As rocky equity markets continue to worry those who look at their portfolios all too often, the S&P/TSX Composite Total Return Index has posted year-to-date losses totalling 4.5 per cent. For the optimistic investor, the recent negative market action might present some buying opportunities. To borrow from Warren Buffett, “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.
Experienced investors will quickly realize this is not really a Buffett-like approach, but rather one that focuses on fundamental growth . Nevertheless, today’s strategy starts by ranking the 701 stocks in the CPMS Canadian database on the following measures:Five-year earnings per share and operating cash flow growth rates ;To qualify, stocks must have a market capitalization great than $140-million, a figure meant to exclude the bottom one-third of stocks in the database by size.