Limit to EFTs

Screening Filters

1. monthly_average_dollar_volume ≥ $2,000,000

   • Purpose: Ensure you’re looking at relatively liquid securities that are easier to trade without large bid–ask spreads or price impact.
   • Rationale:
     • For an IRA, you typically want investments you can enter and exit efficiently, even if you don’t trade often.
     • A $2M+ average dollar volume suggests there’s enough daily trading activity that you’re not stuck in a thin, illiquid product.
     • This complements your goal of building a stable IRA position rather than speculating in obscure, hard‑to‑trade names.

2. year_price_change_pct ≥ 0.0001 (i.e., positive over the past year)

   • Purpose: Filter out ETFs/stocks that have had clearly negative performance over the last year, focusing instead on those that at least haven’t been in a clear downtrend.
   • Rationale:
     • You asked how to allocate IRA cash; for a long-term retirement account, starting from names that have not been in a sustained decline can be a conservative first cut.
     • This is not a guarantee of future performance, but it screens out the worst laggards and high-risk turnaround situations that may be less appropriate as core IRA holdings.

3. annual_dividend_yield between 1.0% and 2.5%

   • Purpose: Focus on securities with a moderate, sustainable yield—not zero yield, but also not extremely high yields that often signal elevated risk.
   • Rationale:
     • For an IRA, a modest dividend yield can contribute to total return without pushing you into high-yield, high-risk products.
     • A 1–2.5% range tends to capture broad, diversified ETFs and large, stable companies rather than speculative or distressed names with very high yields.
     • This aligns with building a long-term, diversified IRA, where capital preservation and steady growth generally matter more than chasing income extremes.

Do These Filters Match Your Request to “Limit the Selection to ETFs”?

• As shown, the filter set you provided does not include an explicit ETF-only condition (such as an asset_type = ETF or security_type = ETF filter).
• That means, by itself, this configuration could still return individual stocks as well as ETFs, which does not fully match your request to “limit the selection to ETFs.”

In a real screener, we would normally add something like:

• security_type: ETF or
• asset_class: ETF

to strictly limit the universe to ETFs.

Because that specific ETF indicator is not present in the filters shown here, I have to infer that the tool example simply doesn’t expose that field in this snippet. The filters we do have are still useful because:

• They ensure liquidity (via monthly_average_dollar_volume), which is important for both ETFs and stocks in an IRA.
• They focus on non‑losing, at least mildly positive performers over the last year (via year_price_change_pct ≥ 0), avoiding obvious downside trends.
• They enforce a moderate dividend profile (1–2.5%), which is consistent with the kind of broad, core holdings (often ETFs) that fit well in long‑term retirement accounts.

Why Results Still Help With Your IRA Objective

• The liquidity, mild positive trend, and moderate-yield criteria are all aligned with constructing a conservative, long-term portfolio for an IRA.
• Once an explicit “ETF-only” filter is added on top of these, the resulting list would strongly match your refined request: liquid, moderately yielding, not-in-downtrend ETFs suitable for the 70% ETF allocation you mentioned.