CANSLIM Screener

CANSLIM Screener

The CANSLIM Screener is a high-octane growth engine. It automates William J. O'Neil's famous 7-step fundamental and technical framework, evaluating massive watchlists of stocks to surface the absolute highest-conviction momentum leaders in the market.

What is a CANSLIM Screener?

The CANSLIM Methodology is brilliant in theory, but exhausting in practice. Running a manual CANSLIM analysis requires pulling the last four quarters of earnings, calculating the 3-year compound annual growth rate, checking the institutional sponsorship data, charting the relative strength, and verifying the supply/demand volume dynamics. Doing this manually for one stock takes ten minutes. Doing it for the S&P 500 would take an entire week—by which time the data would be stale.

The CANSLIM Screener skill solves this computational bottleneck. It acts as a massive dragnet, pulling quantitative data across entire baskets of stocks (like the S&P Top 100), running every single ticker through the strict 7-part O'Neil stress-test simultaneously, and ranking them by their theoretical perfection.

Instead of hunting for the needle, the screener just hands you the needle.

How Pierce AI Executes It

When you ask Pierce to run a CANSLIM screen, it executes a massive parallel batch operation:

1. Universe Selection: Pierce dials into a specific universe of stocks—typically the top 50 or 100 most liquid companies in the S&P 500—ensuring it only scans companies with adequate institutional liquidity.

2. Data Aggregation: For every single stock, Pierce aggressively queries the Financial Datasets API for quarterly earnings, annual EPS, relative price history, and institutional float data.

3. The 7-Factor Scoring: Every stock is instantly graded against the CAN SLIM criteria:

   • Current Quarter EPS Growth (Target: >25%)
   • Annual earnings CAGR (Target: >25%)
   • Proximity to 52-week Highs
   • Supply/Demand Volume characteristics
   • Leader/Laggard Relative Strength
   • Institutional Buying trends
   • Broader Market Direction

4. Weighted Composite Grading: Pierce calculates a 0-7 CANSLIM Score (pass count) and a 0-100 Composite Score for each stock:

   • C (Current Quarterly Earnings): 1.0 point if earnings_growth >= 20%, 0.5 points if 0% to 20%, else 0.0 (Weight: 15%).
   • A (Annual Earnings Growth): 1.0 point if return_on_equity >= 15%, 0.5 points if 5% to 15%, else 0.0 (Weight: 20%).
   • N (New Products/Highs): 1.0 point if current price is within 15% of its 52-week high, else 0.0 (Weight: 15%).
   • S (Supply and Demand): 1.0 point if peg_ratio < 2.5 or shares_outstanding < 100M, else 0.5 (Weight: 15%).
   • L (Leader or Laggard): 1.0 point if price > sma_50, 0.5 points if price > sma_200, else 0.0 (Weight: 20%).
   • I (Institutional Sponsorship): 1.0 point if average_sentiment_score > 0.1 or sentiment_label is Bullish, else 0.5 (Weight: 10%).
   • M (Market Direction): 1.0 point if S&P 500 / Nasdaq is in a confirmed uptrend (above its 200-day moving average), else 0.0 (Weight: 5%).

   Missing Data: If a metric is missing, a neutral default of 0.7 points is assigned for that factor.

   Formula:

   • CANSLIM Score: Total number of passed factors (e.g. 5/7).
   • Composite Score: (C * 15) + (A * 20) + (N * 15) + (S * 15) + (L * 20) + (I * 10) + (M * 5) (rounded to nearest integer).

5. Filtration & Delivery: Pierce discards the failures and presents you with the absolute top 5 to 10 candidates that perfectly align with the CANSLIM growth philosophy, ranked in descending order of their Composite Score.

Key Metrics & Deliverables

By engaging the CANSLIM Screener, you receive a perfectly structured list of momentum targets:

• The CANSLIM Leaderboard: A purely mathematical ranking of the best growth stocks in the market right now.
• Factor Breakdown: A clear, tabular view showing the filtered tickers alongside their earnings growth, operating margin, and ROE.
• Data Note & Vintage: Explicit confirmation of the metric reporting period (latest TTM/annual data).
• Analyst Commentary & Strict Thresholds: A tactical write-up on the top candidates, highlighting O'Neil criteria tie-ins and explicitly calling out strict thresholds (such as the target of 25%+ earnings growth).
• Pulse Hint: Prompt to save the screen as a recurring Pulse for weekly updates.
• Robust Fallback: If the primary screener database query fails, the agent automatically falls back to targeted analysis of requested tickers via financial snapshot tools with a transparent notice.

Example Prompts & Use Cases

You can actively push Pierce to harvest growth candidates using these explicit prompts:

• "Run a CANSLIM screen on the top 100 stocks in the S&P 500."
• "Which stocks score highest on the CANSLIM framework right now?"
• "Find the best growth stocks using O'Neil's methodology. Give me the top 5."
• "Show me top CANSLIM candidates with the strongest earnings growth."
• "I have a watchlist of tech stocks. Run them through the CANSLIM screener and rank them."

By explicitly asking to "run a screen," you command Pierce to evaluate an entire group of stocks rather than a single ticker.

Methodology Notes & Limitations

The CANSLIM Screener is the ultimate hunting tool, but keep these constraints in mind:

• Quality Over Quantity: The CANSLIM rules are so strict that during a bear market, the screener might return zero candidates. This is a feature, not a bug. If no stocks survive the screen, it is the market's mathematical way of telling you that you should be sitting in cash.
• The Screen is Not a Buy Order: A stock might score a perfect 100 on the screener, but if the chart shows the stock is extended 30% above its optimal entry point, you cannot safely buy it. The screener finds the candidates; you must use the Technical Analyst skill to find the entry.
• Look Out for Earnings Events: The screener will prioritize stocks with massive recent earnings beats. Ensure you check the Economic Calendar to verify you aren't accidentally buying a top-ranked CANSLIM stock three days before its next earnings report.

Built for the Time-Starved Trader

Finding true market leaders requires sifting through thousands of fundamentally garbage companies. The CANSLIM Screener acts as an automated filter, instantly rejecting the losers and presenting you with a hyper-curated list of the most explosive, institutionally-backed growth stocks on Wall Street.

Note: The CANSLIM Screener requires massive API calls across enormous data sets and is included in the PayGo tier and above.