Today’s post comes from a guest blog, New Rules of Investing:

Institutional investors have powerful tools at their disposal to screen through reams of data.  Part of the institutional investment process entails screening through thousands of securities looking for a needle in a haystack — stocks that fit certain investment criteria.  From thousands of stocks, analysts can filter through a couple of hundred that fit these so called screens.  With a couple of hundred stocks in hand, analysts set out to do the hard work analyzing these companies, comparing them to one another, speaking to management and whatever else hedge fund and mutual fund analysts do when looking at prospective investments.

If I’m a value investor, I’m probably going to use some metrics that focus on Return on Capital (RoC) or Return on Equity (RoE) and Earnings Yield (E/P).  Growth investors might

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Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. (NASD: WINN), one of the nation’s largest food retailers that currently operates 521 retail grocery locations, including more than 400 in-store pharmacies in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi, recently announced the company’s financial results from its first fiscal quarter of 2009 ended September 17, 2008. Net sales in the first quarter totaled $1.7 billion, a gain of $55.0 million, or 3.4 percent, compared to the prior-year period.

The company’s shares traded higher earlier this week after the announcement of the financial results. Winn-Dixie reported increased sales as a result of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike and Tropical Storm Fay, benefiting from pre-storm purchases and the company’s ability to reopen stores before competitors. Management is maintaining its previously issued guidance that full fiscal year 2009 adjusted EBITDA will range between $110 million and $125 million.

Chairman, chief executive officer and president, Peter Lynch, commented, “This was an excellent quarter

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Most popular investment books are published for the already rich and famous, by an industry that has become just too good at the business of selling books. Rarely will a publisher take a chance with the work of an unknown author. Certainly, it’s a no brainer to sell a Jim Cramer, Peter Lynch, Robert Kiyosaki, or Maria Bartiromo effort while a uniquely new approach to solving the puzzles of Wall Street, presented by an unknown writer or commentator, requires some major financial risk.

Big publishers want to sell already big names; discovering new ones is not in their wheelhouse. Are they responsible for the problems in the financial markets? Of course not, but they do have a perverse, if indirect, impact. By constantly publishing the same Wall Street friendly message, they contribute to the brainwashing.
Without a wider distribution of new …

Hello Friends!  Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting my blog, Stock Picks Bob’s Advice!  As always, please remember that I am an amateur investor so please remember to consult with your professional investment advisers prior to making any investment decisions based on information on this website.

As I wrote in the prior entry, I am still trying to catch up with my trading activity from last week.  This entry should bring the blog up to date with all of my recent trades accounted for.  I apologize once again for letting my blogging lag behind my trading.  It is all a part of being an amateur I guess :).

As I reported previously, I sold my 161 shares of Genoptix (GXDX) on the same day I purchased them–August 14, 2008.  On that same day as well, I …

This article is a reprint of my 7 August 2008 RealMoney column.

Crown Holdings CCK - Annual Report) looks to me like the type of boring stock Peter Lynch would love. The company’s primary products include steel and aluminum cans for food, beverage, household and other consumer products and metal caps and closures.

Cans and bottle caps certainly don’t sound particularly glamorous. A glance at the recent producer price index report, however, shows that this industry has been steadily gaining pricing power over the last several years.

Year/Year Change in PPI Index for Fruit and Vegetable Canning Industry Click here for larger image. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

You may be surprised by how much innovation actually occurs in the business. The company highlights its research and development activities, including the SuperEnd beverage can

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