Screener All Screeners Learn Blog Plans Contact
Investor Education

Learn to Invest in US Stocks

A structured learning path from income basics to multi-factor analysis — with free screener tools at every level. No jargon, no fluff.

🇺🇸 US Markets Focus 📊 Screener-Linked 🎓 Beginner Friendly 🔍 Data-Driven
🌱
Beginner
Income Investor
📡
Intermediate
Signal Hunter
🔬
Advanced
Value Analyst
🌱
Beginner · Level 1
The Income Investor
Start with businesses that pay you to own them. Dividend investing is the most intuitive entry point — you pick stable, cash-generating companies and collect a share of their profits every quarter.
What is dividend investing?

When a company earns more money than it needs to run the business, it can return cash to shareholders as a dividend — a regular payment, usually every quarter. Dividend investing means deliberately choosing businesses that do this reliably.

Why start here? Because dividends create a measurable feedback loop. You don't need to guess whether the market will go up — you know exactly what you're being paid to hold each stock. For beginners, that clarity is enormously useful.

FW Take

Our Dividend Screener focuses on the US market — the deepest and most liquid dividend market in the world. Companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola have paid and grown dividends for 50+ consecutive years.

The 3 numbers every dividend investor must know
Dividend Yield
Annual dividend as a % of share price. Higher isn't always better — it can signal a falling stock price.
FW looks for: 2%–8%
Payout Ratio
What % of earnings is paid as dividends. Too high means the company is straining to maintain payments.
FW looks for: under 80%
Dividend Streak
How many consecutive years dividends have been paid without a cut. The single most reliable safety signal.
FW looks for: 5+ years
5-Year Dividend CAGR
How fast dividends have grown. A growing dividend beats inflation and compounds your income over time.
FW looks for: 5%+ annually
Yield Trap Warning

A yield of 12% sounds great — until you realise it's high because the stock price has collapsed. Always check the payout ratio and streak before chasing yield.

How does our Dividend Screener identify quality stocks?

Our screener runs nightly across US-listed dividend payers and applies a multi-layer filter to find businesses that are paying reliably, growing their dividends, and financially healthy enough to keep doing so.

Each stock gets a Safety Grade from A to D based on:

  • Payout sustainability — is the company earning enough to keep paying?
  • Balance sheet health — is debt under control?
  • Dividend consistency — has it ever cut or suspended payments?
  • Revenue stability — are earnings predictable enough to plan dividends around?

Stocks are also tagged with a Verdict: Income Star, Dividend Grower, Watch, or Cautious — so you can immediately understand what kind of dividend story each stock represents.

How to Read a Card

Not sure what each field means on a Dividend Screener card? Read the full Dividend Guide →

How to build a simple income portfolio

You don't need dozens of stocks to build a reliable income portfolio. A focused, diversified set of 10–15 quality dividend payers across different sectors is a strong starting point.

  • Diversify across sectors — avoid putting more than 20% in any single sector (e.g. all financials)
  • Spread ex-dividend dates — aim for stocks that pay in different months so income arrives year-round
  • Prioritise streak over yield — a 4% yield that has grown for 25 years beats a 7% yield with no track record
  • Reinvest early on — compounding dividends back into shares dramatically accelerates long-term wealth

Use the Income Hub to estimate monthly income from your selected stocks before you buy anything.

Ready to find income stocks?
The Dividend Screener runs nightly across US dividend payers — filtered by safety, yield, streak and growth. Free to explore.
Open the Dividend Screener → How to Read the Card
📡
Intermediate · Level 2
The Signal Hunter
Move beyond single metrics. Multi-factor investing combines technical momentum signals with fundamental business quality to identify stocks that are both fundamentally sound and technically ready to move.
What is multi-factor investing?

No single metric reliably predicts stock performance. A cheap stock is cheap for a reason. A stock with strong momentum might be overextended. Multi-factor investing combines several independent signals so that each one compensates for the weaknesses of the others.

The most powerful combinations in academic research — and the ones our Combined Screener uses — blend:

  • Momentum — price trend signals (RSI, MACD, moving averages)
  • Value — is the business priced reasonably relative to earnings?
  • Quality — is the business fundamentally strong (margins, debt, earnings consistency)?
  • Analyst consensus — what do professional analysts tracking this stock expect?
Why combine signals?

A stock with strong momentum + reasonable value + improving fundamentals is a far stronger setup than any of those three factors alone.

Understanding the 4 conviction tiers

Our Combined Screener assigns each stock a conviction tier based on how many positive factors align. The more factors that agree, the higher the conviction:

⭐ PRIME
All major signals aligned — technical, fundamental and analyst. Highest actionability.
✔ GOOD
Strong majority of signals positive. Solid setup with minor reservations.
〜 EXTENDED
Fundamentals positive but technical signals suggest near-term caution. May be better to wait for a pullback.
— WATCH
Mixed signals. Worth monitoring but no clear entry yet. Add to watchlist.
Pro tip

EXTENDED stocks are often ones that missed last quarter — they may be worth tracking for a better entry. The screener runs nightly, so conviction tiers update as price and fundamentals change.

