Learn From The Leaders: Combining Technical Analysis With Seeking Alpha Quant Grades | Robert Isbitts

Robert Isbitts, Investing Group Leader of Sungarden Investment Publishing, shares how he combines technical analysis with Seeking Alpha Quant Grades, screeners, and watchlists to identify high-quality stocks with strong fundamentals and price trends.For more insights from Robert Isbitts, join Sungarden Investors Club today!Follow Robert Isbitts at Sungarden Investment Publishing on Seeking Alpha!This video's transcript was generated by a third party. It is not curated or reviewed and is provided for convenience and information purposes only. The accuracy and completeness of the transcript are not guaranteed.Robert Isbitts: Hey, everyone. I'm Rob Isbitts. I write for Seeking Alpha under the profile Sungarden Investment Publishing, and I'm the Investing Group Leader for Sungarden Investors Club at Seeking Alpha. For the next few minutes, I'm going to give you a tour of the Seeking Alpha Premium platform through my eyes and how I use it. I watched some of the great video descriptions from some of my fellow Investing Group Leaders here. And for a few reasons, my use of the tools is a little bit different. That's because I'm not a traditional fundamental analyst.I've been a technician, a chartist, a Quant through more than three decades as a professional investor, and that means I have a dedicated process that is price based. You know what that also means? That when it comes to analyzing stocks to make sure I'm not buying good charts from bad companies, I need help.

And Seeking Alpha is my go to for that because the Quant Factor Grades, the Screening Tools, and the Watch Lists are excellent complements to my own chart work.So, let's take a look, and I'll walk you through a few of the typical screens that I go back to time and again. So, I focus a lot on macro analysis and ETFs. Well, the biggest ETF is the S&P 500, and the Top 20 stocks make up a huge percentage of that index. So, when I want to understand what's going on inside the Top 20 stocks, I have those loaded in right here, in a watch list, and I even have a view that I created for it. And I am a big fan of some of the Quant Grades.So, in this case, I'm sorting by industry. I could just as easily take that away, take the sector short away and not group them. I have them sorted here by market cap, at least I can. And this is really where I focus. It's this trio right here, the profitability grade. Because, again, not a fundamental analyst. And I have found that the Seeking Alpha Quant system does a really nice job of bottom lining for me if there's any place that I might get in trouble because the company is not consistently profitable. I think this also speaks to the blue chip nature of a lot of these companies.I also look at the valuation grade. And, look, for years, that hasn't really been a place where you find a lot of higher grades, and I'm certainly sensitive to that, but I also look at growth because that's the other side of valuation. And I will look for higher growth grades. Generally speaking, I'm looking for what a good teacher would look for. If it's not in the A range, at least maybe in the high Bs, B+, B. If not, maybe there's an issue.So, that's what I do on the Top 20 stocks. I'm going to take a look now at a similar panel, but I have a different set up here. This is the Dow 30. Now, I am a big fan of the Dow 30. If you read some of my articles, you would see that. And I'm looking at, not only things like when the dividends are coming up, but again, the profitability grade. If there is a dividend, I want to make sure that dividend is safe, and I want to see if it's growing because if it's not that high and it's growing, that can make up for it. And I will look at this multiple ways because, again, pretty big fan of the Dow, and that's how I will use that one.Now, there's also the screener. And the screener for me, again, like I just said before, I'm looking for the As or at least the Bs. And so, from time-to-time, I'll run screens like this where I'm looking for U.S. companies. I'm looking for market caps, say in this case, at least $10 billion. I want that high valuation and that high profitability. And in terms of growth, I've let it go, and maybe I'll screen down to this later. And so, at any point in time, this will give me things to maybe start looking at because I know that maybe I'm not getting straight As, but I'm getting a high score for valuation, maybe a decent score for growth. I certainly want that profitability, and you can see here that that's where I tend to end up. And then from here, I can overlay it with my chart work and my macro view and produce not only, hopefully, simple, compelling, actionable investment research for Seeking Alpha Investing Group subscribers, but also for my Premium articles.So, I hope you learned a little bit from this quick look at how I use Seeking Alpha Premium to do research for my service. Just click the link below this video, and you can check out my Investing Group, Sungarden Investors Club on Seeking Alpha. I'll see you there soon. Thanks for watching.For more insights from Robert Isbitts, join Sungarden Investors Club today!Follow Robert Isbitts at Sungarden Investment Publishing on Seeking Alpha!