Interview With Ronnie Moas Of Standpoint Research

Ronnie Moas, of Standpoint Research, is starting to make a name for himself as one of Wall Street’s top analysts. He has made multiple appearances on Bloomberg, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek and Barron’s. Ronnie founded Standpoint Research in 2003 after spending several years developing a proprietary 155-variable valuation and diagnostic model to assist him in generating equity investment recommendations. In addition to his quantitative model, Ronnie also uses proven fundamental and subjective overlays in his research.

His results speak for themselves. For the four years ending 12/31/09, “Investars” has Standpoint Research ranked # 1 versus 75 financial institutions. Standpoint was also ranked # 1 versus 119 financial institutions in 2009 according to www.gainerstoday.com and # 5 versus 180 financial institutions in 2009 according to The Motley Fool. Need more proof? Standpoint Research has beaten the S&P-500 by an average of 300 basis points for seven years in a row! Even more impressive is that he has accomplished this while staying fully diversified and not making big bets on specific sectors. So, on a risk-adjusted basis, these returns are extremely impressive.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ronnie last week and we talked about his computer model, his historical performance, his future plans for Standpoint Research, as well as some specific stock selections and his views on the markets in 2010. When speaking with Ronnie, it becomes quite apparent that he is very passionate about what he does. I think that this is one of the reasons he is able to deliver consistent results year in and year out. He said that from a young age he was very good with numbers and that he is driven by the challenge of beating the market. For him, finance was a natural career choice.

Prior to founding Standpoint Research, Ronnie spent nearly five years building, testing and refining his 155-variable model. This stock screening system combines fundamental, technical, valuation, accounting and proprietary variables. Standpoint’s reports to clients highlight how a particular company’s stock scores on each of these variables, but their relative significance is not disclosed. Other than that, the reports are very transparent. One important thing that Ronnie stressed to me was that he does not view his model as a foolproof stock picking application. He said that Standpoint performs rigorous subjective and fundamental research on the securities that the computer model recommends before issuing final recommendations to clients that come in weekly reports that run 4-8 pages in length.

Standpoint’s screening application is run on all 10 sectors of the market on a continuous basis and shows the most attractive stocks from each sector. Although the weight that Ronnie assigns to each variable is proprietary, I can give away one piece of interesting information – the model considers strong relative strength to be a contrarian indicator. If you would like to learn more about Ronnie Moas and his market beating performance over the last seven years, please visit standpointresearch.com . In the second half of our interview, we will cover some specific stock picks, as well as his outlook for the markets in 2010 and beyond. Stay tuned.