A little over a month ago I joined Simply Safe Dividends as CTO (the “tech guy”). After speaking with dozens of customers by phone, trading hundreds of emails with customers, and going through a crash course in analyzing dividend stocks, I’ve set out to make a bevy of improvements to the website.
First up was the Stock Screener. This baby was a behemoth with over 40 financial metrics and dozens of data points in the results table. It was powerful but frankly unusable by most people.
So Brian and I designed a new Basic Stock Screener that would yield useful results right away with little to no configuration. I’ve already used the new Screener myself and discovered a great company (Southern Company) to invest in that would’ve gotten lost in mountain of data in the old Screener.
Here’s the new Stock Screener:
We whittled down the Screener to just a few key metrics:
- Sector, in case you need to diversify your portfolio
- Dividend Yield. The default is 3 to 4.5%, which is the range most retired folks are gunning for. Anything higher than 4.5% can turn up some iffy companies.
- Safety Score. This is our proprietary metric, and we recommend retirees stick with companies that score above 60 for Dividend Safety. You can read about the performance and track record of Dividend Safety Scores here.
- Dividend Growth Streak. It’s comforting to know that a company has shown a commitment to paying and growing its dividend, so we’ve opted to show companies that’ve grown its dividend at least five years in a row.
These default filters are a great place to start for any retiree living off dividend income, but you’re welcome to adjust them based on personal preference. You may, for example, seek a yield higher than 4.5%, but you should do so understanding that these higher-yielding companies require more scrutiny.
Now, you may on occasion need to filter by more parameters than are offered by the new basic Screener. No problem, we’ve got you covered: you can always revert to the Advanced Screener, which is untouched from the previous version and has over 40 options for filtering.
We think you’ll enjoy using the new Screener. Hopefully you quickly unearth a new idea or two!