How do you pick stocks? What’s the #1 thing that makes you dig deeper?

Listen to people on reddit

All A/B quant grades at SA and a strong buy signal for 2 months+

I don’t pick individual stocks but ETFs with 100+ holdings based on macroeconomics.

Strength of a sector, is the dollar under downward pressure, are we likely to hit a recession, etc.

Buying individual stocks is closer to buying lottery tickets without the skills of a quant.

Always fundamentals, balance sheet, income statement, cash flow. I also use analyst reports LSEG/Verus to gauge future growth and value.

Jeffries just released a list of stocks and I think only 1 or 2 would meet my criteria for buying, but I added a few to my watch lists.

When I was 18-30 years old I tried to look at the fundamentals and understand if it was a company that I could trust to continually grow earnings over the next 40 years or not ~. But I walls traded way too much.

I tried to have a weird balance between value and growth.

By around age 30 I’d shifted to passive index investing. I buy a TDF in my 401(k) because it’s the best option 80/20 VTI/VXUS in every other account (and an equivalent in mutual funds in my HSA).

I basically switched to a Bogle style over the course of a number of years because I realized that it’s quite unlikely that any individual person can beat the broader market.

I’ll start adding bonds when I get to about 15 years out from retirement but I’ll keep buying VTI/VXUS every paycheck until I retire. I rebalance in Q1 every year but other than that I haven’t sold anything in years and will not sell anything for another 25 years ~.

I’ll sit and look through a hundred names in a morning. I’ll look through fund holdings and go name-by-name and if there’s anything about the business that is concerning or it simply doesn’t seem like an interesting/good business, on to the next one. If the business is compelling, then go further and listen to conference calls, look at annual reports/presentations and look at valuation. In the last couple of years (and particularly this year) the focus has primarily been on searching in foreign markets.

Over time, this has wound up resulting in at least a surface level familiarity with a lot of names and maybe I don’t go further with exploring a name but something 6 months later makes me think about it/look at it in a different way. If I gain interest in a theme, I’m almost never starting from square one in terms of researching potential ideas.

I peruse Seeking Alpha and tune into CNBC just like every other retail investor. Every once in awhile I’ll buy the stock of a company I have experience with their product or service.

I’ve gotten Killed by the S&P500 by doing this, so proceed with extreme caution.

For me, I have two approaches for new opportunities – **I open my eyes** – what is trending (new stores, news items, etc) – then I google to see if they make sense to me – this is how I found Ulta and O’Reilly Auto Parts – started seeing a lot of new stores made, nice profit and got out of Ulta when I saw too many stores.

I kept hearing about autonomous driving so I investigated but saw too many issues with Lidar and though Waymo and TSLA were just too far ahead of everyone. I think the LiDAR segment will consolidate considerably or there will be some bankruptcies.

Secondly, **I look at the “smart” money** like Bill Gates – [Breakthrough Energy](https://breakthroughenergy.org/our-work/breakthrough-energy-ventures/bev-portfolio/)- what are they investing in and then look for similar companies,