How to use SCREENER.IN like an Expert (2024)

A beginner’s guide on how to use SCREENER.IN for screening stocks efficiently (Updated): Screener.in is an amazing website to perform the fundamental analysis of a company. There are thousands of Indian investors who use the Screener website regularly to read and analyze the financials of Indian companies. As a matter of fact, the customized financial reports presented by the screener website is quite interactive, friendly, and easy to use.

Introduction to Screener.in Website

Moreover, they provide various tools and data to analyze any publically listed company in India efficiently. For instance, if you search any stock on the stock screener, you will get a number of essential information about the company like an overview, chart, analysis, peers, quarters, profit & loss, balance sheet, cash flow, and other reports. The best part is that you can read the financial statements of the company for the last years, all in one place, without scrolling much or changing the tabs.

Here is an example of the pieces of information that you can get about ‘TITAN COMPANY’ on the Screener.in website.

(Image source: Screener)

However, there’s one powerful tool that screener offers which most people are not using on their website. And it is the query builder. The majority of people know how to use screener.in to read financials. However, they do not know how to write a query in the query builder.

What is Screener’s Query Builder?

First of all, if you do not know what exactly is a query, it can be defined as follows:

What is a query? A query is a request for data or information from a database table or combination of tables. For example, if you want a specific type of stocks from a table of all the stocks listed, you can write a query to request that information.

Query Builder can be used in a number of ways. You can use it for screening stocks i.e. to find stocks with specific criteria. Personally, I use this tool quite often to screen Indian stocks. In this post, we are going to cover how to use screener.in website efficiently using the query builder. Here, we will discuss the basics of the query builder. However, once you know how to use the query builder basics, you can write complex queries to this builder as well.

Now, before we cover all the topics mentioned above, you need to learn where and how to use query builder. You can find the query builder on the Screener website. Here are the steps to find the query builder.

1. Open Screener website (www.screener.in)

2. Login using your username and password. If you do not have an account on the screener, make a new one using your email id. It hardly takes a minute.

3. Once, you are registered/ logged in, scroll down to find the query builder.

How to use the Query builder?

In the query builder, you can write the queries to find the data/ information. The queries can either be of one line or multiple lines. For example, if you want to find the companies with Price to earnings ratio less than 15, you can write the following query in the query builder.

Price to earnings < 15

Here’s the result that you will get.

This is the example of a one-line query.

Now, if you want to find the list of companies whose Price to earnings ratio is less than 15 and Price to book value is less than 3 (should fulfill both criteria), then you can write the following query:

Price to earnings < 15 AND
Price to book value < 3

Note: This is an example of a multiple line query as we are using two filters. Whenever you use a multiple line query, use an ‘AND’ after the end of every line. Further, you do not need to add ‘AND’ on the last line of the query.

Here’s the result that you will get.

Now that you have understood how to use the query builder, let’s write few simple queries to shortlist the companies based on different criteria and filters.

How to use SCREENER.IN like an Expert using Query Builder?

— How to find small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap companies?

Now we are going to use market capitalization to find small-cap, mid-cap and large-cap companies here.

Market capitalization: It refers the total market value of a company’s outstanding shares. It is calculated by multiplying a company’s outstanding shares with the current market price of one share. Read more here: Basics of Market Capitalization in Indian Stock Market.

Although there’s no fixed market capitalization range to classify companies into small-cap, mid-cap or large-cap companies, however, as the thumb rule, we can use the following range:

Small cap companies: Market capitalization < 8,500 Cr
Mid cap companies: Market cap- between 8,500 Cr and 28,000 Cr
Large cap companies: Market cap > 28,000 Cr

Now, how can you use the above information to find small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap companies? You just have to write a query using the market capitalization range to get the result.

For example, if you want the list of small-cap companies with a market capitalization less than 500 crores, write the following query in the query builder:

Market capitalization < 500

You will get the following result.

Similarly, if you want to find companies within a certain market cap, you can write the following query:

Market capitalization > 500 AND
Market capitalization < 10,000

This query will limit the market capitalization between Rs 500 Cr to Rs 10,000 Cr. Here is the result that you will get.

Now, can you guess the query to find the list of companies greater than a specific market cap, say Rs 10,000 Cr?

Yes, here’s the answer:

Market capitalization > 10000

You will get the following output for this query.

As already mentioned above, the values of market capitalization taken here is not a hard and fast rule. You can write different queries depending on your criteria. If you want the list of those large-cap companies whose market cap is larger than 50,000 crores, you can write the following query.

Market capitalization > 50000

Similarly, you can write a number of queries depending on your requirements.

— How to find penny stocks?

Penny stocks are the companies with a very small market share price. Typically, the share price of these companies is less than Rs 10. Further, they also have a small market capitalization (below 100 crores). You can run a simple query on the Screener query builder to find penny stocks. Here’s the query:

Current price < 10

Moreover, if you want to add the market cap filter in this search, you can write the following query:

Current price < 10 AND
Market capitalization < 100

This query will give you the list of all the companies with the current price of less than Rs 10 and market capitalization of less than Rs 100 Crores.

