The best tool to find growth stocks

We all know the story “The Tortoise and the Hare”. It’s a simple story with a powerful lesson.

A tortoise and a rabbit are racing. The rabbit thinks his speed and intelligence will give him an easy win over the slow-moving tortoise. He gets overconfident and decides to take a nap thinking the turtle will never catch up to him. Once the rabbit wakes up, he finds that the tortoise is close to the finish line. He rushes to catch up, but it’s too late. The turtle won.

Through hard work and determination, the turtle did the impossible. He proved that you can be more successful by acting deliberately and consistently…rather than acting quickly and sloppily.

You might be wondering what a 2,500-year-old fable has to do with stock investing. It’s simple – when you’re a growth investor, the last thing you want to be is the rabbit. You don’t want to hit the snooze button while the market is steadily rising. At the same time, you can’t simply react because of a headline or a blip in the market.

There are a lot of “rabbits” out there. And they are their own worst enemies. They are the last to spot buying opportunities – they wait too long to buy. They are the first to panic when the going gets tough – they sell too fast. For them, investing in stocks is a source of constant stress and anxiety.

On Wall Street, the turtle is a much rarer breed. Their movements are carefully planned. They identify the best buying opportunities early, but only after vetting them carefully. They commit to a strategy that is based on hard data rather than emotion. And when speculation is rife, they consider the facts before selling.

As a long-term quantitative investor with a strong focus on fundamentals, earnings and sales growth, I see myself as more of a turtle. Dig deep into the numbers and see if a stock really has staying power. If it happens, I can invest and hold for the long term. If my research shows it isn’t, I won’t touch it with a three-foot pole, even if all of Wall Street is in awe of it. On the other hand, if a stock’s fundamentals start to change, I will sell.

To help find the best stocks, I used my proprietary Portfolio Grader system, a tool I’ve discussed extensively in the past. 360 Square items (you may even have used them yourself). Well, today, I’m excited to announce that I’ve upgraded Portfolio Grader to my new one Stock grader. And in today’s 360 Squarei would like to show you what Stock grader what it looks like and how you can use it to find fundamentally superior stocks in any market condition.