P123 Step-By-Step
Getting Started With Portfolio123 (Introduction)

Portfolio123 is a powerful stock-selection platform, yet mastering it can be surprisingly easy if you take it one step at a time. In this series, Screening The Market author Marc Gerstein, formerly with MultexInvestor.com and Reuters.com and now consultant to Portfolio123, will guide you every step of the way, starting with the aspects that should seem familiar even to newcomers. As users gain comfort and confidence, something that will happen quickly, we'll progress to Portfolio123's more sophisticated features.   Full Article »

P123 Step-By-Step
Our First Portfolio123 Screen (Chapter 1)

Our step-by-step journey through Portfolio123 starts with the creation of a very simple screen. We're not aiming for strategic sophistication here - we'll do plenty of that very soon. The idea right now is to get acquainted with the interface. This should prove well worthwhile since it will also give us a solid background for other Portfolio123 functions which we'll take up later on.   Full Article »

P123 Step-By-Step
Backtesting Your Screens (Chapter 2)

It's easy to create a screen that looks like it ought to succeed at identifying attractive stocks. But is it really as solid as we think it is? One way to assess the merits of the screen is to monitor and track its performance over the course of several years. But there's a better solution: backtesting. Generally, this is an ambitious undertaking since it involves recreating the past and pretending the screen you came up with today was fully operational several years ago and keeping track of what would have happened had you actually used it. But you have it easy, since Portfolio123's backtesting engine does all the work for you.   Full Article »

P123 Step-By-Step
A Closer Look At The Screening Interface (Chapter 3)

In the last article, we had some fun scratching the surface of backtesting. There are plenty more good things to come. Now, let's throttle back a bit and look more closely at the rest of the Portfolio123 screening interface. After backtesting, this may seem mundane. But knowing the basics - how to do the things we want to do - is important in order to get the full benefit of Portfolio123's more exciting aspects. Besides, we'll still manage to dabble more in backtesting toward the end of this article, as we see how simple things we can adjust in the interface can reveal a lot more about the screen we've been working with.   Full Article »

P123 Step-By-Step
Screening Factors (Chapter 4)

The very simple growth screen we created in connection with prior articles was fine for initial demonstration, but it didn't even begin to scratch the surface of what can be done in a Portfolio123 screen. Some of the screening power here stems from the fact that there are so many factors to choose from. Beyond that, for many users, the main keys to success lie in the interesting ways the factors can be used.   Full Article »