What stock under five dollars should I buy?

Screening Filters

1. Market Cap ≥ $300M (market_cap: {'min': '300000000'})

   • Purpose: Focus on larger, more established companies among low-priced stocks.
   • Rationale:
     • Many sub-$5 stocks are tiny, highly speculative microcaps.
     • Setting a minimum market cap helps avoid the riskiest “penny stocks” that can be easily manipulated and lack fundamentals.
     • Companies above ~$300M tend to have more stable operations, better disclosure, and more analyst coverage.

2. Share Price Between $1 and $5 (price: {'min': '1', 'max': '5'})

   • Purpose: Directly match your request for “stocks under five dollars,” while excluding ultra-low-price micro-pennies.
   • Rationale:
     • Max price of $5 aligns with your “under $5” requirement.
     • Minimum price of $1 avoids extremely illiquid, sub-dollar names that are often subject to reverse splits, delisting risk, and extreme volatility.

3. Monthly Average Dollar Volume ≥ $1M (monthly_average_dollar_volume: {'min': '1000000'})

   • Purpose: Ensure the stocks are reasonably liquid and tradable.
   • Rationale:
     • Dollar volume combines price and share volume—$1M+ per month suggests enough trading activity that you can enter and exit without huge bid–ask spreads or significant price impact.
     • This helps filter out thinly traded names where it’s hard to get a fair execution.

4. Price Above 20-Day Moving Average (moving_average_relationship: ['PriceAboveMA20'])

   • Purpose: Tilt toward stocks with short-term positive price momentum.
   • Rationale:
     • Price above its 20-day moving average is a common technical signal that the stock is in a short-term uptrend or recovery phase rather than in a clear downtrend.
     • For low-priced stocks, this can help avoid names that are actively breaking down.

5. Listed on Major U.S. Exchanges (list_exchange: ['XNYS', 'XNAS', 'XASE'])

   • Purpose: Restrict results to NYSE, NASDAQ, and NYSE American (AMEX) listings.
   • Rationale:
     • These exchanges enforce higher listing standards than OTC or pink sheets.
     • You get better reporting quality, less fraud risk, more liquidity, and tighter spreads—important for sub-$5 ideas.

6. Positive Earnings TTM (eps_ttm: {'min': '0'})

   • Purpose: Focus on companies that are actually profitable over the last 12 months.
   • Rationale:
     • Many cheap stocks are cheap because they lose money.
     • Requiring EPS ≥ 0 screens for businesses that at least break even, suggesting a real operating model instead of pure speculation.
     • This leans the list toward higher-quality, more sustainable companies in the low-price range.

7. Non-Negative 1-Month Rise Probability (one_month_rise_prob: {'min': '0'})

   • Purpose: Ensure that any probabilistic model of 1-month performance is at least not outright negative.
   • Rationale:
     • This can act as a basic sanity check so we don’t include stocks where a predictive model explicitly indicates a negative skew or very poor odds of rising in the next month.
     • Practically, a min of 0 is loose but it keeps consistency with predictive fields used in the screen.

8. Non-Negative Predicted 1-Month Return (one_month_predict_return: {'min': '0'})

   • Purpose: Prefer stocks where a model-based forecast suggests at least some positive expected return over the next month.
   • Rationale:
     • While no model is perfect, this attempts to bias the list away from names with a clearly negative expected near-term return.
     • It’s a mild, quantitative nudge toward short-term upside potential, aligned with your interest in what to buy rather than what to avoid.

Why Results Match Your Question

• You asked for stocks under $5 → direct price filter of 1–5 meets this.
• The screen adds quality and tradability constraints (market cap, major exchanges, dollar volume) so you’re not just getting the cheapest, riskiest tickers, but low-priced names that are more investable.
• Profitability and momentum (positive EPS, price above 20-day MA, non-negative predicted return) aim to surface sub-$5 stocks with at least some combination of real business performance and constructive price action, making them more reasonable candidates to consider for purchase.