resources | 1 comment

Sometime in the future the dust will settle on the much-maligned financial crisis and the long-running and seemingly interminable European sovereign debt crisis. Investors will emerge after grappling with foreclosures, credit card debt and unemployment. In fact they may already be doing so, judging by the recent performance of the stock markets.

When the last waves of individual investors return, they are likely to be impressed by the fact that despite all the talk of a “new normal”, value investing never really went out of style. Diligent students of Benjamin Graham, including his famed disciple, Warren Buffett, will likely emerge even stronger from this turbulent period.

When this happens, investors will look for ways to emulate their success and to seek out stocks that offer value using their methodology. Those investors will look for fundamental company data, and tools to make sense of all that data, in their quest to dig up that elusive investing gem.

Such a resource may already be amongst us, as I was pleasantly surprised to find when I went scouring the net for a fundamental and value-oriented, no-fuss and easy-to-use stock screener – paid or free, no issue.

Vuru.co is a stock screening site that unabashedly caters to the value investor who is short of time and rather inclined to have the grunt work done for him! Easy and instantaneous gratification is apparent from the word go – you just have to register your email and password to start accessing all the services. I braced myself for the usual routine of email validation but found to my relief that Vuru saw no need for verifying your email.

You’re inside the site and a click on a quick tour link let’s you hop on to a brief overview of how the site works. That done, a user would start on the Analysis page. The layout is friendly, cheerful and beautifully simple – one can’t tell that it’s the door to data on 5,500 stocks across all major U.S. and Canadian exchanges.

Analysis

Vuru Grade

A key metric on the site is the Vuru Grade – how much a stock scores on a scale to 100 based on its fundamentals and value. The Analysis page links to the top Vuru graded stocks, trending stocks, the user’s watchlist and portfolio and the most discussed stocks.

Clicking any stock opens up a snapshot summary, and tabs to valuation, management, financial strength, economic moat and dividends and buybacks for the stock. All of the stock information is presented in easy-to-navigate, clean-cut pages that may seem almost Mac OS X inspired. The summary page also displays the other parameters in the form of green-red horizontal bars. Again in the beautifully visual Vuru approach, these make it easy to make sense of all the fundamental company data — for each indicator, the more green, the better.

Screener

This is the fun part. A long list of fundamental parameters to the left of the page – you tick which you want. Your choice is now presented to you in the form of slider bars, which you can tweak up or less and the screener does the rest, immediately displaying the results.

The screener was a joy to use, and results appeared very fast, considering the universe of 5,500 stocks.

Watchlist

A user can create a watchlist of stocks that interest him. This is an especially convenient and time saving facility.

Portfolio

Stocks can also be entered into a Portfolio, along with transaction details. The site generates a detailed performance report on the portfolio’s value focus, under-performing constituents and dividend yields, and returns percent.

Vuru Portfolio

This feature can also be used to paper-trade, especially after investment filings of famous value investors are made public. Just enter the transactions and watch how the super-investors are doing on the portfolio reports.

FAQ Section

This section contains the entire methodology and mode of calculations of the various terms and parameters used on the site. Crystal-clear and precise, the FAQ helped answer all queries that arose during this review.

Cost

The service is completely free. Considering the wealth of analysis and screening resources available on Vuru, and seeing that most other quality screeners come at a subscription, this is a great deal. Besides, I could find no other screener that was so laser-focused on value investing, and had so much work already done, ready to use for the user.

Conclusion