PickYou can use this link for a screener of stocks that meet a lot of the criteria below...Click Here
OR
- Pick the industry that I'm interested in. Look at the bottom left of this page: Sector Summary
- Check the head lines: Wall Street Journal, USA Today
- Narrow down to stocks, that you've at least heard of
- In most cases you are best dealing with the largest in the sector
- If I know anyone that works for the company or in the sector talk to them
Current Price: N/A
- Read on Reuters a summary of the company... Click Here
- Check that the company is doing better than the industry in a majority of common ratios. This can be found adding the ticker to the end of this link, Click Here
- Buffet Analysis
- Gross Profit Margin over 40% - this shows how good of a job the money that is spent does making money. This can be found adding the ticker symbol to the end of this, Click Here
- Net Profit Margin over 15% - this shows how much of a competitive advantage the company has, if they have a higher number that means they can mark up there prices more since they are a dominate force in there sector. Click Here
- Return on Equity over 15% for 1 and 5 years- this shows the rate of return on the ownerships interest of common stock owners. Click Here
- Does the company have increasing debt, if a company has increasing dept it may be a sign that they aren't making enough to pay off current debt. Click Here
- Net Income over Total Revenue over 20% - this is a measure of how well management is using the money that is coming in, Click Here
- Increasing Net Income - pretty simple, we're looking to make sure that each year they are making more money. Click Here
- 10 Year EPS trending up - here we are looking for a company that is durable not one that is going to have a good year here and there. Click Here
- Increasing and Positive retained earnings - This shows that a company is continuing to make money and has money on hand. Click Here
- Reasonable P/E, normally this would be under 20, but more importantly is that it's lower than the rest of its industry. Click Here N/A
- Reasonable PEG, A PEG of 1 should mean the company is valued so a PEG under 1 should be undervalued. Click Here N/A
At this point if you feel comfortable with the stock that you have picked, it's time to buy. There are several schools of thought on picking a proper time to buy a stock, I'm just going to write about two of them here;
- The company is a solid long term investment and pays a dividend. In this case you are not looking for valley, you are buying a solid stock that you aren't planning to sell. This mean you can buy at pretty much any time, but will fair much better during a downturn where every stock is low you have the opportunity to buy the best stocks at discounted rates.
- Looking at the chart. There are hundreds of book on charting and how to use them to time buys and sales, if you are trading stocks quickly this can be a viable option. Here you aren't betting on the quality of the stock, but more the emotion and predicabilty of humans. This link shows a chart of the stock that you were looking at above. Here are you looking for a where the 20 day average crosses the 100 day average (showing momentum) followed by an upward trend and lastly a high volume day. In a lot of cases this indicates a buying opportunity based on this charting theory. It doesn't work every time, but is pretty effective when you have already picked the stock you want to buy and are just looking for the best buy point.
Check out summaries of your stock on various investment sites: 
Google Finance (SEC Filings,Recent News)
Yahoo! Finance (Key Stats,Analyst Estimates,Charting)
MSN Moneycentral (Major Holders,Financial Statement)
Stock TA
Reuters (Company Overview)
Investors Business Daily
RTS Stock Reports (Comment)
The Motley Fool
Market Watch (Analyst Opinion)
Morningstar (Options)
Seeking Alpha (Transcripts)
AOL Finance (Events)
Portfolio Grader