Screen Edge: Finding growth stocks in any weather 14 May 2003
Growth stocks and bull markets are old friends, but our Relative Growth screen does well even in down markets
Marc Gerstein Director of investment research MultexInvestor
At first blush, it may not seem like a big deal that the MultexSelect Relative Growth screen rose 11.6 percent in the first four months of 2003. Sure, this was better than the 6.2 percent gain for the S&P 500, but after all, growth investing and upward-moving markets tend to go hand-in-hand. I'll bet you'd be more surprised to learn, however, that this screen is up 78.0 percent since we first started tracking performance in January 2000-especially since the S&P 500 was down 31.6 percent during the same period.
What is relative growth?
The key to the Relative Growth screen's distinctive utility is the word "relative": Instead of looking at growth data in a vacuum, it compares company performance to a rational benchmark-namely, industry averages.
.... cut, see link for rest of companies in the screen ....
American Pharmaceutical Partners (APPX): Speaking of short interest, the shorts are in hock, collectively, for nearly 90 percent of APPX's float. Heck, even if I were a bear, I'd cover on that basis alone-there have to be other, less risky short opportunities out there. And as to the merits, it's not as if APPX is a fly-by-night outfit; it's a fairly successful maker of injectable forms of generic pharmaceuticals. One potential new drug is attracting a lot of attention: ABI-007, the rights to which APPX has acquired, is a new treatment for metastatic breast cancer. The FDA granted fast-track status to the testing-review process, a potentially encouraging sign. There are certainly risks here, but they're risks shared by most drug makers. APPX differs from other drug companies in one key respect, however: Since it's not a household name like Merck or Pfizer, many haven't heard of it. Hence the stock's valuation metrics are a lot lower than you're likely to see for other such issues.
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