Also read:What are Penny stocks? And should you buy it?

— How to find debt-free companies?

If you are investing in a company for the long-term, make sure that it’s debt-free. Or at least that it doesn’t have more debts than its asset. The profitability and growth of a company are highly affected if it has a huge debt. To find the debt-free companies you can use the ‘debt to equity’ ratio.

Debt to equity ratio: It measures the relationship between the amount of capital that has been borrowed (i.e. debt) and the amount of capital contributed by shareholders (i.e. equity). Read more here.

If the debt to equity ratio is equal to zero, it means that the companies are basically debt-free. If the debt to equity is equal to 1, it means that the debt is equal to equity. Now, most of the companies will have some debt as many times the company requires additional money to carry out different works like expansion, R&D, etc. However, as long as the debt is less than equity, the company can be considered decent.

Here, we are going to use debt to equity = 0 to find the debt-free companies. (However, feel free to use debt to equity < 0.5 to find the list of companies with low debts.) Here’s the query:

You will get the following output:

Note: You can also use ‘debt=0’ query to find debt-free companies in India.

— How to find debt-free large-cap companies?

To find large-cap debt-free companies (blue chips), you just have to write a simple 2-line query given below:

Market capitalization > 50000 AND
Debt to equity ratio = 0

Note that you can take the market capitalization of the company accordingly. I took the company with a market cap greater than 50,000 Cr here just as an example.

— How to find low PE stocks?

If you want to find the companies within a specific Price to earnings (PE) ratio, you can write a simple one-line query. For example, if you want the list of the companies whose PE is less than 12, you can write the following query:

Price to earnings < 12

Please note that the list is a generic one and will give the list of the companies across all industries.

— How to find high dividend stocks?

To find the list of high dividend stocks, you can use dividend yield in the query.

Dividend yield: A stock’s dividend yield is calculated as the company’s annual cash dividend per share divided by the current price of the stock and is expressed in annual percentage.

For example, if you want to find the list of all the companies whose dividend yield is greater than 4%, you can write the following query:

Dividend yield > 4

This query will give the following output:

Also read:Dividend stocks: Should you invest in it?

— How to find companies between a specific price range?

You can also use the Screener’s query builder to find the list of all the stocks within a specific price range. For example, if you want to find the list of all the companies between Rs 80 to 100, you can write the following query:

Current price > 80 AND
Current price < 100

This will give you the following list of companies. You can use this query to find the specific price range stocks accordingly.

How to run multiple queries on the query builder?

All the cases explained above are simple to find the specific type of stocks like debt-free, penny stocks, or high dividend stocks. However, is that all? How to use SCREENER.IN query builder more efficiently?

You can perform better screening by using multiple queries in the query builder. Here, you can write multiple lines of queries on the query builder to filter companies with different criteria. For example, if you want to find the list of a company fulfilling the following criteria:

• Market capitalization greater than Rs 30,000 crores
• Debt to equity ratio of less than 0.5
• Current market price range is between Rs 100 and 300
• The dividend yield is greater than 1.5%

Then you can write the following query:

Market Capitalization > 30000 AND
Debt to equity < 0.5 AND
Current price > 100 AND
Current price < 300 AND
Dividend yield > 1.5

This is the result that you will get for the above query.

How to create your own Stock Screen?

You can use different financial ratios to create your own stock screen. These different ratios can be ROE, ROCE, PEG, Sales growth, Profit growth, Current ratio, PE ratio, P/BV ratio, etc. Here, you can create your own screen using these different ratios to shortlist a few good companies and use it for your future references.

Here is an example of a query to screen the stocks:

Market Capitalization >500 AND
Sales growth 5Years >15 AND
Profit growth 5Years >15 AND
Debt to equity <1 AND
Net cash flow last year >0 AND
PEG Ratio <1 AND
Promoter holding >30 AND
Pledged percentage <15 AND
Average return on equity 5Years > 12 AND
Average return on capital employed 5Years > 12

NOTE: THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE TO TEACH YOU THE BASICS, NOT A RECOMMENDED QUERY. Generally, I do not use a general query to filter the companies for the whole list, but use specific queries for specific industries. Different industries have different characteristic ratios.

In a similar way, you can create your own screen with the help of different ratios. This can help you save a lot of time and energy.

Quick Note: If you want to learn more stock research tricks, feel free to check out my online course- HOW TO PICK WINNING STOCKS? The course is currently available at a discount.

Conclusion

Query Builder is a simple yet powerful tool that can make your stock research 10 times simpler. Writing queries in the query builder is easy as discussed above.

Although there are a lot many uses of the Screener website, however, the most useful ones are covered in this post. Feel free to play around and create your own queries.

That’s all for today. I hope this post ‘How to use SCREENER.IN efficiently?’ is useful to the readers. If you have any questions, please comment below. Happy Investing.