Technical signals explained: RSI, MACD, and moving averages
RSI (14-day)
Relative Strength Index measures whether a stock is overbought or oversold on a 0–100 scale.
Healthy zone: 40–70
MACD Signal
Moving Average Convergence/Divergence — shows momentum direction. Bullish when MACD line crosses above signal line.
Look for: bullish cross
50-Day MA
Short-term trend. Price above the 50-day average is generally bullish; below is bearish.
Bullish: price > 50MA
200-Day MA
Long-term trend baseline. Price above the 200-day average is the most widely-watched bullish signal.
Bullish: price > 200MA

Our screener aggregates these into a single Technical Score so you don't need to read each chart manually.

How to act on screener signals — a practical framework

Screener output is a starting point, not a buy signal. Here's a simple 3-step process for evaluating any Combined Screener hit:

  • Step 1 — Check the conviction tier. Start with PRIME and GOOD. Skip WATCH unless you have a specific thesis.
  • Step 2 — Open the stock detail. Click through to the Chart and News tabs to see recent price action and catalyst news.
  • Step 3 — Check the analyst consensus. If analysts have a Buy/Strong Buy and the technical signals agree, that's a convergence worth researching further.
Never skip your own research

Screener outputs are informational only. They tell you which stocks pass a set of quantitative rules — not whether any stock is right for your situation. Always do your own research before investing.

Ready to hunt for signals?
The Combined Screener runs nightly across US large caps, scoring each stock on technical momentum + fundamental quality. Filter by conviction tier.
Open the Combined Screener → How to Read the Card
🔬
Advanced · Level 3
The Value & Growth Analyst
At this level you're not just reading signals — you're evaluating business quality. The goal is to find companies trading below their intrinsic value, or growing fast enough that the current price looks cheap in hindsight.
What separates great businesses from merely good ones?

Great businesses share a small set of structural advantages that allow them to earn above-average returns on capital, year after year:

  • Pricing power — they can raise prices without losing customers (brands, networks, switching costs)
  • High return on equity (ROE) — they earn a high return on the capital shareholders have invested
  • Low debt — they don't need to borrow heavily to grow, which means earnings aren't at the mercy of interest rates
  • Consistent earnings growth — results aren't lumpy or cyclical; they compound steadily
  • Strong free cash flow — profits are real cash, not accounting abstractions

Our US Value and US Tech screeners encode each of these into quantitative checks — so the stocks that pass have already cleared a high quality bar before you even look at valuation.

Deep value signals: how to identify an undervalued stock

Value investing is the practice of buying businesses for less than they are worth. The core valuation multiples our Value Screener uses:

P/E Ratio
Price-to-Earnings. How many years of current earnings you're paying for the stock. Lower = cheaper.
FW Value target: <20×
P/B Ratio
Price-to-Book. Compares market value to accounting net asset value. Classic deep value signal.
FW Value target: <3×
EV/EBITDA
Enterprise Value to operating earnings. Strips out capital structure differences — more comparable across sectors.
FW target: <15×
Free Cash Flow Yield
FCF as a % of market cap. High FCF yield means the business generates real cash relative to its price.
FW target: >4%
Value Trap vs. Value Opportunity

A low P/E can mean the stock is cheap or the business is in trouble. Our screener pairs valuation metrics with earnings quality checks to filter out value traps — companies that look cheap but are cheap for a reason.

Growth quality: what makes a high-growth stock worth owning?

The US Tech Screener focuses on businesses where growth justifies a premium. But not all growth is equal. Our screener distinguishes quality growth from speculative hope:

  • Revenue acceleration — growth rate is increasing, not decelerating
  • Margin expansion — as revenue grows, profit margins are widening (operating leverage)
  • Earnings beats — the company is consistently surprising analysts to the upside
  • Analyst upgrades — professional coverage is becoming more positive
  • Technical confirmation — price action supports the fundamental thesis

When a high-growth business hits all five of these, the screener flags it as a PRIME conviction pick — the signal that institutions and sophisticated investors are already acting on the same fundamental story.

Why the Russell 1000?

Our screeners run across the Russell 1000 — the 1,000 largest US companies by market cap. This universe gives us large, liquid businesses with reliable data, analyst coverage, and institutional interest. We deliberately exclude micro-caps where data is noisy and liquidity is thin.

How to read earnings results and analyst estimates

Every quarter, companies report earnings. The market reacts not to the raw numbers, but to the surprise — whether results beat or missed expectations. Key things to track:

  • EPS Beat/Miss — did earnings per share exceed the analyst consensus? By how much?
  • Revenue Beat/Miss — are sales growing faster than expected?
  • Forward Guidance — what is management saying about the next quarter and full year?
  • Analyst Revisions — are analysts raising or cutting their price targets after results?

Our screener card's Analyst tab shows the current consensus — Buy/Hold/Sell ratings and the 12-month price target — updated in near real-time from financial data providers.

Earnings Proximity Flag

Cards on our screener flag stocks with earnings due within 30 days. This is important — holding through earnings introduces binary risk (gap up or gap down). Factor this into your position sizing.

Ready to analyse US quality stocks?
The US Tech and Value Screeners apply 11-point quality frameworks to the Russell 1000 — updated nightly. Dive into the full detail panel for charts, fundamentals, and analyst consensus.
Open US Tech & Value Screeners → Read the Tech Card Guide Read the Value Card Guide

Educational content only. All content on this page is for informational and educational purposes. FinWealthytech screener outputs are generated by quantitative rules applied to publicly available financial data — they are not personalised financial advice, investment recommendations, or solicitations to buy or sell any security. Past performance of any screening methodology does not guarantee future results. Always conduct your own research and consider seeking professional financial advice before making investment decisions.