Can I reference specific fiscal years? ex: profitable in fiscal 2008 and 2009

Research
1

Hi all,

I’m wondering if there’s a way to reference a static specific fiscal year. For instance, if I wanted to identify companies that had were profitable in both 2008 and 2009 could I do that? Essentially I’m wondering if I can identify specific cases for specific points in time and build a filter around that? My specific initial case is varied performance for banks subsequent to 2008/2009 depending on their fundamentals in 2008/2009, but the idea could be extended to other industries - like resource companies more recently, or perhaps currently retail. Anything with a boom/bust cycle could be relevant.

thanks,

2

Interesting idea.

  1. You could run a screen using the TTM data (offset 0 and offset 1) as of mid-2010 to get yourself a list of the profitable banks.
  2. Backtest on a universe made up of this list of stocks.

Please keep us updated on your findings.

3

Keep in mind that different companies can have different fiscal year-ends, so annual financials may not align over the same time periods.

4

Thanks, you’re likely right to just build a static universe for specific industry for each specific case, and compare that result to a universe of the remainders who do not pass the test.

The idea is just a hunch. I bought some bank stocks a year or two back based upon static criteria during the financial crisis combined with other bank metrics that are not available in standardized financial reporting, and have been impressed with how they’ve performed. Granted, financial stocks in general have done well, but I took from that the idea that how a company performs during the most stressful of times for the industry might be relevant for selection.