Screening Filters
Market Cap ≥ $20,000,000,000 (Large-cap focus)
- Purpose: Limit results to large, established companies.
- Rationale:
- When someone asks for “the best stock to buy currently,” they’re usually looking for a balance of upside and reliability, not ultra-speculative micro caps.
- Large-cap firms (>$20B) tend to have:
- More stable business models
- Deeper liquidity (easier to enter/exit positions)
- Better disclosure, analyst coverage, and institutional monitoring
- This filter reduces the risk profile of candidates and keeps the list to companies that are realistically investable for most people.
Net Margin > 10%
- Purpose: Ensure the company is meaningfully profitable.
- Rationale:
- High net margins indicate a company can convert revenue into actual earnings efficiently.
- For a “best stock to buy” shortlist, you generally want:
- Strong competitive advantages (often show up as high margins)
- Pricing power and cost control
- Better ability to weather downturns
- This filter steers us away from weak or marginal businesses and toward quality franchises.
Revenue 5-Year CAGR > 8%
- Purpose: Target companies with solid, sustained growth.
- Rationale:
- “Best” typically implies not just stability, but also growth potential.
- A 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) above ~8% flags businesses that are:
- Growing faster than typical mature companies
- Likely expanding market share, product lines, or pricing
- Using a 5-year window avoids chasing only short-term spikes and focuses on structurally growing businesses.
Predicted 1-Month Return > 5% (one_month_predict_return)
- Purpose: Add a near-term upside component to the screen.
- Rationale:
- Among fundamentally strong names, this filter prioritizes those where models expect a positive short-term move (e.g., >5% over the next month).
- It aligns with a user who is asking “currently” — implying interest in both fundamentals and current timing.
- While no prediction is guaranteed, this tilts the results toward names with favorable short-term risk/reward, according to the underlying model.
Analyst Consensus ∈ {“Strong Buy”, “Moderate Buy”}
- Purpose: Require supportive institutional/analyst sentiment.
- Rationale:
- If we’re trying to approximate “best stock to buy now,” broad analyst support is a useful confirmation check.
- This filter excludes:
- “Hold,” “Sell,” or “Underperform” names where the Street sees limited upside or higher risk.
- It keeps only stocks where multiple professional analysts, looking at earnings, valuation, and risks, currently believe the risk/reward is attractive.
Why These Results Match the User’s Question
The question is very broad (“best stock to buy currently”), so the screen translates that into high-quality, relatively lower-risk, and currently favored opportunities:
- Large, established businesses (size & stability)
- Profitably run (healthy net margins)
- Growing over multiple years (revenue CAGR)
- With a positive short-term return profile (predicted 1-month return)
- And strong external validation (buy-rated by analysts)
Together, these filters narrow the universe to stocks that are:
- Financially strong
- Structurally growing
- Near-term attractive based on predictive models
- Supported by professional analyst consensus
This doesn’t guarantee any one “best” stock, but it creates a focused list of high-probability, high-quality candidates that are more likely to fit what people typically mean when they ask for the best stock to buy right now.
This list is generated based on data from one or more third party data providers. It is provided for informational purposes only by Intellectia.AI, and is not investment advice or a recommendation. Intellectia does not make any warranty or guarantee relating to the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of any third-party information, and the provision of this information does not constitute a recommendation.