zacks research wizard screening tool

[blingmaster]

Does anyone have any experience or feedback to share about zacks research wizard? Zacks investment research seems to be a well established and reputable firm but I have been unable to find any feedback about their stock screening and backtesting product. I am a novice to the world of investing and am looking for a simple way to invest a small amount of capital. The product includes some preset screens, one of which claims average profits over 100% when backtested. Should I quit my job and head for the tropics or is this program just bs?

 

[Diamond Geezer]

don't use it for backtesting though, you don't know exactly when trades are assumed to be entered, and many other issues along those lines

For forward looking screening though this obliterates the free screeners and I've looked at a lot of the Freebies (which are good)

If you are an earnings based trader there is no parallel until you move up to the professional quality Thomson Financial product. And that costs 10's of thousands per year.

 

[asenft]

Something is fishy about this service and I don't know what it is. Their downloadable screen software seems pretty elaborate except for decent graphing. I tried their best screens with minor modifications to reflect a decent average volume range (> one million). One called Upgrades and Revisions which backtested 44.8% annualized while a Screen of the Week dated July 5th of last year boasted a 54.4% from the last two years of data. Here is where it's gets interesting. I created my own screen where my *only* entry was that the average volume had to be over one million. The number of companies in my portfolio ranged from 594 to 845 but it produced 52.5% annualized over the last two years even though the S&P only produced 10%. It's interesting that the free trial software doesn't allow you to backtest when we had a bear market either. ;-)