Quick and Easy Ways to Find Stock Ideas that even a Caveman can Do

Good ideas are hard to come by. There are dry spells as well as an occasional monsoon of ideas. But how does one maintain a steady influx of ideas and knowledge?

Screens

The most popular would be a stock screener. There are many free ones but here is a list that I refer to:

• Old School Value stock screener - I've custom created and compiled market beating screens based on a broad range of investing styles
• Yahoo Screen - Free screener with lots of parameters
• Morningstar Free Screen - Nice screener with good input ranges
• CAPS Screen - An interesting screener based on community expectations
• Google Screen - Simple to use. Maybe too simple. Google like
• Magic Formula Investing - The little book that beats the market

These screens alone should keep you busy for months if you were to go through it all.

Blogs and Sites

Another form of idea generation is obviously visiting other investing sites. Everyone has a different circle of competence, so gathering a good range of sites that are not identical to your views will keep you on your toes and will definitely help you expand your own circle of competence.

You can view my list of recommended sites here.

Weekly & Monthly Journals

Reading company related news and short articles will help you get an overview of the company and all the noise that goes with it, but nothing much beyond that.

Reading high quality journals will help you get informed about many different issues beyond stock analysis.

In weight lifting, you can't continue to increase your bench press by just performing chest exercises. You need to have an equally strong back. Analyzing companies all day won't increase your ideas or increase your circle of ideas. You'll just end up looking for and at the same things.

Forbes, Smart Money, Wall Street Journal and even the free Morningstar articles are good places to start.

Books

My goal is to try and go through one book a month. It can be a new book or one that you've read before. Whatever the case may be, feeding your knowledge with books has never led to bad mistakes.

Good investing books often mention examples which I always jot down to review later and it isn't these companies that I find interesting, it's the competitors, suppliers or customers of the company that show up in my radar.

Conference Calls, Transcripts and the SEC

This is probably the most time consuming, but what better way to learn about a company than to listen to the conference calls or read the transcripts.

Seeking Alpha publishes conference call transcripts for free which EVERYONE should take advantage of. I even have the transcripts set up with my RSS reader so that I receive all transcripts. I've also come across some ideas this way.

The SEC website is also another vital location. It won't necessarily give you ideas, but it will definitely plant conviction and understanding into your brain. The SEC site is quite daunting and confusing at first, but just browse through and you'll get used to it in no time.

Good Ideas Rarely Come From These

• To finish off, here are some places where I do NOT get good ideas from.
• Radio, TV, newspaper news announcements
• People around the water hole at work or some other non investing social event
• Brokers
• Financial Advisors

Do you have anything to add?

Jae Jun runs Old School Value, a value investing service providing stock valuation spreadsheets, stock analysis and value stock screeners for the DIY investor. He writes a weekly Tuesday column for Benzinga.