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Beginners in Stock Trading
The C checklist
- The 8-point C checklist that consolidates everything from M2 W1-W2
- The two ways to apply it (manual deep-dive or screener-based first pass)
- The pass / yellow / fail thresholds for each of the 8 points
- Why a stock that passes the full checklist still isn't a buy, only a watchlist candidate
This is Day 40, the last lesson of M2 W2 and the closing of the C deep-dive. M2 W3 (Days 43-48) opens the A, Annual Earnings Growth, with Trader Tuesday: David Ryan on Day 44.
THE CHECKLIST
The C is the first letter of CAN SLIM and the first filter you run on every stock candidate. After two weeks of lessons, here is the consolidated checklist:
1. Most recent quarterly EPS, year-over-year growth ≥ 25%. The canonical CAN SLIM benchmark. Calculated as: (current quarter EPS − year-ago quarter EPS) ÷ year-ago quarter EPS. Pass: ≥25%. Yellow: 15-24%. Fail: <15%. (For mega-caps with multi-hundred-billion-dollar valuations, the threshold can flex down to 18-20% per the prior-batch operating discipline.)
2. Acceleration vs prior quarter. The most recent quarter's growth rate higher than the previous quarter's growth rate. Pass: higher (acceleration). Yellow: roughly equal (steady). Fail: materially lower (deceleration).
3. Year-over-year revenue growth. The top-line growth supporting the EPS growth. Pass: ≥15-20%. Yellow: 5-15%. Fail: below 5%, or negative. (A stock with strong EPS growth but weak revenue growth, Red Flag #1 from yesterday, has engineering risk.)
4. Operating margin direction. Margin expanding, flat, or contracting compared to year-ago quarter. Pass: expanding. Yellow: flat (within ±50 basis points). Fail: contracting more than 100 basis points.
5. GAAP-vs-adjusted EPS gap. The cleanliness of the earnings adjustments. Pass: adjusted EPS within 20% of GAAP EPS. Yellow: adjusted 20-40% above GAAP. Fail: adjusted more than 40% above GAAP, or large recurring "non-recurring" items.
6. Days sales outstanding (DSO) trend. A check on revenue quality. Pass: DSO flat or declining year-over-year. Yellow: DSO rising 10-20%. Fail: DSO rising more than 20% year-over-year.
7. One-time items contribution. The portion of EPS driven by gains/losses outside operating performance. Pass: small or zero. Yellow: one-time items contribute 10-25% of the quarter's EPS. Fail: more than 25% of the quarter's EPS comes from one-time gains.
8. Effective tax rate stability. A check that the EPS isn't being artificially boosted by a tax-rate drop. Pass: rate within 200 basis points of the year-ago rate. Yellow: rate dropped 200-400 basis points. Fail: rate dropped more than 400 basis points and contributed materially to the beat.
A stock that earns "Pass" on all 8 points is a high-quality C candidate, operating-driven earnings growth, accelerating, with a clean accounting picture. A stock with 5-7 passes and a couple of yellows is acceptable but qualified. A stock with multiple fails is not a CAN SLIM C candidate; the headline 25% number is masking weaker underlying performance.
TWO WAYS TO APPLY THE CHECKLIST
You have two practical workflows depending on whether you're researching a specific stock or screening the broader market.
Workflow A, Manual deep-dive on a candidate. When someone mentions a stock or you've encountered one through your watchlist, run the full 8-point checklist. Total time: 5-7 minutes per stock once you've done it a few dozen times. Most of the inputs are on Yahoo Finance's "Financials" tab; the DSO and tax-rate inputs require pulling from the income statement and balance sheet directly. The 10-Q footnotes (for non-recurring items and accounting changes) are on SEC EDGAR.
This is the workflow you'll use most often. It is thorough and gives you a clear pass/yellow/fail picture per stock.
Workflow B, Screener-based first pass on the universe. When you're starting from a broader universe (the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, the Russell 1000, or all U.S. listings), use a stock screener to apply the first three points (25% EPS growth, EPS acceleration, 15%+ revenue growth). The output is a list of perhaps 40-100 stocks per quarter that pass the basic three-point screen.
Then run the deeper 5-point check (margin direction, GAAP-vs-adjusted gap, DSO, one-time items, tax rate) only on the screened-in candidates. This gets you from a 4,000-stock universe down to a 10-30-stock high-quality C-screen list per quarter.
Free or low-cost screeners that handle the basic three-point screen well:
- Finviz. Free, web-based. Can filter on EPS growth and revenue growth.
- Stockcharts. Modest subscription. Strong charting integrated with screening.
- Yahoo Finance Screener. Free. Less powerful than the above but adequate for first-pass work.
- MarketSmith (IBD's own product). Subscription-based. Built specifically around CAN SLIM; surfaces the 8-point check elements as a cohesive workflow. The most expensive but the most aligned with the methodology.
For most BiST readers starting out, Finviz plus Yahoo Finance is sufficient. As you become more serious, the IBD/MarketSmith ecosystem becomes worth the subscription cost, but only after you've internalized the methodology to the point where you're using a tool, not relying on it.
WHY PASSING THE C CHECKLIST IS NOT A BUY SIGNAL
A stock that passes the full 8-point C check is a high-quality candidate for the rest of CAN SLIM. It is not a buy.
Repeating the discipline established in the M2 W1 weekend recap (Day 34): the C is the pre-screen, not the entry signal. A stock with clean current earnings still needs:
- The A, three-year annual earnings growth track record at 25% per year (M2 W3-W4 will deep-dive)
- The N, new highs, new products, or new management as a catalyst (M2 W4 will deep-dive)
- The S, supply and demand confirmation through the chart's volume signature (M3 W1 will deep-dive)
- The L, leadership rank, top 20% relative strength versus the market and industry (M3 W2 will deep-dive)
- The I, institutional sponsorship at a healthy and growing level (M3 W3 will deep-dive)
- The M, supportive market environment, with the broader indices in an uptrend (M3 W4 will deep-dive)
And then it needs a chart pattern setting up, a cup-with-handle, a flat base, an ascending base, a double bottom, or one of the more advanced patterns in M9, that gives you a defined pivot and a defined risk level.
Only when all of that aligns is there a trade. The C is the first cut. It cuts the universe by about 10x. The remaining six letters cut further. The chart determines timing. The risk discipline determines size.
The 8-point C checklist is the start of that funnel, not the trigger at the end.
The economy lost jobs in July, and stocks went up on the news.
| S&P 500 | 7,757.64 (+0.62%) |
| Nasdaq | 26,690.62 (+1.30%) |
| Dow | 54,036.93 (+0.28%) |
Friday's close. For the week as a whole, per IBD, the Dow rose 3%, the S&P 500 3.6% and the Nasdaq 5.2%.
What drove it: Last night we told you the July jobs report was due at 8:30 AM and that economists expected a gain of about 88,000 jobs. Instead the economy lost 23,000. That is a large miss, and it is worth understanding why the market rose on it. Weak hiring makes a Federal Reserve rate increase less likely, and the odds of a September hike promptly fell to about 42% from roughly 67% a week ago. The 10-year Treasury yield dipped toward 4.6%, and gold futures jumped 2.5% to just over $4,400 an ounce. This is one of the genuinely counterintuitive things about markets, and it is worth sitting with: economic news is not judged good or bad on its own terms. It is judged by what it changes about interest rates and future earnings. Bad news for the economy was, on this particular day, good news for stock prices.
Tonight you got the eight-point C checklist. Here is a stock that reported this week, with the first point already filled in and the rest left for you.
Cloudflare · NET · $300.27 (+5.57%) · Friday's close · Internet infrastructure and security
Cloudflare sits between visitors and the websites they are trying to reach, making those sites faster and blocking attacks on them. It reported Thursday night: revenue of $696.1 million, up about 36% from a year ago, and it raised its full-year revenue guidance to a range of $2.864 to $2.87 billion. Run that against tonight's checklist and point three, year-over-year revenue growth, clears comfortably. That is one point of eight.
We are deliberately not filling in the other seven. Earnings-per-share growth and whether it accelerated, the operating margin direction, the gap between GAAP and adjusted earnings, the receivables trend, one-time items, the tax rate: those are the exercise. They are all findable in the release and on the financials tab in about ten minutes. A checklist you have watched someone else complete teaches you almost nothing. One you have filled in yourself, on a real company, once, you will remember.
- Friday's close: $300.27, up 5.57% from $284.43
- But the open: $318.00, with a high of $324.73
- Revenue: $696.1 million, up about 36% year over year
- Guidance: raised, to $2.864 to $2.87 billion for the full year
- Checklist status: point 3 passes. Points 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are yours to complete
One more thing, and it is the second time this week we have pointed at it. Cloudflare opened at $318.00, touched $324.73, and closed at $300.27. Anyone who bought at the opening bell on a genuinely excellent report finished the day down about 6%. Shopify did the same thing on Wednesday. Two clean examples in three sessions is not a coincidence, it is the ordinary behaviour of a stock after a big earnings gap: the most eager buyers show up first, and once they are done, the price often drifts back. The report being good and the opening price being a good entry are two entirely separate questions. Tomorrow is the Weekend Recap, and Sunday brings the Pattern of the Week.
Tomorrow is the sixth Weekend Recap, the second one inside M2. We'll walk back through this week's ground on current earnings, ending with today's checklist, and preview Sunday's Pattern of the Week, Double Bottom #2, with Crocs in 2009 as the example. Crocs 2009 is one of the cleanest double-bottom recoveries in modern equity history.
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